Dragonmark: Dragonshards – What are they good for?
Posted by Keith Baker in Eberron FAQ, Gaming Features, UncategorizedAug 21st, 2010 | 14 responsesSadly, as a freelancer I have a limited amount of time to answer questions and post on boards. So I’m going to start an archive of frequently asked questions here on HDWT… about once a week, though no promises. Feel free to send questions to me here, on Facebook, or to Hellcowkeith on Twitter. This week’s question concerns Eberron dragonshards.
I’m running an Eberron campaign and I can’t find any clarification in any of the Eberron books as to what benefit an Eberron shard provides when crafting it into a typical magic item.
By the Rules As Written, not much. From page 265 of the 3.5 ECS:
In addition to the items described here, the following magic items from the Dungeon Master’s Guide are normally made using Eberron shards: spell storing weapons, ring of spell storing, ring of counterspells, ring of wizardry, rod of absorption, metamagic rods, pearl of power, and the bead of karma (on a strand of prayer beads). In addition, intelligent magic items frequently incorporate Eberron shards.
Now, I didn’t write this particular piece, and personally, I don’t think it goes far enough. This hardly seems sufficient to make Dragonshard mining a major source of economic influence for House Tharashk, or to give Q’barra the gold rush feeling I always wanted there. So if I don’t think this is sufficient, what did I have in mind?
Well, in my original vision, it’s not a question of the benefit an Eberron shard provides in crafting a typical magic item. Rather, it’s the fact that you cannot craft a typical magic item without Eberron dragonshards. I always saw Eberron dragonshards as Eberron’s answer to oil: a fundamental resource that drives the magical economy. No benefit is specified because use of dragonshards is assumed. When it’s said that an item will cost you 4,000 gp to produce, well, 1,000 gp of that cost is probably refined dragonshards. Khyber and Siberys shards are rare and used for more specific tasks; Eberron shards are consumed in mass quantities.
Fourth Edition makes this nice and simple. In my home Eberron campaign, residuum is the term used for the most refined form of Eberron dragonshard – processed and reduced to a gleaming powder. This is the fuel that is used to power rituals or create items, and the resource that can be reclaimed when an item is disenchanted. This comes up in one of the Thorn novels, where there’s a reference to “residuum-grade dragonshards”. As a result, when people find raw Eberron shards, I assign a sale value. PCs can use them as if they were residuum, but it’s inefficient and they’ll only get 30% – 60% (1d4+2) of the sale price worth of residuum. Meanwhile, if the shard is processed, it will ultimately produce twice its market value in residuum… meaning that the wizard who burns unrefined shards is potentially only getting 15% of its residuum potential.
But how do you make this work in 3.5/Pathfinder/whatever? Use the same principle. At the DM’s discretion, refined Eberron Dragonshards can be used in place of any arcane spell component with a cost… and when creating magic items, 25% of the component cost is made up of refined Dragonshards. If adventurers acquire unrefined Eberron shards, they can use them for the same purpose, but at the reduced level of efficiency.
In any case, the short answer to the question is: In my campaign, using Eberron shards to create typical magic items doesn’t give you any sort of bonus; instead, it is a resource that is required to create any arcane item. This is what has given House Tharashk so much influence in such a short period of time.
UPDATE: Since writing this, I had a chance to write an article for DDI about Q’barra and the dragonshard trade. As a result, the idea of dragonshards as residuum is now in the canon. However, I decided to make an Eberron dragonshard worth its full market value as residuum, rather than make it a random percentage. This keeps book-keeping much simpler for adventurers, and the thought is that Tharashk makes profit because they can squeeze 200 gp worth of residuum out of a shard with a market value of 100 gp; essentially, the value of the shard in your hand takes into account that they will need to make a profit on it when they buy it from you. This does mean that if you have a ritual caster in your group, there’s not a lot of need to sell shards, since you can get the same residuum value that you could for selling them; but shards are bulkier than residuum, and hey, you may have more need for gold.
14 Responses to “Dragonmark: Dragonshards – What are they good for?”
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Ah! Not what I was expecting, but good to know that’s what your intent was, Keith. Thanks for answering my question! Only 13 hours till I thrust my players into Eberron…
Most excellent, sir. I shall be using this immediately as the next phase of my Eberron campaign begins in two weeks. Thank you.
I kinda figured it was like that, a sort of ‘everything incorporates these into their manufacture [residuum] or their structure [the light-emitting element in an everbright lantern]‘, but I never had characters that bothered to craft anything. They were always more ‘exlplodey’ magic users, or they were not magic users. But I like that you intended it this way.
I also had a mental image similar to the early 20th century oil barons going into their huge skyscrapers, only with WoW gear and getting out of a floating limo.
I like the comparison to oil. I recall a discussion where the ecological ramifications of mining dragonshards was debated. Especially the wisdom of harvesting khybershards- aren’t they binding demons after all? Eberron dragonshards are most common in places invaded by the daelkyr. It just isn’t something that can go on forever, is it?
Not ALL Khyber shards are binding demons, Gurv; personally I’d assume that you want “empty” ones for most binding work, while a “filled” shard would serve different purposes. But yes, I think the idea of people mining “filled” shards is a fun campaign topic. I used it in my unpublished Sunless Feoral article, which I might put up here one of these days.
Speaking of other Editions, a buddy of mine and I are doing a quick conversion of the core Eberron classes to Pathfinder, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in looking at what we’ve worked up once we have the classes and races done?
That’s cool. Presumably there’s a cost to refine the shard? Is refining something you imagine PCs doing, or an “off-camera” activity?
The few 4E Eberron games I ran I used Eberron Shards as residuum components for rituals. For example, a single dragonshard was worth 2000gp of residuum. This helped immersion and was a better image then lugging a potato sack of glowing dust around.
Ill be running a Fantasy Craft Eberron game here shortly and their role in that system has escaped me up until this point.
Thanks this is all good stuff. I was a big fan of your “Dragonshards” articles.
@Toby, I assume that refining is an industrialized process involving alchemical equipment and skills. A player character with Arcana (4E)/Profession – Alchemist (3E)/whatever could do it as long as they have time and the proper equipment, but it’s not something I’d expect PCs to do.
Essentially, the point as I see it is to make raw dragonshards a more interesting treasure than gemstones, because you CAN burn them for spell-power in a pinch… but at the same time, one can see how they are tied into an industrial society that has developed ways to more efficiently harness the power that they contain.
I like it. My 3.5 campaign also hasn’t had much in the way of magic-item construction, but I did have a bit of backstory fluff where New Cyre’s struggling economy got a boost from the discovery (by the PCs) of an old Eberron shard mine in a nearby foothill of the Seawall Mountains (under a collapsed and forgotten Dhakaani monument; some New Cyre homsteaders had actually dragged stones away for use in building their cottages, not knowing what they’d found or what was just under their feet).
I’ve heard that refined Eberron shards – residuum- makes good rocket fuel, though for some reason the colonists call it Tylium…
I think you’re thinking of Tiberium, Mike… or is it Khaydarin?
No, it’s Tylium: http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Substances_in_the_Re-imagined_Series
I was joking. Tiberium is the crystaline fuel source in the Command & Conquer games, while Khaydarin crystals are the fuel of Starcraft. And then we have dilithium, of course… but at the end of the day, they’re all actually dragonshards.