Q. I could not believe my eyes when I read your answer to the question
about the cost of chain mail in issue #158. I, too, thought the prices
had been misprinted. Your response that scale mail costs more to make
than chain mail is idiotic and grossly unhistorical. Chain mail is
made of wire (itself difficult and expensive to make) that is formed
into links that are interlocked, then soldered or welded together. In
the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., a Roman armourer, using
techniques that remained essentially unchanged throughout the Middle
Ages, could make four or five suits of chain mail a year. By contrast,
scale mail uses metal plates, not wire, that are simply sewn onto a
leather shirt.
A. To reiterate, the base cost of chain mail in the AD&D 2nd Edition
game is 75 gold pieces, and the base cost of scale mail is 120 gold
pieces. Itemized breakdowns of the costs of manufacture for each type
of armour are given on page 6 of the Complete Fighter's Handbook. Your
estimate of the construction time for chain mail agrees with the table
in the Complete Fighter's Handbook, where an unsupervised apprentice
working in a properly equipped shop can make a suit of chain mail in
10 weeks (5.2 suits a year). However, two apprentices working under
the same conditions take eight weeks to make a suit of scale mail (16
man-weeks in all). Scale mail requires more raw materials (60 gold
pieces worth) than does chain mail (38 gold pieces worth); chain
mail's rings require less labour and metal than scale mail's plates.
Note, however, that chain mail and scale mail come from two different
historical periods. (See the Dungeon Master's Guide, page 35, for a
discussion of time periods in the AD&D game and their associated
technology.) Scale mail, an ancient armour type, had all but
disappeared by the time chain mail came into common use during the
Middle Ages. Obviously, if you have a campaign set right on the
borderline between the end of the Ancient period (when the DMG says
chain mail doesn't exist at all) and the beginnings of the Dark Ages,
about 1100 A.D. or so, chain mail is going to be very expensive. There
are several reasons for this. First, chain mail would represent the
newest and best concept in body armour, keeping up with the latest
developments is always costly. Second, the manufacturing techniques
and advanced metallurgy that made chain mail economical to manufacture
during the Middle Ages would not yet have been invented. Third, from a
campaign standpoint, chain mail should be more expensive that scale
mail; you can kiss your play balance goodbye if the best armour
available isn't also the most costly. You are free to set your own
cost for chain mail in such a setting, but I recommend at least double
(150 gold pieces) and triple (225 gold pieces) normal prices would not
be unreasonable. Furthermore, chain mail in this setting probably
would be made of iron, not steel, as the equipment list in the
Player's Handbook assumes. Such chain mail would weigh 50 lbs. instead
of the listed 40 lbs, or 25% more (see DMG, page 38).
Speaking of the "unhistorical": One does not have to have wire to make
chain mail. The Romans used rings cut, punched, or drilled from sheets
of metal. The Romans and ancient Chinese probably also had access to
cast rings. Wire was pretty rare in medieval Europe, and most wire was
gold, silver, or copper for use in jewellery and adornments. Medieval
armourers almost certainly made their chain mail from rods that they
forged themselves from ingots or bars; this is not as difficult as it
sounds, especially when the armourer knew what he was doing and had
his whole life to practice the skill. (Note that making a rod from a
chunk of raw metal takes a lot less hammering than what would be
required to make a flat plate out of the same piece of metal.)
Furthermore, the chain mail currently preserved in museums and private
collections is not soldered or welded, but riveted; in most cases,
however, the rivets were hammered so carefully that the links appear
to be welded. Finally, not all chain mail had its links fastened.
Ancient armourers often simply linked the rings, as did their
successors when they were in a hurry or wanted to cut costs. This
generally made inferior armour, but oriental armourers often made very
good unriveted chain mail (as good as riveted mail) by using a
superior alloy and by making each ring from two or three coils of rod.
For readers who are interested in learning more about the manufacture
of chain mail and other types of armour, I recommend A Glossary of the
Construction, Decoration, and Use of Arms and Armour, by George
Cameron Stone. The book is uncommon but is available at better used
book stores and at large libraries.
Q. I really enjoyed your "April Fools" column back in issue # 156. Did
anybody help you think up the questions?
A. The questions in #156 were real; readers really sent them in. I am
not clever enough to think up questions like that. I suppose I could
get together with a few colleagues and think up a few questions that
would be pretty wild, but that would be a waste considering what the
mailbag holds every month.
Q. To answer your question in issue #156 (page 55, third column): Yes,
those questions do arise during play. Now that you know this, perhaps
you'd reconsider your answer to the "watery ranger" question. Where
I'm from, characters get wished into glasses of water all the time
(the idea originated in a fanzine), and your suggestion that such
characters can be killed simply by drinking them is tough on PCs.
A. First, if wishes are so common in your campaigns that they are used
for anything "all the time", you've got too many wishes floating
around; cut back. Note that a wish is the only magic in the core AD&D
rules that can turn a character into a glass of water. Polymorph any
object can turn organic matter into inorganic matter, but into only
one kind of matter at a time; a successful spell could turn a
character into a glass, or into water, but not both. Second, wishes
are not intended to be used as direct attacks on creatures. Such
wishes fall into the grossly unfair category (see PHB, page 197), and
the DM should actively subvert the intent of such spells whenever they
are used, even when they are used by NPCs. Thus, if an evil wizard
wishes a PC "into a glass of water", a huge glass containing the PC
and many gallons of water should appear; rest assured that at least
one novel twist exists for each possible wording of this wish. Third,
this wish should allow a saving throw, since it is being used as a
high powered polymorph any object spell. Fourth, any polymorphed
character retains his hit points. Drinking the character will cause
harm just as surely as eating the character would, but if the
character has 100 hit points, drinking the character is going to be a
long and difficult process. Water in a glass has no armour class (it
just sits there), but the most damage a human can do by drinking is
1-2 hit points per round. Note that big, nasty teeth have no real
effect on water, but a large tongue does, so a dragon or cow might be
able to "drink" 1-12 hit points each round. Also, as TSR editor Jon
Pickens points out, if a character is turned into a glass of water, a
few of his hit points will be held in the glass (say 10-20% of the
total), and the glass must be smashed before the character can be
killed; this, too, is easier said than done if the victim has a lot of
hit points. Finally, although evaporation or spillage can "kill" the
character, death won't be instantaneous. An evaporated character is
effectively in gaseous form until his molecules are thoroughly
dispersed in the atmosphere; a kind DM might rule that the gaseous
state lasts indefinitely. Similarly, a watery character poured into
the dirt and allowed to soak in can be considered melded into stone
and not truly dead.
Q. Back in issue #121, you said that non-yakuza ninja do not have the
ability to pick pockets. However, the same issue of Dragon Magazine
contained a new oriental character class, the geisya. This class is
supposed to have a pick pockets ability that is the same as a ninja of
the same level. Furthermore, Oriental Adventures itself says that a
yakuza has a chance to pick pockets equal to that of a ninja of the
same level. What gives?
A. This column was right; ninja do not have a pick pockets ability
unless they are ninja-yakuza. Until an official correction comes
along, assume a 1st-level yakuza has a 30% chance to pick pockets.
This ability increases by 5% per level to a maximum of 99% at level
15. Allow the geiysa to pick pockets as a yakuza (not a ninja) of
equal level.
Q. A couple of issues ago, you said that the new dragons can breathe
only three times a day. What's wrong with allowing them to breathe
once every three rounds with no limit on the number of times per day?
A. Nothing is wrong with that. In fact, that's the way dragon breath
is supposed to work with the new dragons (my error).
|
|