More Sufficiently Advanced Chemistry

Following this earlier post, but going back to an earlier Cracked article,  here are some more inspirations for adventure-game wonders based on real chemistry.

Ferrofluids: Suspensions of iron particles in a liquid that form shapes when magnetic fields are applied.

• An iron door that is solid only through the grace of magnetism; turning off the field collapses it.
• Over here is a jug of some black oily material. Over there is a statue holding a detachable hilt that exudes an invisible magnetic field (going near, you feel the pull on your iron weapons and armor). Pour the jug on the hilt for a real Liquid Sword.
• Flicking the switch means that the slimy liquid at the bottom of the pit rises up and forms nasty spikes.

Aerogel: Translucent, super-strong material that's mostly air.

• Cloudy glassteel pane: you can kind of see through it to all that treasure on display, but not break it.
• Or you can break it - but there's an angry air elemental inside.

Perfluorocarbons: Breathable fluids imbued with oxygen.

• It's a pool with ... a manticore at the bottom?
• I stashed my treasure under water at the end of this long tunnel. Suicide to try and swim, but only I know the water is breathable.
• Potion of water breathing - but you have summon up the guts to inhale it right into your lungs.

Elastic conductor: Material that expands and becomes rigid when current is applied.

• Wizard's bridge over a chasm. You need to cast a lightning bolt to extend it all the way, but hurry - it only stays that way for a round.
• Curtains that part for anyone except the electric shock monster being held captive.
• Gloves that enhance a shocking grasp spell with a floppy ribbon that turns into a blade, adding stabby injury to shocking injury.

Non-Newtonian fluid: "A liquid that turns solid when sufficient stress is applied."

• "It's only a ten-foot drop, I'll just dive into this ... AAAGHHH"
• You find a strange leather suit, that seems to be made of two layers with a little valve. Elsewhere you find a bottle of the fluid. It gives full mobility, works as plate mail against blows of all kinds, and can only be pierced by small soft scratches.
• The giant can walk on this water, but you little guys just fall through.
• Lair feature of a Great Old One wishing to outdo Cthulhu's non-Euclidean geometry.

Transparent alumina: See-through (if slightly cloudy) metal.

• See above under glassteel doors and windows.
• Metal bikinis and codpieces just got more interesting.

Carbon nanotubes: Nano-scale fibers made of carbon: incredibly strong, electrically conductive, and yeah, the Cracked writer gets overwhelmed by the Cracked style guide at this point and just gets stuck on "bur bur bur awesome mind-blowing bur bur bur" so here's the website of a company that makes them, and the wiki article.

• +3 armor that looks like just a shirt and pants. Nanotubes.
• The beast with nanotube fur ... equivalent to plate mail.
• A sword with an invisible blade. It's just one nanotube.
• The wizard installed some looong nanotube wiring in her castle to deliver fire and lightning damage to those below.

Any Sufficiently Advanced Chemistry

.... is indistinguishable from alchemy. I've taken the six miracle substances from this recent Cracked magazine article and found a couple of fantasy-world uses for each one.

Gallium, the Metal That Melts in Your Hand

1. Obviously, heat-sensitive tripwires.
2. Cool way to seal a flask.
3. Reptiles or golems or undead are blocked by this wall, warm-blooded creatures can melt their way through it.
4. Stand here for too long and the heat from your boots will trap your feet in the cube of metal underfoot.
5. Gallium also reacts with aluminum to make it brittle. Imagine that a similar reagent exists for each metal - who needs lockpicking skills? Imagine a self-destroying golden treasure.
6. A metal bridge that you can blow with a tea kettle at each end.

Sulphur Hexafluoride, The Gas Heavy Enough to Float Solid Objects

1. It's what's under your floating disk.
2. Take the 100' leap of faith down; the heavy air will cushion your fall, but then breathing becomes a problem as you climb the 10' ladder to the passage onward.
3. It makes your voice deeper, kind of an anti-helium. Kobolds huff this stuff and hide to make people run from the "loud, singing giant around the corner." 
4. Floating skull! Run!

Hydrophobic (Water-Repelling) Surfaces

1. A necessary coating for underwater adventurers' spellbooks, bows, etc.
2. A corridor floor coated with this, then a trap dumps a blob of water, which races towards you like an Indiana Jones boulder. When blood spills on the floor, it beads and skitters like water on a hot griddle.
3. Invisible fishtank: foot-deep water on the floor surrounded by a hydrophobic zone. Will they figure out that this is the safe place to be when pursued by that water elemental?

Spontaneously Exploding Powders and Crystals

1. What's this smoky gray gem ... BAM
2. What's all this funny colored sand ... BAM
3. Bad guy to captive in10x10 room: Hold this. Don't move.
4. Explodes with shock wave from loud noise... best door opening deterrent.

Hot Ice (clear liquid that turns solid and white when disturbed)

1. Let me just stick my foot into this pool of clear water ... Oh.
2. If you can find a way to carry it around in a flask without bumping it, you have an instant door sealant, hole plugger, etc.
3. Sprayed from the ceiling, is an encasement trap.

Memory Metal


1. Clue, command word, true name, etc. written in cursive script as a twisted piece of wire that only needs an application of heat to snap back into the real letters
2. The same, but forms a key to a mechanical lock.
3. A strip of metal formed into an innocuous looking wristband expands and sharpens into an assassin's blade when placed in warm water.
4. A tangled wire ball placed in a piece of cold meat and fed to a mighty beast will, in its warm stomach, resume its former shape of a jagged, four-pointed cross.

One-Roll Breakage Rules

It may be a while before I post the Dungeon.ppt you've been awaiting - there's the small matter of my 100,000 word manuscript I have to format and put in the mail by Thursday. It's not for gaming - it's a psychological monograph on moral emotions -  but I did slip the phrase "malevolent and benign" into one of the chapters...

In the meantime, a solution to something that's been bugging me a while...

What do you do when you roll a critical hit and weapons clash in combat? Or a fumble says to test for weapon breakage? Or one of your players is trying to hack a door with an axe?

Do you:
1: Pause the game, haul out the 1st Edition DMG and consult the item saving throw table?
2: Pause the game, haul out the 3rd Edition or Pathfinder book and use the even more complicated material damage system?
3: Remember 3-5-7-9-11?

When a swung weapon (not a spear, arrow etc.) might damage an item, and the weapon is made of material harder or as hard as the item, roll damage for the attacking weapon. I'm assuming you're using standard variable damage where a dagger is d4, longsword d8 and so on. Does it break the defending item?

If it's 3 or greater, a fragile item like a wand or a flask breaks.
If it's 5 or greater, a wooden haft, club or other thin wooden item breaks.
If it's 7 or greater, a shield or other solid wooden item breaks.
If it's 9 or greater, a sword, dagger blade, iron haft or other thin metal item breaks.
If it's 11 or greater, a metal shield or other solid metal item breaks.

Magical items defending against breakage have +1 to this number for every +1 of magic bonus.

A non-weapon surface that an object hits (say, in a fumble), if it's as hard as or harder than the weapon's weakest material, does:

1d4 damage if wood, 1d6 if reinforced wood, 1d8 if stone, 1d10 if metal - in ascending order of hardness.

In such a fumble, an edged weapon that doesn't break or take any damage is still blunted and has -1 to hit until sharpened.

Hacking at a solid item like a door proceeds the same way, except no hit roll is needed. An axe or pick is the ideal tool; anything else that can be swung is -1 damage for this purpose. Each hacker gets one damage roll per round, and the minimum damage roll to score a "breakage" is 7 (solid wood).

An object will take 2 "breaks" to fully break through a 1' square area that is 1 inch thick. So, to take a typical door off its hinges will require 4 breaks, more if thicker; to open a locked chest will require 2 breaks. If in this process a natural 1 for damage is rolled, the weapon takes damage instead, as in a fumble (see above).

So - hack away!