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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drdevoid" data-source="post: 1320540" data-attributes="member: 5356">Am I being obtuse?Why not use darkwood for the tower shield?From the 3.5 SRD:Darkwood: This rare magic wood is as hard as normal wood but very light. Any wooden or mostly wooden item (such as a bow, an arrow, or a spear) made from darkwood is considered a masterwork item and weighs only half as much as a normal wooden item of that type. Items not normally made of wood or only partially of wood (such as a battleaxe or a mace) either cannot be made from darkwood or do not gain any special benefit from being made of darkwood. The armor check penalty of a darkwood shield is lessened by 2 compared to an ordinary shield of its type. To determine the price of a darkwood item, use the original weight but add 10 gp per pound to the price of a masterwork version of that item.Darkwood has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 5.Simple analysis bears out that it's far cheaper by pound (Darkwood @ 10 gp/lb vs. Mithral @ 500 gp/lb) which assumes that making large beams of mithral should be difficult hence not ideal for making 'portable walls' (tower shields). If Sunderability is the big issue here:-Mithral has 30 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 15-Darkwood has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 5.-And (thrown in for good meaure) Dragonhide has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 10(Dragonhide is twice mstwk value and offers no other benefit)The net bonus of mithral over darkwood:-1 off armor check (-3 vs. -2)+2 max dex (darkwood doesn't decrease this)-10% arcane spell failure (darkwood doesn't decrease this)But with the money saved one could enchant said shield, right?The mithral over darkwood benefit then revolves around the max dex bonus which is laughable at lower levels for standard fighters or ASF percentages in which case, well, you're screwed any which way.Combined with promoting believability against a skeptical DM (tower shields are listed as wooden after all) as well as cost effectiveness as a concern, I would say darkwood is a soft sell.</blockquote>

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