Gantrium Xanthine Golem Heart

[Aermas]

Most golem hearts are made of iron, sometimes reinforced with a diamond. What might be some properties gained by a golem with an indestructible heart made of gantrium with a xanthine gem?

[taalismn]

Woe, that would be like comparing a 1914 Lanchester armored car and a 1980s V-300 Commando.
With that sort of magic reserve, you could build in some formidable magic defenses or weaponry. Maybe even a transformable body.
The sort of body you'd want to do a transferred intelligence into if you had to choose a non-flesh body.
Hell, with that sort of an expense account you could probably finagle a stone to flesh spell that would allow you to swap between stone and meat.

[Aermas]

I was thinking more a power armor golem, but just straight transfered intelligence would be fun too. Do you think the Gantrium Heart would overcome any incompatibility issues & let a character keep their spells & P.P.E. etc?

[taalismn]

You'd still lose a fair amount of PPE that would go up with your old body, and you'd be dependent on whatever PPE was available in your new golem body(like if you'd added a PPE power system for instance).
Spell-wise, I'd rule that you would still remember your spells, but your spell strength would be HALF, given that you're no longer exercising your mystic muscles using a flesh and blood body. On the other hand, you (hopefully) have a -lot- of time ahead of you to become acquainted with your new form and gain your spell strength back.

[ShadowLogan]

Where is Gantrium found?

By RAW, swapping the Iron/Diamond for Gantrium isn't going to do anything to the Golem other than not allow the ritual to be completed properly.

And by RAW there is a mage NPC in SoT6 who did transfer to a Golem body and retains their PPE and Spells.

[Aermas]

Where is Gantrium found?

By RAW, swapping the Iron/Diamond for Gantrium isn't going to do anything to the Golem other than not allow the ritual to be completed properly.

And by RAW there is a mage NPC in SoT6 who did transfer to a Golem body and retains their PPE and Spells.

Gantrium is in Palladium Fantasy: Northern Hinderlands, also in Seige of Tolkien 1, under the Rings of Elder. When forged in magical fire it becomes Indestructible. It also has a lot of benefit to practitioners of magic as armor made from it doesn't interfere with casting, & infection draws magic to the practitioner. Seems like a very cool material to use as the heart of a Golem if possible cause it would make the Golem effectively immortal (the body could be destroyed but the heart is Indestructible) but I thought since it's so magically charged it might also give the Golem other benefits. Wasn't really looking at transferring intelligence to begin with

[ShadowLogan]

As I said, by RAW Gantrium wouldn't work as the heart of the Golem. Anything you do would have to be a house rule that allows substitutions.

The golem is already effectively immortal IMHO, removing the heart is what kills it, which is something that changing to Gantrium wouldn't change if it was possible (yes the Gantrium would be indestructible, but it can still be removed from the body).

[Aermas]

Yes this is homebrewing, or at least in the territory of GM fiat. Yes the ritual specifically calls for iron. My premise is wouldn't it be cool to make a variant made of gantrium & what effects might that have on the finished product? Like half cost to enchantments placed on the golem, or some kind of inherent PPE source to draw on, maybe just a little bit better starting stats.

[Library Ogre]

It would have to be very short, as it is a Munchkin.

[taalismn]

Why not toss in BOTH the Gantrium and the Iron Heart?
You're already dropping a bundle on this beast, so expense is no problem.
Street-legal And munchy.

I've mused about making a golem from mythril, but the material amounts and costs would be so exorbitant that it would be easier to get yourself an automated space destroyer.

[Aermas]

Which book is mythril in?

[taalismn]

I don't think in any of them, but -mithril- is from Tolkien and is elven silver-steel.
So I'm picturing it as a super-form of silver, potentially a combination of kisenite and magically purified silver and expensive as hell.

Come to think if it, even a golem made of 'just' kisenite would be astronomically expensive and I can't picture any Kisent consenting to use that much of the metal on just one lump construct unless they were being paid way above what the same amount of metal would bring if made into lots of smaller pieces like hand weapons and body armor plates/chainmail.

On the subject of exotic material golems, here's a thread on titanium: viewtopic.php?t=151376

[Curbludgeon]

I could see some Nuhr Dwarves making an automaton's body out of kisenite. Maybe using that Animator(or whatever it was called) class for Palladium Fantasy out of the Rifter could lower the material requirements.

[ShadowLogan]

Yes this is homebrewing, or at least in the territory of GM fiat. Yes the ritual specifically calls for iron. My premise is wouldn't it be cool to make a variant made of gantrium & what effects might that have on the finished product? Like half cost to enchantments placed on the golem, or some kind of inherent PPE source to draw on, maybe just a little bit better starting stats.

Depending on how close to RAW you want to stay, given ALL Golems via the ritual start off as clay sculptures (I'm guessing the amount of PPE pumped into it is what changes it into a stone or iron body) you don't need that much of it.

You could in theory allow the Gantrium (or whatever other exotic material one is considering) to be put-into/mounted-onto the clay as "dressing" (like a diamond/gem in a ring) or maybe even a flexible "shell" (ie dress it in armor) or maybe even "built-in" weapons (like claws). That would seem to be the easiest approach to what would X look like if it was involved in the construction. It likely would not regenerate with the body (though in this case it might not matter, granted what "indestructible" could mean in a MDC environment is subject to POV).

In your desired scenario, the Gantrium bits create areas that cannot be damaged, giving it the equivalent of a natural AR among the materials various properties OR simply requires attackers to make called shots to hit non Gantrium areas (like the joints).

IMHO swapping out the Iron/Iron-Diamaond heart and/or altering the "eye" gems would require the Golem's basic shape to be something other than a basic-humanoid (2 arms & 2 legs w/head). It's probably safe to say that the amount of PPE used is what dictates if the Golem body becomes stone or iron, which likely also means if the PPE amount is changed it could result in other Golem Body Material Types (i'm just not sure if there are other megaversal canon examples of it, the Ectoplasmic Golem is a psi-power and not a true Golem, some of the unofficial Rifter material for variant magic branches do, but off hand I don't recall specifics other than they exist).

I don't think in any of them, but -mithril- is from Tolkien and is elven silver-steel.
So I'm picturing it as a super-form of silver, potentially a combination of kisenite and magically purified silver and expensive as hell.

Come to think if it, even a golem made of 'just' kisenite would be astronomically expensive and I can't picture any Kisent consenting to use that much of the metal on just one lump construct unless they were being paid way above what the same amount of metal would bring if made into lots of smaller pieces like hand weapons and body armor plates/chainmail.

On the subject of exotic material golems, here's a thread on titanium: viewtopic.php?t=151376

As I said above, you don't need a lot of the exotic materials as all Golems in this case start from a Clay Body and the PPE pumped into via the ritual transforms clay into stone or iron in the process (which we also know is possible given spell/spell-chains exist for this purpose).

What you could do is as I mentioned above, if you want a Golem of another material, just alter the PPE required in the ritual. Then you don't need to spend absorbent amount of currency/resources to create a Golem out of X.

[Aermas]

Well my initial idea was that just the heart was Gantrium & that it would allow the Golem to persist indefinitely, it would regenerate no matter how much damage you did to the golem body, & even if you tried to remove it, the golem would always try to regenerate, unless you locked the heart in a box or deprived it of a rocky/metallic area to draw material from. The Xanthine gem would quintuple the MDC instead of double it like a diamond does. So instead of 80 (160 with a diamond) the golem would get 400 MDC half damage from physical & energy attacks immune to fire & cold. Regen 2d6 MDC per Melee Round. Maybe a bump to the physical stats or base IQ.

What do you guys think?


Edit: plus if I was gonna make it out of something else I'd use Thermo-Kinetic plates to further reduce damage

[Curbludgeon]

The gantrium/xanthine rings in the SoT book lack a couple of abilities described in PFRPG13, but have several extra. Xanthine on its own as described in PFRPG is just a battery, equivalent per carat to a diamond when the latter is installed by a techno-wizard.
For a home game that wanted to get into this I'd say the gantrium doesn't grant any sort of half PPE cost or doubled range/duration/PPE recharge time, but would allow a golem to make use of abilities powered by xanthine or other PPE storage media. At most I'd increase the doubled MDC of an Iron Golem to triple, if for no other reason that to keep below the 250 MDC ability penetration limit.