While the Katana seems to be the uber alles sword for idiots online some of the best weapons ever forged were made from Damascus Steel which was forged in Persia from ingots aquired from India which at the time had some of the most advanced metal working techniques in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel
Note the wavy pattern in the metal which is often associated with Katanas.
A similar type of metal was also used by the Vikings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXbLyVpWsVM
They probably got it via Persia and trade routes. This metal is crucible forged steel which is made in a furnace. Which is kind of a big deal in the 9th century when traditional metal working hammered the impurities into the blade. There is a bit of myth and legend surrounding these blades, not as much as say Katanas. They are still metal blades and in modern terms they are nothing special as if they were made today they are just a good quality steel. Thats what makes them so good though they were in essence a blade made out of steel that would generally have too wait until blast furnaces were invented to be mass produced.
Valyrian steel in a Game of Thrones is modeled after Damascus steel.
In D&D terms 3.5 had master work weapons, a Katana was just a master work bastard sword and in 5E it is now just a long sword (yay).
The 2nd ed FIghters hand book also had blades of various quaility. You could get a +1 bonus to hit or damage and the best swords made were +1 to hit and damage.
Now Damascus steel to me could easily exist in 5E except perhaps it is known as Dwarven Steel or in game stats it would be similar to Mithril. In game terms I would treat a damascus steel blade as.
+1 to hit
or
+2 damage.
Gnomes could be another contender as well along with Humans or Dragonborn. Dwarves may not have a monopoly on it but may likely be the closest supply and have the furnaces neccessary to make it. Now for the finest blades one can make without magic, perhaps the best Katana one can make without magic or a Damascus steel "magical" blade. This should require the right ingot (worth several cows in D&D terms), and a master smith to make and in game terms grant both a +1 bonus to hit and a +2 bonus to damage which in some ways makes it superior to a +1 weapon. A master work Katana becomes a 1d8+2 weapon that has +1 to hit and damage. In a world with +1 to +3 magical weapons these blades will not break the game but one may be able to buy them if one is willing to travel as most likely ye olde market shoppe will not have them for sale even in large cities. There were laws banning weapon sales to heathens so maybe the Dwarves do not ship out finished weapons for much the same reasons the Spanish did not equip the Aztecs or Inca with steel weapons and gunpowder.
To me this offers a good alternative to magical weapons and most likely the bonus would not stack with a magical bonus. But perhaps it does stack and now you have a Valyrian steel blade IMHO as those blades were enchanted at creation apparently. If these blades do exist they should be rare like Game of Thrones and be unavailable for purchase.
Just some random thoughts about the pinnacle of sword technology in medieval times.
Not entirely true. They put a damascas steel blade underneath a microscope and discovered that the "impurities" within the blade formed naturally occuring carbon nanotubes. It is believed that it was these carbon nanotubes that gave damascas steel its extraordinary strength.
I love exotic materials/masterwork items as an option over magic weapons and alongside them.
In 4e Darksun, for example, I made obsidian cause 2 bleed (save ends) per tier. It was much more expensive, as crafting obsidian properly required a ton of skill (as in reality...Check out some intact Aztec and Mayan sacrifical and ceremonial knives! Wicked stuff.) I've read that they still use obsidian 'micro-blades' for some forms of eye surgery...It apparently can be sharper than steel can even get.
Serrated weapons are great for a bit of ongoing bleed too.
I like the idea of a weapon/armor being +1 to either hit or damage too. I have used that for decades.
Cold Iron, Adamantine, Mithral, obsidian, damascus, silvered, redsteel, shadowsteel, etc...All these things are awesome to me. I like giving them out somewhat early, so the first 'real' magic weapon/armor PC's get feel extra special. The obligatory "+1 magic longsword" given out sometime between levels 2 and 4 is just...well, lame, IMO. I'm glad 5e is encouraging magic stuff to be magic. I'm sad they didn't go into exotic materials and masterwork in the PHB (well, aside from silvered). Maybe the DMG will. In the right cultures and large cities, masterwork stuff can be baught in my games. True magic items, not so much.
Kalani wrote:
I would sooner just make Damascas steel have increased Hardness and/or HPs. If I recall correctly, they were no sharper than other weapons - and only known for their legendary (almost mythical) strength.
I haven't decided just what to do with it, but I'm definitely using red steel equipment in my game.
Kalani wrote:
I do have Dwarven steel in my game. I'm not sold on +2 damage. What about increasing the damage die by 1 step? It's effectively only slightly better than +1 damage, but rolling a d6 for a dagger would certainly feel different and special for the players. What do people think?
No bonuses to hit or damage without magic!!!!!
Lawolf wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
Info about damascus steel for some of you since most people got it wrong.
Does it look cool? yeah....
Is it practical? nope.
"Some of the best weapons ever made are of Damascus" you said.
this is very wrong. Almost any modern carbon steel would be better than these weapons due to the much higher quality and purity.
What is damascus steel you may ask?
well it is simply steel...... no more and no less. You get wavy lines on it because it has been folded 6-8 times. This folding was originally done to remove impurities from crappy steel. No it is NOT folded hundreds or thousands of times. That is a myth. 8 folds will net you some 500 layers.
Do these layers make your weapon better?
Short answer. No.
Long answer. Once upon a time this process helped smiths with access to terrible steel remove impurities so in a way yes but aside from that it serves no function other than cosmetic.
With modern steel would this process make your blade worse?
Yes. There is no need for this process unless for cosmetic purposes. The folds you see will possibly even weaken the blade creating small weak points and inconsistincies galore.
Use a damascus blade for a wall decoration only.
I have personally polished a few knives and a sword that have went through this process.
Flaws I find in damascus folded steel include often 'micro pockets', poor and inconsistant welding of the 'layers', and lastly a peeling effect between the layers from blades that see hard use.
And on a final note i'll leave you with this question to think about.
Japanese swordsmiths produce the most valuable swords and have for centuries making blades prized for their form, beauty, and function.
How many katanas do you see with those lines? Damn near zero. (don't confuse with the hamon line....it's not even related.)
shamurai7 wrote:
masterfat78 wrote:
Atheosis wrote:
shamurai7 wrote:
Not weighing in in the real life Damascus steel discussion as the legends of it mainly served to inspire my take on Dwarven steel.
Is there sundering or breaking in 5th edition? Perhaps it could grant advantage on these checks or advantage when damaging an item? That would be a more flavourful bonus then damage.
What if all +1 magic items were not magic at all, but were instead "mundane" items crafted from superior metal? Or perhaps, being crafted from superior metal is what imparts magic on these weapons in the first place?
Atheosis wrote:
shamurai7 wrote:
I was speaking at a novice level for forum sake, but their are in fact dozens of diferent types of steel with very different properties.
The false thinking is that damascus is a steel at all..... it is not a steel but it is a technique. the technique of folding steel to remove impurities and add a beautiful appearance.
Good weapon steels are stainless...very brittle and hard. great for short blades that don't undergo large amounts of shock. holds edge very well, low maintenance.
Generic 'high carbon'. less brittle and still very hard. good for longer blades such as swords. can still easily warp and snap with blade to blade contact, high maintenance prone to rusting, holds edge very well, very unforgiving.
and my favorite....high carbon 'spring' steel. this steel is alloyed with silicon giving it amazing 'memory'. Holds a great edge and less prone to warping and snapping. Still prone to rusting. This is the steel i'd want on my hip in a swordfight. very forgiving.
for dnd.....probably basic high carbon steel is the top tech..... walking rust bucket paladins!!
@shamurai7
Well, folding doesn't really have much to do with Damascus steel itself, specificaly. As you clearly know, iron swords we're often folded to make the carbon content more even as well as to extract impurities, but Damascus is known for having specific patterns even without folding. Read up some on wootz steel, as Damascus steel swords we're most likely made from it (imported from India).
It would be an interesting world where there are no magical swords. The sword a wizard creates and thinks is magical is really just the caster using magical to create the proper environment to forge superior quality weapons. If you went this route, you could then allow that dwarves and maybe elves have secret processes that don't require a wizard to produce the same effect. Perhaps even some human nations.
One consequence of such a rule would be that "magical" weapons wouldn't really be magical and thus would work where magic does not work.
shamurai7 wrote:
The actual advantage of any high carbon type blades, over 'mild steel' or bronze...
Flexed, but didn't bend and stay bent. Most of the low carbon, mild steel blades used by early western warriors (Vikings for example) would actually bend... there are examples and records of warriors stepping on their swords in the middle of battle to straiten them back out.
Harder and held an edge longer. This was a huge advantage in that it allowed the harder weapon to actually cut through softer metals.
How to represent this in game terms? A better sword would be more effective against armor than a mild steel or bronze weapon. So you'd get more of an advantage against an armored opponent than an opponent who's AC was more DEX or Magic based.
So... +1 to hit against Medium or better armour?
Kazadvorn wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
Unless you're tracking wear and tear on blades as they're being used, the type of metal a weapon is made of makes little to no difference in its ability to deal damage.
A crappy sword made of the best steel is only going to ever be a very durable crappy sword.
A fantastically balanced and designed sword that's made of mediocre steel will be just as deadly as a fantastically balanced and designed sword that's made of the best steel - it just needs to be maintained more often and is more likely to suffer a catastrophic failure (bend or break under stress). When your life depends on trusting your sword, it makes sense that swords made of better steel were more valuable.
In essence, if you want to add bonuses to non-magical weapons, do so based on the quality of the workmanship, not the material. Base the durability and strength on the material, and use both factors to determine the price.
In the BBC series on elements, they theorized that naturally occuring vanadium impurities in the iron were responsible for "Damascus steel."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27829874
ArkPanda wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
seti wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Lord_Ventnor wrote:
Treat masterwork/special material items as +1 Magic Weapons - +1 to hit, +1 damage - that do NOT count as magic for the purposes of creatures resistances.
But, on the plus side, they can actually be bought with money, just like high end armour.
Sometimes simpler is better.
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
Kalani wrote:
That depends.... You could always hand waive said weapons as being the same for the purpose of bypassing damage reduction. Seeing as we are talking about house rules here, what is stopping such mastercraft weapons from being functionally identical in all ways to their magical counterparts.
Both would grant +X to attack and damage.
Both would bypass damage reduction.
Both would be behind the paywall, and unavailable for purchase.
Alternatively, that might be the major distinction between mastercraft and magical weapons..... The mastercraft Valyrian steel sword might be just as sharp, and just as well balanced as its magical counterpart (both are identical +X weapons), however only a magical sword can injure the magical denizens of the world.
It would make for an excellent balance point. Perhaps players might be able to purchase +1 Valyrian steel blades from a collector for several thousand GP.....+2 or +3 Valyrian blades would be considered priceless relics, heirolooms, and the like however. Their magical counterparts however would all be unavailable for purchase due to how valuable such items are when facing against the hoardes of creatures resistant to mundane weapons.
There are multiple variant paths the DM could take in this case, all of which could provide interesting story and world-building hooks.
I see the words Dwarven steel being used a lot. Humans can make this steel (duh) but in a fantasy setting Dwarves seem like a more obvious source for it at least locally while human Dwarven steel would be from far off lands?
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Hey, remember back in Tekumel, where all the equipment list purchased weapons were made from, I dunno, laminated vegetable matter or something, and all the "magic" weapons were just rusted to death relics invented by a prehistoric society that understood the science of metallurgy? No? Well, I never played under the original system either, but it sounded like it reframed the whole magic item vs mundane equipment issue.
Just to add my 2 cents...
1) The process of folding the steel being talked about here is called Pattern Welding (because of the patterns it creates in the steel). Pattern Welding itself in theory will not make your blade necessarily harder, sharper or better in any way. But it was used to mix different metals (softer and harder like iron and steel) to get advantage of the properties of those different metals and produce blades that were supperior in quality. This "quality" came in the form of impact-absorption mostly. You could have a blade with a soft center so that it would bend easier without breaking, but still have hard steel edges that would retain sharpness better.
2) Patter Welding was more than making only "exceptional" swords. Almost any decent sword was pattern-welded up till around the Viking age. And that was why swords were very expensive until the late middle ages where cheaper and better ways to forge steel blades were being discovered (we will also see plate armor start to develop by then). A Viking pattern-welded sword could cost as much as a cow or more (that was actually quite the money to put on a weapon) and one of the reasons the Norse made it an art form of fighting with axes. They were much much cheaper and easier to produce. By the late middle ages making swords were easy and cheap enough that whole infantries could be equiped with at least regular arming swords.
3) Damascus steel was not Pattern Welding. Although Pattern Welding is used to simulate damascus steel in appearance. It may have involved folding the metals too, but if so it was not only that which gave the steel its quality.
4) Armor! Finally, the point I find more relevant to a historical discussion is that we tend to put too much value into exceptional-quality weapons in our modern games, making them deal lots more damage, cut through harder materials like butter or whatever (which is fine, they are games, and it's fun to have this kind of stuff), and we also talk a lot about how awesome japanese or some other blades were. This is probably because in modern warfare we have a big enphasis on development of weapons: rifles, tomahawks, atomic bombs... But the truth is in medieval times it wasn't weapons that made that much of a difference (at least not the fact that a certain blade was "sharper" than the other or something of the sort). The real game-changer at the time was armor. Even a dull blade could kill a man as dead as the best damascus steel could (as someone already mentioned), and as long as your weapon didn't break you could still kill, probably just as easily as the guy holding the expensive blade. But armor was the big deal. Development in armor technology changed medieval warfare so much that whole new weapons and fighting styles were developed to try and cope with the advancements in armor making. At the peak of plate armor development by the late middle ages a guy with a kitchen knife wearing a set of plate was probably better off than the guy with a Damascus steel blade and a shirt. No sword could cut through plate, and that's that. You either hit in between the plates or at best you could hope for a concussion from the impact of the sword in the armor. Even a suit of mail could make someone much harder to kill, and although mail could be pierced sometimes it was not because the "blade was sharper" but probably because of enough force behind the blow and/or a pointy edge that slipped between the rings. All in all as far as medieval warfare was concerned, good armor was much more relevant than good weapons.
In real combat, give me a proper sword, and I will shatter thee's katana.
Zardnaar wrote:
The informations I have about damascus steel is that the appellation is used for two techniques.
First it was forging an alloy called wootz, renowed for its quality, coming from India and Uzbekistan.
Later, the term was also used about a technique alternating soft and hard steel sheets.
The two techniques are sharing a similar visual appearance, and then the same name.
The wootz gains this appearance mostly spontaneously during the metal crystallization, from the high level of carbon of this alloy.
The other damascus steel appearance is intentional, worked sheet after sheet.
My opinion is that alloys properties have limited impact on weapon effectiveness (katanas were effective and forged from crappy metal).
The quality of steel becomes important when resistance or weight is taken into account, as D&D doesn't care about other properties as blades are considered sharp and solid unless the weapon is destroyed or targetted with special effects. The only interest about Mithril was the light weight. I can see it influencing the type of weapons forged from it, as thrusting and parrying weapons clealry benefit more from high quality material, but I don't know if D&D needs this complexity. Maybe for finesse martial weapons and their needed flexibility ?
Like Rastapopoulos, I think that the interest with special material is about protection and the ability to bypass protection.
But then the problem is that D&D use AC, HP and damage reduction to simulate protection.
If the material grant a bonus to attack or damage, it doesn't make sense against unarmored opponenets, or opponents with sufficient quality to counter the quality of the weapon. And weapons bypassing damage reduction makes no sense as soon as this DR doesn't come from armor quality or, again, if the armor quality is equal or superior.
The quality of alloys other materials is the domain of micromanagement, and D&D turned incoherent each time the designers made rules about micromanagement.
The simpler solution is DM fiat, IMO. You may decide that the character needs less time to take care about his weapons and that NPCs may be impressed by this weapon and react accordingly. And when other weapons would break, this one is advantaged.
edwin_su wrote: