I want to create a magic item that would be basically a lute left by the almighty Pun-Pun. I highly doubt that he would lower his standards to use pitiful materials like adamantium or platinum. I am wondering what is the most expensive material in the world of Dungeons and Dragons that could be used instead.
Materials from Dragon and Dungeon magazines are welcome. Previous editions would be fine as well, but their value would require a conversion to 3.5.
I'm starting with the following assumptions:
Using the Giant in the Playground Special Materials Index as a reference, the most expensive I can find are abyssal bloodiron (Planar Handbook p.69) and thinaun (Complete Warrior p.136), which both cost at least 10,000 gp for a weapon, or 3⅓ the price of adamantine.
Thinaun costs 10,000 gp for a light weapon (ranging from 1 - 4 lbs) and 15,000 gp for a one-handed weapon (3 - 8 lbs), so at first glance it's more expensive than abyssal bloodiron, which is 10,000 gp tops. However, lets remember one thing: Pun-pun the kobold is a Small creature, and a lute sized for him weighs a quarter of normal.
That's ¾ lb for a wooden instrument. Now, if you just polymorphed that from wood into steel, it would become approximately twelve times heavier and weigh 9 lbs, but the acoustics would be all wrong. A functional lute is sounded by the ability of the strings to resonate the body. That's why lutes are normally made from a light material like wood. The lute has to be made of thin enough metal to weigh something much closer to 1 lb, so we're unlikely to need 15,000 gp worth of thinaun.
So thinaun and abyssal bloodiron are both 10,000 gp for a weapon, but abyssal bloodiron also increases the cost of magical enhancements by 2,000 gp. While we're not counting the price of enhancements in the overall material value, it's a given that this lute either has been enhanced, or soon will be by whichever adventuring bard acquires this most legendary item.
By this tiebreaker, abyssal bloodiron is the most expensive special metal. It's more expensive than adamantine (3,000 gp for a weapon), obdurium (twice that, at 6,000 gp), Oerthblood (6,000 gp) and stygian ice (6,000 gp per weapon, 2,000 gp per pound). It's more expensive than starmetal, which as per Complete Arcane costs 5,000 gp per weapon. And while riverine (Stormwrack) is extremely expensive, it's still no more than twice the price of adamantine for any given use.
For the previously mentioned reasons of acoustics, I don't believe that diamond or gemstone has the right material properties to make a working lute, at least not one that anyone but the superhuman Pun-Pun can play. Gemstone is generally too hard to vibrate and the sound response would be poor. We also don't know what size a diamond is, so it's impossible to price.
However, in Into the Wormcrawl Fissure (Dungeon #134, p. 85), there is a single star sapphire the size of a fist worth 12,000 gp. The specific density of sapphire is about 4 g/cm³, meaning that even if you did produce an instrument from this gem (which would ruin the visual qualities of cut and clarity that gems are generally valued for), a 10cm cube of sapphire weighs 4kg, or 8.8 lbs, giving this sapphire a value of only 1,364 per pound.
But if we're trashing priceless gemstones, lets go all the way and scrap a chaos diamond (DMG p.252), a one-pound gem the size of a fist and costing 160,000 gp. At this point, however, we have to stop, because, firstly, we could trivially use epic-level adamantine bracers of relentless might (4,384,000 gp for 1 lb) or even an infinite value of epic items.
Secondly, as I've mentioned, I do not believe any normal person could reasonably play a solid diamond lute.
Dragon #347, p. 47 describes pure ore, a variant type of ore of exceptional purity found on the Plane of Earth. Using as little as one ounce of pure iron ore is sufficient, and increases the cost by 400 gp per lb, or 80% the price of mithral. Abyssal bloodiron is, as the name suggests, a carefully smelted alloy of extraplanar iron and blood. Crafting an item from this material should pose no challenge to Pun-Pun.
However, abyssal bloodiron has this ugly red tint to the edges, and that's not to everyone's taste. That's why we use colored metal (Races of the Dragon p.122), a kobold crafting tradition which uses trace minerals to change the hue of metal. Doing so increases the price of an item by 10% to 25%.
Depending how many pounds of metal make one light weapon (I'm assuming between 1 and 3) and the price of coloring, we're looking at between about 4,100 and 13,000 per pound.
I'm omitting the possibility of alloying with Oerthblood (Dragon #351 p.45, +6,000 gp per weapon), as it's described that weapons "must be made of a specific alloy", suggesting that this is a material rather than an additive like pure and coloring, and I'm also assuming that even if you had sufficient metallurgy skill, you'd essentially be making half oerthblood and half abyssal bloodiron, which would only dilute the price.
I'm also ignoring pandemonic silver coating (Complete Warrior p.136, +9,000 per weapon), as the same page notes you can't make an item of multiple special materials, and I feel like this qualifies; but also importantly, pandemonic silver has the properties of alchemical silver, and DMG p. 285 is clear that the alchemical silvering process doesn't work on rare metals; it also only works on steel, and abyssal bloodiron is strictly speaking a form of cold iron. You could arguably apply it to thinaun, which is a steel alloy, but again I'm not counting this, as I feel it's against the spirit of the no multiple special materials rule.
But we're not done yet! A lute needs strings: dragonsong strings (Dragon #332, p. 52-54), crafted from the vocal cords of a gargantuan dragon, costs an additional 18,000 gp. This is quite possibly the most expensive component of the entire instrument. This isn't a magical enhancement, so it fully counts as a material component.
User ShadowKras notes that other power components made of other dragon body parts (Dragon #332, p. 56) have a market price. If any of these can be used as part of a lute, and weigh more than their equivalent in abyssal bloodiron or thinaun, they would increase the instrument's price significantly.
Pun-Pun could, if he wished, make an even larger lute, and with epic checks no doubt even play an instrument too large for him to reach the strings (as a free action, while balancing on a cloud, etc). Once it begins to weigh as much as a one-handed weapon, it's definitively more valuable to switch to thinaun. Since thinaun is likewise a steel alloy, all of the above enhancements would equally apply. In fact, if you don't feel like visiting the Blood War to mine abyssal iron, and don't intend to magically enhance the instrument, thinaun would be evenly priced even for a small instrument.
The exact price of abyssal bloodiron and weight of a functional lute made from metal are not specified, so we can't easily pin down the price for the finished item. What we can say with certainty is that it's made from the most expensive material.
Star Metal is the most expensive material I could find. From Forgotten Realms Adventures (AD&D 2e, p.141):
A typical price was 10,000 gp per pound (22,100 gp/kg)
From Complete Arcane (3.5e, p.141):
Starmetal is extraordinarily hard and is equal to adamantine for all purposes. (...) Creating a weapon of star metal costs 5,000 gp more
Do note that those are two different scales, one is listing the price per pound of star metal, and the other is the price to craft a weapon using that material, which may not be completely made of the material and may include the purification and extra work necessary to forge the alloy and turn it into a weapon, as comically noted in this Order of the Stick comic:
For comparison, Mithral is listed as 500 gb per pound under Special Materials. According to Draconomicon (3e) under Trade Goods for calculating dragon hoards, Adamantine is priced the same as Mithral (100 gp for an ore). But we don't have the price per pound of adamantine, we may only guess they are equal or higher than mithril's, as their ore has the same cost.
So, Star Metal is 20 times more expensive than mithril and possibly adamantine too.
Considering that we have two listed prices (per pound and to craft a weapon), and that a lute is not (normally) a weapon, a medium-sized lute (3 lbs) would cost 30,000 if being forged purely from star metal, not including any art, jewelry or adornments, or even the cost of the strings.
The Oerthblood metal, mentioned in Dragon Magazine #351 is not a special material per se, but it must be turned into an alloy together with other metals, such as iron, steel or mithril, and it increases the base cost of the item on top of whatever other material it is made of. The benefit is doubling the hardness and increasing hit points by 50%, and granting a +1 luck bonus to attack rolls and causing a -1 penalty to saves against spells on foes struck by it.
So, an oerth-blooded iron weapon would cost +6,000 gp, while an oerth-blooded mithril item weapon would cost even more. While the article does not mention other metals it could be mixed it, other than iron, steel, and mithril when giving out examples of the hardness increase, it doesn't really exclude that idea either.
That said, even though the 3.x's version of star metal is listed as +5,000 gp for a weapon, it could be oerth-blooded into a new alloy, oerth-blooded star metal to increase that to +11,000 gp. Making that the second most expensive metal alloy in the game.
I won't be mixing this with Thinaun (+10,000) or similar, because those are already described as being iron or steel alloys. Being mixed alloys, they could affect each other and not actually produce a better alloy, but a more fragile one. That is a metallurgy question for your GM though.
But since star metal is a pure metal and not an alloy, it should be a valid combination for oerth-blooding.
Hold on, I said second most expensive, right? Well, what would be the first, then?
Yep, following that same logic of raw ore plus oerth-blooded alloy, we also have the Pandemonium Silver (Complete Warrior, p.136), which isn't a special material either, but a coating of silver extracted from the plane of Pandemonium, which costs +9,000 gp to coat a light weapon. I am going to use the cost of a light weapon because that is the closest I can imagine to a musical instrument like a lute, but the price for coating one-handed weapons is +11,000 gp and for two-handed weapons is +13,000 gp.
This brings our special alloy, now coated in silver from the Pandemonium, to a total of +20,000 gp (!), not including any jewelry we could possibly add to it, or the possibility of using dragonsong strings (Dragon Magazine #332, p. 52-54, as pointed out by Quadratic Wizard) for that additional 18,000 gp.
There is something else cooler in this, this coating also has a special effect when exposed to any wind:
In addition, a thin, unearthly scream issues forth from a bladed weapon made of pandemonic silver whenever it’s unsheathed in at least a light breeze.
Enjoy your Luck-bringing Outsider-slaying Screaming Lute of Pandemonium.
Riverine from Stormwrack is water trapped between carefully-shaped walls of force. It’s fantastically expensive (2,000 gp/lb. for non-armor item), would be preposterously difficult to make into a lute, and is basically indestructible. Sounds perfect for Pun-Pun’s lute.
I cannot guarantee that riverine is distinctly the most expensive special material in the game, but I don’t know of any more expensive.
Thinaun is a dark, glittering metal with the strength and weight of steel. It is extremely rare, being found almost exclusively in the Outer Planes, but its true value comes from its unusual property to attract souls. A creature who dies while in physical contact with a piece of thinuan, or a weapon or object crafted from it, will have their soul trapped within it.
Since star metal is only used for improving weapons and armor and is technically to scarce (if you are trying to stay lore-friendly) to be made into even a lute, regardless of cost, it is very difficult to find a source that could be accurate. Thinaun, however, costs 10,000+ gp at the absolute minimum for a light weapon. Pun-Pun's lute could cost far more depending on the size and what accessories he adds. I could not find the page, but it is found in the Complete Warrior supplemental rulebook.
You're going to have quite a time pricing it but don't look at metals, look at gems. Pun-Pun would have crafted it out of diamond or something of that caliber. Raw diamond can be worked into the desired shape with Stone Shape, nothing comes to mind to fuse pieces together but at his power level that certainly should be possible.
Obdurium (from page 35 of the Stronghold Builder’s Guide) is twice as expensive as Adamantine, but it has 60 hp/inch and 30 points of hardness (both values are 1.5 times that of Adamantine). For a legendary artifact, it seems like a good option. An obdurium weapon costs 6,000 gp more than normal.
Besides the base material, it is also important to consider alloys when determining materials and costs. In particular, Dragon magazine issue 351 (page 45) mentions a special material called “oerthblood” which doubles the hardness of the base material and multiplies the hp by 1.5. For a weapon it raises the cost by 6,000gp.
Assuming lutes are priced similar to weapons, this would make Pun Pun’s obdurium-oerthblood instrument cost an additional 12,000gp for the materials alone. And this isn’t taking into account any non-material features he decided to add into the construction, such as dwarvencraft/elvencraft, skill enhancements, making it a magic or intelligent item, or any of the Artisan Craftsman special properties (described in Dragon Magazine 358).
And for those paying attention, this metal has a hardness of 60 and 90hp/inch.
