As I read the rules, it's not the cast chance, but the chance that a spell effect forms near the metal which is reduced. Thus you roll normally for spell success, and then you roll whether the metal prevents the spell from taking effect.
Once upon a time (i.e. in RQ2) it wasn't just unenchanted iron, but any hermetically pure metal which absorbed magical energies. Nowadays we make a big deal of unenchanted (or in the old terms, unattuned) iron because it is the only known "pure" metal with decent material qualities for weapons and armour (disregarding the question of carbon contents). Copper and sea metal come in next, but are vastly inferior to bronze.
However, why not have "magical" artifacts of (hermetically) pure metal other than iron in temples, at court, or elsewhere where you want to provide a magic-inhibition? Note that you need vast amounts of the material, which can keep metallurgists and alchemists in your city busy for years. Iron is easy, you buy it from dwarf metallurgists who have the time...
This would also strenghten the Lokarnos spell "Coin Wheel", since the spell may be regarded as an "attunement" allowing the use of pure gold as coinage.
>(personally, I think its a reasonable explanation - because it means that
>unenchanted iron armour is viable, alleviating the requirement for enormous
>POW sacrifice for iron armour. And yes, I like the POW sacrifice mechanic -
>I think making Iron enchanted is a process (a sort of magical tempering)
>that should be permanent, I dislike enchanting iron becoming another spell
>like mechanic).
I agree with this reasoning, but does it have to be 1 POW per kg?
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