Steven "Conan" Trustrum wrote: > After doing some more looking, I'd have to rule that iron is the norm > for weapons and armor. I base this not only on the SRD's unnecessary > ambiguity on the matter, but also on instances such as these:
I think the SRD authors just didn't want to bother--lazyness in a lot of ways shows up in 3e. (Like, where are the underwater combat rules? ;) ) > - A "mirror, small steel", basically a flattened piece of metal > weighing 1/2 lb, costs 10 gp and yet a longsword, which ways 4 lbs and > would take a LOT more work, only costs 5 gp more. A mirror is a fair bit more work than a sword is. Remember: no mechanics, no metal-paint-on-glass. Someone has to hammer out the steel a light, flat plate, and THEN polish it to a high shine by hand... Of course, the @!$ing economics of D&D are pretty messed up. (1/5th a lbs. of gold for a steel mirror?) > - Looking at the armor descriptions you'll see that everything is > "metal plates", "metal rings", and so on, and yet they specify "steel > shields" (which, for some odd reason, cost less than a steel mirror if > you buy a small shield, and a large steel shield only costs twice as > much as the mirror. Huh?). Muddling the matter of the shield even more > is the fact that the artwork lists them as "metal shields". > > WotC seems to have been purposely confusing no the matter, but I keep > drawing the impression that iron is the norm. I think WotC is just lazy, not purposefully confusing. It'd be nice to have an OGL'd set of rules dealing with things like copper, bronze, iron, steel, silver, gold, darkwood, etc. weapons and equipment. It'd also be nice to have HP for armor. But when such a system is devised, I think it would better fit the picture of what d20's default is percieved to be to have most equipment assumed to be steel when "metal" is applied, and only "iron" when weight and size aren't factors (i.e., iron binds on doors and locks, but steel weapons and armor.) DM _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
