Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Low-Tech] Material or quality

~~Peter Knutsen~~ · 04-22-2015, 08:42 PM

In Sagatafl, my homebrew RPG system, the severity of the problem with making bladed weapons out of silver - or bronze - depends on how long the blade is.

Knives and daggers are fine, but a silver shortsword gets a Durability penalty, relative to one made of iron, and a silver broadsword even more so, same way a bronze broadsword does. You can use Enchantments to compensate, increasing the Durability to match that of a mundane "iron" weapon, but you can use the same magic on a mundane iron weapon to increase its Durability too, to be above par.

Craftsman's skill, of course, can also affect the final Durability, but the craftsman has to be familiar with the material used (in GURPS that's be a Perk for each exotic alloy, including bronze, silver, meteoric iron, and post-medieval steel, each regarded as a separate alloy, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to apply the usual limit on how many Perks a character is allowed to have).

A weapon with Durability slightly below par for its type isn't a serious problem, unless you want to parry with it (e.g. if you're of a Keltic inclination, disdaining shields and armour as being for wusses), but if your enemy suspects his weapon is significantly stronger than yours, he might deliberately try to "match" his weapon against yours again and again, hoping to break your blade.

But all that is about sword type blades.

What about an axe head made of silver, or a flanged mace head of silver? I can't see much problem with that. It'd be notably heavier, of course (mass of iron IIRC is about 7, vs 11 for silver), so the mace would count as a lead-weighted mace, which I presume GURPS has rules for, but I'm not sure if there are rules for axes with extra-heavy heads. Ones can probably be devised if needed.

Or you can make most of the axe head out of iron or primitive steel, and just weld a silver axe blade onto it. Then you get an axe not appreciably heavier than one with an iron head (average density probably comparable to bronze, which isn't denser enough than iron to warrant any special "heavy weapon rules"), and the "functional bit" that hits the werewolf is still pure silver (or 75%-92% silver anyway, which is good enough to get the job one).

04-22-2015, 08:42 PM	#8
~~Peter Knutsen~~ Banned Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Europe	Re: [Low-Tech] Material or quality In Sagatafl, my homebrew RPG system, the severity of the problem with making bladed weapons out of silver - or bronze - depends on how long the blade is. Knives and daggers are fine, but a silver shortsword gets a Durability penalty, relative to one made of iron, and a silver broadsword even more so, same way a bronze broadsword does. You can use Enchantments to compensate, increasing the Durability to match that of a mundane "iron" weapon, but you can use the same magic on a mundane iron weapon to increase its Durability too, to be above par. Craftsman's skill, of course, can also affect the final Durability, but the craftsman has to be familiar with the material used (in GURPS that's be a Perk for each exotic alloy, including bronze, silver, meteoric iron, and post-medieval steel, each regarded as a separate alloy, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to apply the usual limit on how many Perks a character is allowed to have). A weapon with Durability slightly below par for its type isn't a serious problem, unless you want to parry with it (e.g. if you're of a Keltic inclination, disdaining shields and armour as being for wusses), but if your enemy suspects his weapon is significantly stronger than yours, he might deliberately try to "match" his weapon against yours again and again, hoping to break your blade. But all that is about sword type blades. What about an axe head made of silver, or a flanged mace head of silver? I can't see much problem with that. It'd be notably heavier, of course (mass of iron IIRC is about 7, vs 11 for silver), so the mace would count as a lead-weighted mace, which I presume GURPS has rules for, but I'm not sure if there are rules for axes with extra-heavy heads. Ones can probably be devised if needed. Or you can make most of the axe head out of iron or primitive steel, and just weld a silver axe blade onto it. Then you get an axe not appreciably heavier than one with an iron head (average density probably comparable to bronze, which isn't denser enough than iron to warrant any special "heavy weapon rules"), and the "functional bit" that hits the werewolf is still pure silver (or 75%-92% silver anyway, which is good enough to get the job one).