bronze, iron and steel oh my

hello all,

Does anyone out there have any simple rules to show differences between steel, iron, and bronze armour and weapons?

What I am toying with is reduced hardness for iron and bronze, but I thought that I would check if any of my fellow DM's out there might have any good suggestions.

Hygric.

Simple? Not really.

I created a whole Materials system a couple years ago, you could try something similar. Basically, give every item (weapons and armor) a bonus based on the primary material used, and have that bonus stack with magical enhancement. But, each material also increases the DC of the Craft check by a given amount, increases cost, etc.

So, say that iron armor is the baseline (normal cost, +0 DC). Steel is the "masterwork" (x2 cost, +1 Armor Check, +3 DC). And so on. Dragonhide might be (x50 cost, +3 AC, +2 Max DEX, resistance 5 to the appropriate element, +16 DC)

I'm sure there's something simpler out there, though.

HEre is my 2 cents:

Iron is the baseline.

Steel is considered masterwork for function and creation.

Bronze gets all sorts of penalties. Some examples:

-1 to AC for armor
reduced hardness for weapons,
weapons break on maximum damge or criticals


This also makes for some neat magical weapons and armor. I have an NPC 3rd level fighter that walks around with a +5 bronze chain shirt. The magicalness (is that a word?) overcomes the hardness problem most of the time and it is really only as effective as regular plate mail.