Adamantine Arrows?

[The_lone_gunman]

On the off side note: A tank round is made from uranium for a few reasons. One being it's incredibly dense and strong. When it hits the dart keeps its shape longer as it deforms the tank armor transferring its kinetic energy into heat. This superheats the air inside the tank and blowing a 30 ton turret into the air. All while still not managing to penetrate the armor.

I believe you may be thinking of the HEAT round (High explosive anti-tank), which uses a shaped charge as opposed to kinetic energy. The APFSDS (Armor piercing, fin stabilized, discarding sabot, the M829A2 I believe is what we used in Germany) round provides an extremely high-velocity sub-caliber round also known as a Kinetic Energy Penetrator, but it does not blow turrets off the tanks. The reason they use uranium is because it is so dense, and thus the stored kinetic energy is magnified into the "dart". This dart has a long profile, and the friction of it passing through the armor of the target is what causes the burning spray that enters the interior of the tank. It is actually molten metal spary that causes the damage inside the tank. There are several sights on the web that can show the effect of this during tests, it is pretty intense (you can actually see the molten metal spread around the opposite side of the tank on the inside) This can cause the ammunition inside the tank to explode. The ammunition exploding could cause the turret to blow off I would suppose....

This was a problem in desert storm, because they would shoot the T72's with the "super-sabot" or the "silver bullet" as it was nicknamed, but couldn't tell if the tank was dead because the tank would just shudder a bit then sit there. Usually the crew inside was dead of course due to the explosive "splatter" effect. However, a quick HEAT round placed at the base of the turret could be effective at blasting it right off .

The HEAT round works by using explosive firepower, instead of kinetic energy to penetrate armor. When the round impacts the target, an impact sensor ignites an explosive shaped charge, which concentrates molten metal and gases into a narrow blast that cuts through armor. It also has a secondary explosive effect, and when hit right can cause the turret to fly off, something done to great effect in Iraq.


Of course this is all very off topic so I guess I will shut up now LOL. I would allow the +2 from the admantite arrows......


TLG

 

[hong]

It is an inescapable fact that an arrow only is a weapon if it is used as a melee weapon.

Check PHB, page 97 and Table 7-4 on page 99 of the same book.

And you will see that an arrow doesn't do any damage at all, rather the bow.

You can cast greater magic weapon on an arrow, and it stacks with bonuses from the bow.
You can place weapon enchantments on an arrow, and it stacks (most of the time) with enchantments from the bow.
Arrows (and ammunition in general) are listed as "weapons" in Table 8-14 of the DMG, for random ranged weapon enchantments.

If you can have an arrow with a +5 enhancement bonus, I see no reason why you can't have it with a +1 or +2 natural enhancement bonus. Similarly, if an arrow gains a natural enhancement bonus when used in hand, I see no reason why it shouldn't gain a natural enhancement bonus if fired, which is what it's designed for, after all. One might say that's the point of an arrow.

Whether or not you could make an adamantine bow is a whole other thing, but an arrow wouldn't have any effect of being made of adamantine except being much much more expensive.

This is your interpretation, and it's open to question.

 

[AGGEMAM]

Arrows (and ammunition in general) are listed as "weapons" in Table 8-14 of the DMG, for random ranged weapon enchantments.

And listed in the DMG, page 248 as not belonging to any weapon category!

And btw, check page 183-184 of the DMG, where it says: 'ranged weapons and ammunition' and 'magic ammunition and breakage', is clear that designers did not consider ammunition as a weapon.


I would probably house rule this myself, and extend the +1 bonus for being a melee weapon to it being used as projectiles too. But that is not specifically surported by the rules.

 

[hong]

And listed in the DMG, page 248 as not belonging to any weapon category!

Well, it's still a weapon then, isn't it?

I would probably house rule this myself, and extend the +1 bonus for being a melee weapon to it being used as projectiles too. But that is not specifically surported by the rules.

If everything that happened in D&D had to be specifically supported by the rules, nothing would ever get done and we'd end up spending all our time arguing on this board. Hmmm.

But anyway. What I'd say is that the arrows can be made of adamantine, but since they don't deal any damage by default, they also don't get any enhancement bonus by default. When fired from a bow, though, they _do_ deal damage (since it's self-evident -- I hope -- that the damage listed for a bow is actually inflicted by the _arrow_, not by hitting people with the bow), and so gain a bonus that way. The bonus would be dependent on the type of bow used: if it's a shortbow, the arrow does d6 damage and so only gets +1; if it's a longbow, the damage is d8, and so gets +2. Finally, if the arrow is used in hand, it does d4 and so gets +1.

 

[AGGEMAM]

Well, it's still a weapon then, isn't it?

Nope not according to rhe rules!

Check my edit. (I copy-pasted it below.)

And btw, check page 183-184 of the DMG, where it says: 'ranged weapons and ammunition' and 'magic ammunition and breakage', is clear that designers did not consider ammunition as a weapon.

 

[Johno]

I'd allow adamantine arrows in my game.

Of course they'd be pretty rare, and hideously expensive:

200 gp per arrow (you can't buy them in lots of 50). Which comes out to 10,000 gp per 50...

Considering the fact that they are destroyed on a hit and 50% likely to be destroyed on a miss... and magical +2 arrows cost a mere 8350 gp for 50... I can't see PCs lining up to purchase this stuff really

A wand of greater magical weapon created at 6th level by a wizard costs 6*3*750= 13,500 gp and can create 2500 +2 arrows...

 

[hong]

Nope not according to rhe rules!

Check my edit. (I copy-pasted it below.)

And btw, check page 183-184 of the DMG, where it says: 'ranged weapons and ammunition' and 'magic ammunition and breakage', is clear that designers did not consider ammunition as a weapon.

I think it's much of a muchness. On p.183, the context is the stacking of bonuses for ranged weapons and ammunition. In that context, a clear distinction needs to be made between the launcher and the projectile, hence the care taken to treat each item separately. Similarly, on p.184, the context is item breakage, something that only applies to the projectile, not the launcher.

In the context of adamantine weapons, though, there's no particular need to distinguish between launcher and projectile. Hence the rules for adamantine don't go into much detail on the subject. Your inference that it's "clear" that ammunition is not a weapon is again open to question.

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

I'd allow adamantine arrows in my game.

Of course they'd be pretty rare, and hideously expensive:

200 gp per arrow (you can't buy them in lots of 50). Which comes out to 10,000 gp per 50...

Considering the fact that they are destroyed on a hit and 50% likely to be destroyed on a miss... and magical +2 arrows cost a mere 8350 gp for 50... I can't see PCs lining up to purchase this stuff really

A wand of greater magical weapon created at 6th level by a wizard costs 6*3*750= 13,500 gp and can create 2500 +2 arrows...

And the difference is thus:

Magical arrows lose their enhancement bonus 50% of the time if they miss or 100% of the time if they hit. In order to make new arrows, you cannot salvage anything from the old arrow.

Adamantine arrows (adamantine arrowheads and wooden shafts), on the other hand, would break as well, however, a savvy player would always ask to find the arrowheads.

A DM would have to explain why the adamantine arrowheads break 50% to 100% of the time, considering that adamantine is the hardest, toughest material in the universe. If they don't break, the player will take the arrowheads, build new arrow shafts for 1gp using the Craft skill, and effectively have an infinite supply of +2 arrows.

Hence why I allow adamantine arrows (adamantine arrowhead and wooden shafts), but they don't do anything special because not enough adamantine is being used.

And I don't allow adamantine arrows with adamantine shafts because steel arrows wouldn't fly without some serious enchantments.

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Geron Raveneye---
PS: An adamantine weapon that causes 1d8 points of damage and gets the enhancement bonus costs +9000 gp. As every arrow has to be considered a single weapon for calculating that (as each arrow causes 1d8 points of damage), each adamantine arrow that is to get a +2 bonus costs +9000 gp. Think about that...game balanced enough for y´all?

Yeah, sounds fine from a house rule persepective. (Which I am not against, considering I have so many house rules already.)

A question though...does the arrow break? And if so, can the shaft be repaired or remade with the Craft skill? I think this would be balanced if it cost 9,000 gp for 1 arrow.
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And as per the DM thingy, I am the DM and I constantly make rulings. The point of this thread, however, is to come to a consensus of what the rules actually say, not how we house rule our games. Because, as hong would tell you, that belongs in house rules.

In this instance, I ruled that:

1) Adamantine does not break unless you do in upwards of 20 damage.

2) Adamantine arrowheads do not have enough adamantine to give the arrows an enhancement bonus. (Considering a dagger weighs 1lb and is entirely adamantine, while a single arrow weighs .15 of a pound, and probably less than .05 of that is the arrowhead.)

3) Entirely adamantine arrows could not fly.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Hmmm...

..if ya want me to elaborate on my houserule, I´d say yes, if you retrieve the arrowhead and reattach it to a new shaft with a good craft check, it´ll be a new +2 enhanced adamantine arrow

See, the effect of an arrowhead also depends on the properties of the material it is made of...and adamantine confers better material properties on the head, making it sharper, pointier, whatever.

And steel arrows do fly..it´s a matter of how much force propels them...after all, planes fly, too