They should really fix that in Cabaret Chicks on Ice!

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

One approach to RPG design is that it isn't so important what the sword is made of, whether it is iron or steel, but what the final quality is, e.g. in terms of GURPS' Poor, Good, Fine or Very Fine. It is simply that making a better sword is easier if you have steel to work with than if you only have iron, and much harder if you are trying to do it with silver.

This works fine if you're playing in a world that is uniformly TL 3. There was a time when swords of all qualities would have been available, but they would all be made of bronze. Even the Very Fine Bronze swords must have been inferior to Very Fine Iron swords, or bronze would have stayed in use. It may be a matter of weight, breakage, cost, time to make, etc... rather than damage, but there was some reason that some materials replaced others in higher tech levels.

More to the point, if I play a character from TL 2 in a TL 3 campaign, I'm getting 5 points for it. My fine iron Broadsword would be great when we encounter faeries, but it shouldn't be identical to the steel swords of my companions in every other respect.

Similarly, an obsidian arrow head is demonstrably sharper than steel, but it may be too brittle to deal with armor, etc....