Does hardness overcome hardness?

[Ottergame]

You can swing a sword at a rock and have it cut through if the blade is good. You can also stick that same sword in a doorway and snap it in half without to much effort. It's not to hard to break something if you know what you're doing.

 

[Shadowdweller]

This is one area where fantasy diverges from reality. In D&D, a nonmagical club made of wood in the hands of a raging barbarian can shatter a longsword.

In the real world, a non-magical wooden stick can shatter a longsword. In the real world, windstorms have been known to drive pieces of straw through trees. In the real world, it takes only nine pounds of pressure to break any bone in the human body, and yet human beings are capable of lifting hundreds of pounds by using those same bones as support. It's all a matter of how the force is applied.

 

[James McMurray]

And none of those facts mean that hardness should overcome hardness in D&D.

 

[Gez]

Well, the Mohs scale isn't really about sundering things anyway. It's rather about the capacity to scratch materials.

You can't leave marks with your fingernails in a window (I'm not talking about dirty or wet hands, or mist-covered window). You can, however, scratch it with a metal edge, or a diamond.

Shattering isn't the same thing, as it's more a question of energy than of hardness.

 

[The Souljourner]

The reason I am asking is that I was wondering how they craft something like adamantine.... I guess I can always require adamantine tools in order to craft it...?

ciaran

You don't need a harder metal to craft an item of metal... that's what heat and pressure are for. How do you think they make super hard metal items in the real world?

-The Souljourner

 

[Stalker0]

And none of those facts mean that hardness should overcome hardness in D&D.

Nuff said