Could stone be used in place of metal for certain items?

For certain categories of items, namely weapons, armor and machinery (that's pretty general, I know), how well would stone fare vs metal? Assume that any complications with shaping the stone are gone.

As far as machinery goes, I would like to know about things as simple as door hinges, to things as complex as systems of gears, or even vehicles of some description. What about the hull of the vehicle?

For context:

I'm trying to build a world for a tabletop game, and it's going to be fairly high magic. In D&D, there's a spell called Stone Shape. In my world, wizards (or the like) with the capability of casting a spell like that would be fairly ubiquitous, so it's use could be very common. The spell can shape at most a 5 ft cube of stone, and into any shape (of the same mass of course), or even multiple shapes (the spell says the object can have hinges, and hinges are really two separate parts). The spell is instantaneous. That, to me, seems like a good incentive to use stone over metal where applicable, as it doesn't take anywhere near the same effort to forge.

So, given that forging from stone is instantaneous, and nearly effortless, and forging from metal is not, what sorts of things that we are used to being metal would be stone instead, if any?

I didn't include the magic tag, because while magic is being used to shape the stone, any application of the stone is decidedly non magical.

posted almost 8 years ago

awenonian‭

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