I necro this because I have been asking myself the same question.
Well, I thought that was covered by the "one of the few challenges that actually promotes trade" argument, although I also have to say that this was more true in 40d than it is now as, regardless of the map you're on (IME), wood is always available natively. Even if it's only cavern-plant wood. The only real and absolute prerequisite for a bed is (trade notwithstanding, but especially so in island or other traderless embarks) an axe with which the wood is cut down. Of course if you don't have an axe, but only the metal that you'd wish to make a bed with... well, make an axe!
Why can we not make beds of metal?
"The
ShadowToady knows!" Seriously, I think because wooden bedframes are the thing you use when you no longer sleep on the floor on/in the clothes on your back. A bigger question is perhaps why beds don't need
more than wood (c.f. Minecraft's wool requirement), except that I think this is a dwarf thing.
And perhaps the woodenness requirement is because to truly get a good night's sleep, dwarves need to know that they're hunkered down on a lump of dismembered matter that is sacred to the elves. Like various nasty creatures of folklore like a bed of their enemies' dismembered bones, etc, etc. Or, alternatively and less xenophobic (relative dorfiness or not), if they're laying down on a stone or metal surface they might as well have been on the stone or ore-strewn floor, so there's just no point.
Stone chairs?
Technically, that would be a throne.
[/quote]if anyone could tell me howto / if it can be edited in through raws I will try and do it myself...
[/quote]No expert myself, but there's a whole modding section to this forum that probably have stickies with equivalent examples, or somesuch.
Lead barrels for food storage...
Not necessarily a problem for non-liquids, and even with liquids if you avoid the acids (or long storage times) you're not going to have so much of a problem. Assuming that dwarven physiology isn't already adapted to all kinds of contaminants floating in the air (below cave-in-cloud levels, anyway, which are enough to cake the clothing and exposed flesh but apparently don't cause much in the way of permanent lung problems beyond any initial injuries).
To be honest, I don't see any problem at all with metal or stone beds - it would suit the dwarven flavour very well.
I'm not arguing against that on principle, but given how the situation is I'm Ok with the vanilla restrictions (and also Ok with anyone who adds their own essence of peppermint to the mix).
Back to the challenges of wood, as well as ash for soap production, you still need wood for axles. Apart from the fact that in mills (water/wind/tidal) of the age and later you never had metal-cog on metal-cog[1], but always at least one wooden cog (or wooden teeth set into a metal wheel) to avoid various things such as sparks, provide a 'mechanical fuse' in the linkage and other fairly logical purposes (yes, including material availability/workshop capabilities), I'd say that the lack of non-metal axles is a bigger mystery than non-metal beds.
But as that's the case, then fair enough.
[Removed mention of artefact beds being made of virtually anything, anyway, given the ninja][1] Assuming that the axle is essentially terminated at each end by an integrated cog structure, to mesh with the gear made from the stone/metal mechanism[2]
[2] Although I had sort of imagined that a mechanism was a cube configurable in a number of ways, inside and out, but when constructed as a gear it had a recessed hollow on each side ready to receive an axle.
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Topic: Metal Beds (Read 15932 times)