Making a black blade

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Also, as I understand it, oxidized or not, a silver sword or dagger is only a sword or dagger for one or two uses. Then it's a club. Same as the problem when someone in a game I was in insisted on having his weapons forged from gold - the DM let him have them, but a few moments into our first combat they changed from cutting weapons into bludgeons, then started deforming...

Fold lamination can cure that issue. The same technique used on Japanese and Damascus blades. Done enough, and your lamination layers are pretty thin, and you get a nifty edge.

[Anaraxes]

Silver and gold are soft metals, true.

The usual RPG explanation is that the "silver" dagger isn't solid silver. It's coated, or an alloy, or has some alchemical magic, so the weapon is strong enough to be a weapon, while remaining silver enough to affect those creatures particularly suspectible to that metal.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Fold lamination can cure that issue. The same technique used on Japanese and Damascus blades.

No it can't. The main point of folding iron is to help distribute the carbon more evenly through the product. Another reason is to break up and drive out slag. Another reason to fold the metal is to combine hard steel and softer iron into a more functional material. None of this is applicable to gold or silver blades.

Done enough, and your lamination layers are pretty thin, and you get a nifty edge

If you fold steel more than around 15 times it loses all benefits of the process since the hard and soft layers effectively become one homogenous material.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The usual RPG explanation is that the "silver" dagger isn't solid silver.

Whereas the historical explanation is that silver is for silver bullets.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

I'll do that if I have to (or invent some black alloy), but I prefer fantasy games that are founded in reality. If there is a real way to do things, I prefer that. I'm definitely more of a 'Low Fantasy" guy.

I prefer realism by default in my Ärth setting, but due to Rule Of Myth (and/or Cool), meteoric iron is about as good for making swords as renaissance-grade steel is, whereas in reality meteoric iron is at best as good as any other iron, and may in fact be worse.

I do have one sword that it'd be nice to have a very dark grey metallic colour, but I'm thinking I can leave that unexplained as long as it's just dark grey and not actual metallic black.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Whereas the historical explanation is that silver is for silver bullets.

Which turn out to have their own problems in terms of practical manufacture.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Also, as I understand it, oxidized or not, a silver sword or dagger is only a sword or dagger for one or two uses. Then it's a club. Same as the problem when someone in a game I was in insisted on having his weapons forged from gold - the DM let him have them, but a few moments into our first combat they changed from cutting weapons into bludgeons, then started deforming...

I've got one Enchanted sword made out of actual silver, in my Ärth setting, and appropriately named Quick-Silver, but a whole lot of very precious Essence was spent merely on upgrading its material properties to match those of medieval-grade steel (specifically, the Durability was boosted, and the Fleetness penalty, representing unwieldiness, was reduced). Then more Essence was spent on making it even better than a medieval-grade steel sword (that's traditional to do), and on top of that, some Essence was also spent to make it even shinier than normal silver is.

It's a very shiny sword. And very fast (metric buttloads of Essence was spent on making it quick), and of course quite corrosion-resistant. It's not the one of the very best magic sword in the setting (no sword is, but there are definitely better ones), but it's very shiny indeed, and because of the speed Enchantments it feels really good to wield.

And everybody who's inclined to contemplate such matters, are keenly aware that a fair amount of Essence had been wasted on compensating for the sword being made out of silver.

There are probably tens of thousands of silver arrowheads lying around, most quite old and forgotten, and quite some time ago, some culture (it's speculated to be Atlantis) Enchanted a lot of silver-bladed daggers, most of them made in the same craftsman style, that were somewhat low-powered Focus items for MetaMagic spells (think 1-2 levels of One-College Magery, Gadget Limitation).

But Quick-Silver is probably the only sword in the setting that's actually made of silver.

[Flyndaran]

Quicksilver is mercury not silver.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Silver and gold are soft metals, true.

The usual RPG explanation is that the "silver" dagger isn't solid silver. It's coated, or an alloy, or has some alchemical magic, so the weapon is strong enough to be a weapon, while remaining silver enough to affect those creatures particularly suspectible to that metal.

As far as I know, there are two ways to handle the weapon materials issue.

One is to say that the weapon material chosen for use acts as a modifier to the final stats of the weapon, e.g. it may give a penalty to the attack roll, or a penalty to the Durability stat, or a multiplier to weight, or a penalty to the damage value.

with this kind of mechanic, you first take the alloy and make a sword out of it, either deliberately aiming for a specific degree of craftsmanship quality (in Sagatafl terms you choose a Quality value to aim for, such as Q4 or Q5), or else you make some kind of skill roll or skill-influenced roll to determine what degree of craftsmanship quality you arrive at.

Then after that's done, you apply the materials-specific modifiers to the stats of the weapon, rather like a Lens in GURPS.

The other way is that you start out needing to know what kind of alloy you're using, medieval grade steel ("iron"), renaissance steel, even better steel, even better again, or meteoric iron, or silver, or orichalcum, and then the chosen alloy provides a modifier to your skill roll, and this skill roll determines the final degree of craftsmanship of the weapon, meaning that you're more likely to end up with a high-Quality sword if you work with post-renaissance steel than fi you work with medieval grade steel.

(Or you can do a variant, where the process is non-random, and you choose a higher RD for your roll if you want a higher Quality, but then it's rather like an all-or-nothing process and if you don't succeed on the roll, the resulting weapon is extremely low Quality.)

Using this method, the alloy chosen may still have some effects on the final stats of the weapon (silver might still give a flat -1 Durability penalty, that is added in regardless of the Quality rolled), and there may be special effects (if silver, post-AV damage isn't halved vs Weres or Vampires), but in most cases it's simply noted down as flavour information, so that you can know what kind of alloy the sword was made of (special steel, meteoric iron) and perhaps if it was pattern-welded, but it's only flavour, and that which matters is the Quality value.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Whereas the historical explanation is that silver is for silver bullets.

And arrowheads?