Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Apr 13, 2004 19:57:08	I'm a little confused when it comes to the rules pertaining to weapons with alternate materials... Lets say you have a bone longsword... According to the table in the equipment chapter, it has a hardness of 6 and 2 hp. So what if instead of being made of bone, its made of drake ivory. According to the section on exceptional materials, drake ivory has a hardness of 10 and 30 hp per inch of thickness. how do we determine how many hit points to give it? It doesnt really say anywhere how thick a longsword is. I probably haven't looked in the right place... Are we supposed to assume the thickness of a weapon?
#2 zombiegleemax Apr 14, 2004 17:00:34	Don't have the core rulebooks in front of me, but looking at the SRD, iron is listed as hardness 10 and 30 hit points per inch thickness, which is the same as the Drake Ivory of the athas.org conversion. An iron one-handed blade is listed as hardness 10 and 5 hit points, so we can surmise that a one-handed blade is 1/6 inch in thickness under the SRD. Drake Ivory blades would be as tough to break as iron/steel weapons, but still have a -1 attack and damage penalty for being 'inferior'. Of course, hit points for objects are a bit arbitrary anyway, since that same 30hp/inch applies to hand-held objects, doors, and 10x10 wall sections equally. In the SRD, info on material hardness and hp is in the Combat chapter (Sunder/Attack and object), and the Wilderness and Environment chapter (Walls, Doors). I think the same info is in the PHB and DMG, respectively.
#3 zombiegleemax Apr 14, 2004 21:46:33	Originally posted by not_human Don't have the core rulebooks in front of me, but looking at the SRD, iron is listed as hardness 10 and 30 hit points per inch thickness, which is the same as the Drake Ivory of the athas.org conversion. An iron one-handed blade is listed as hardness 10 and 5 hit points, so we can surmise that a one-handed blade is 1/6 inch in thickness under the SRD. Drake Ivory blades would be as tough to break as iron/steel weapons, but still have a -1 attack and damage penalty for being 'inferior'. Of course, hit points for objects are a bit arbitrary anyway, since that same 30hp/inch applies to hand-held objects, doors, and 10x10 wall sections equally. In the SRD, info on material hardness and hp is in the Combat chapter (Sunder/Attack and object), and the Wilderness and Environment chapter (Walls, Doors). I think the same info is in the PHB and DMG, respectively. Wow. With that in mind, it's not hard at all to come up with weapon hardness and hp for weapons... Its important to me because in order to make weapon materials important, I am considering enabling a critical failure rule; on a roll of natural 1, the player rolls damage as normal, and then applies that damage against his weapon. This represents a bad swing, general wear and tear, a hard parry, or what have you. Iron weapons or better are immune to this rule; a natural 1 results in an automatic miss, nothing more. the big criticism of critical failure is that the more experienced a character is, the more rolls of the die he makes, and the chance of a critical failure increases. In this case it actually works in my favor, since the "1" doesnt represent a failure of the wielder, but of the weapon.