Bronze vs. Iron vs. Steel

[Tonguez]

A once had a treasure which was a mix of bronze and iron armour - the PCs took the iron items but left the bronze hinking it inferior

little did they realise that the top item in the trove was a magical set of bronze greaves

anyway I tend to simply put a damage fumble on the weapons

bone/shell= 1d6 damage on a roll of 2 - 3 breaks on a 1
bronze= 1d6 damage on a roll of 1 - 2
iron = 1d6 damage on a roll of 1

 

[Desdichado]

Has anyone, perhaps, thought of having ancient weapons be of less-impressive metals, like bronze or iron? What did you do to mechanically model the older weapons, if so?

Keep in mind, that if you're trying to model a more realistic approach to ancient weapons, that ancient weapons that archeologists have found have deteriorated quite a bit. Very few swords even from a thousand years ago (the time of William the Conqueror, say) are in any way usable or even salvagable.

That'd be an interesting spin, though. Your PCs go on this quest to find the fabled sword of the ancient hero Whatshisname the Conquerer, and when they get it, it's nothing more than a pitted lump of bronze.

 

[S'mon]

Well, y'know, that's the thing about bronze... it *doesn't rust*.

 

[Desdichado]

Steel, on the other hand, and particularly the multi-layered steel like the Japanese and later Europeans produced, is quite a bit superior because it has a softer Iron core which gives the blade some flexibility and bend while having a high-carbon outer surface that can hold a razor sharp edge.

Keep in mind, the myth of the uber-katana and it's folded steel. Katanas were generally made that way because the steel quality that the Japanese had access to was relatively poor, and they had to come up with processes that mitigated that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Would someone be willing to guess a ballpark of how much more expensive bronze implements would generally be compared to steel weapons and armor?

 

[Desdichado]

Well, y'know, that's the thing about bronze... it *doesn't rust*.

That doesn't mean it doesn't corrode and deteriorate due to other processes. Have you ever seen the remains of ancient bronze swords and armor? I have, and it's ugly.

 

[Blair Goatsblood]

What you want to do with iron/steel/bronze depends on aim of your game.

For my game, I'm trying to have a lot of flavor in the game world, orcs and goblins use crude axes and maces of wrought iron, the exotic easterners have scimitars and glaives with high quality pattern forged steel, hordes of cavemen descend from the hills waving axes and spears with chipped flint heads, and in the tomb of an ancient hero a magical bronze sword and breatplate is found. All materials are mechanically the same, aside from concerns regarding rust monsters, etc.

Some of my players like to rp using their equipment, one pc has a normal rapier he named the "green tiger", another will use a cruel, jagged wolf-hilt orcish dagger when in situations of dire necessity. These are normal weapons, but the players love having the choice between different flavorful weapons, and many choose weapons on the merits of coolness before powergaming.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

A Bronze sword can easily bend into a nice right angle if it hits another Bronze sword, bone or metal (they demonstrated this in a documentary that came out about when the movie Troy was released by hitting a pig carcass with the sword).

I could shatter an iron sword into shards by hitting a pig carcass with it. All I'd have to do is make the blade out of cast iron. I could also bend a steel sword into a right angle over a pig carcass; I'd need a sword with a mild steel blade.

Compare this against a Dark Age pattern-forged blade. The test of such a weapon was for the swordsmith to bend it in a vice, such that the tip of the blade touched the pommel. If he did that and the weapon sprang back perfectly into shape, it was deemed a worthy sword and he signed his name on the tang. If it broke or bent, he reforged it.

(Actually this is from literary sources and is quite possibly apocryphal. However, modern tests have shown that it is, in fact, possible to do this with a well-made pattern-forged blade... a Viking pattern-forged sword was a massively more advanced feat of smithing skill than a Japanese katana, which was simply an exercise in repeated folding taken to extremes. If a katana and a Viking blade had struck one another in combat, there would unquestionably have been bits of katana all over the place.

This is one of the main reasons why the Japanese swordfighting techniques do not emphasise blade-on-blade contact - the weapons weren't designed to cope with parrying.)

Anyway, I can certainly imagine someone making a bronze sword and bending it into a right angle; you could do that with steel too. The problem is the vagueness of the terminology. What grade of bronze or steel?

Steel, on the other hand, and particularly the multi-layered steel like the Japanese and later Europeans produced, is quite a bit superior because it has a softer Iron core which gives the blade some flexibility and bend while having a high-carbon outer surface that can hold a razor sharp edge.

This is the result of annealing, which process forms a kind of crystalline structure in the outer part of the steel, increasing its structural integrity. The Europeans actually seem to have discovered annealing before the Japanese did, which is in keeping with the general superiority of European sword-forging over the Japanese of the same period.

Katanas were works of art, but they were the result of taking one relatively primitive technique to extremes.

The Samurai were amazing warriors, no doubt about that, but they excelled despite their inferior weapons technology, not because of it.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Would someone be willing to guess a ballpark of how much more expensive bronze implements would generally be compared to steel weapons and armor?

Depends on the locality... some places have more iron ore, some have more copper, some have more tin.

Here's a good ballpark for steel, though: As I mentioned above, around 1100AD, a steel sword was somewhat more expensive to purchase than a family house.

So even if bronze were only a few percent more expensive, that's still enough to make a big economic difference. And my best guess is that the difference is considerably more than a few percent.

 

[S'mon]

That doesn't mean it doesn't corrode and deteriorate due to other processes. Have you ever seen the remains of ancient bronze swords and armor? I have, and it's ugly.

Yeah, a couple days ago on The History Channel, I think it was. They'd been sitting in the ground 3,000 years* and they looked fine to me. A heck of a lot better than iron that's been in the ground 1,000 years, anyway.

*Approx. Apparently it was an iron-age collector's collection of bronze age antique weapons...