Soft Metals Hardness

[Drake M]

I can't find any canon information on the hardness/hp per inch of thickness on any of the following materials:

-Bronze
-Silver
-Gold
-Electrum

Electrum makes sense, but bronze armor is specifically mentioned in the DMG. And someone must have wanted to smash a gold object at some point.

Does anyone have canon information on the hardness/hp of these, especially gold?

 

[domino]

Well,
" Alchemical silver has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 8. " from the SRD.

A homebrew for bronze I found says that bronze as -2 hardness and .75 hp of steel, or 8 hardness and 22.5 hp per inch. But that's not authoritative.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Checked PHB, Stronghold Builder's Guide wall materials, Draconomicon treasure appendix and d20 Modern SRD. Didn't find anything on these or any similar materials.

From Stone to Steel is an excellent 3rd party book that offers a lot of information on materials (and the rules are OGC). Their hardness values...
Bronze: 3-5
Copper: 2
Gold: 5
Silver: 8

I don't see electrum on the master table, and bronze is an alloy of varying composition so I assume that's why they give a range. There is hit point information as well but it's more complicated.

This is the sort of thing that could be posted in the new Q&A forum if you want to see if WotC published anything on this.

 

[Greenfield]

We had a monster try to Sunder a Mighty Composite bow, using a Halfling as a weapon.

Talk about a nightmare to adjudicate! Hardness for wood is listed, or can be guessed at by looking at Darkwood (which says it's as hard as normal wood, but half the weight), but guessing the thickness of a mighty bow?

Of course, the fun-to-play factor outweighed the other issues by a ton.

(Note: If the Halfling is wearing +3 armor, does that make it a +3 Halfling? )

 

[Dandu]

No: Enhancement bonuses to AC do not apply when the armoris being used as a weapon.

 

[Drake M]

Man, I have been gone a while. There's a new Q&A forum?


I guess alchemical silver can just be ruled as the same as any other silver, fixes that problem.
The hardness info is helpful, but how are the hitpoints complicated?

 

[Ahnehnois]

New Forum.
Just created within the past couple of weeks. The idea is that if you have a question that can be objectively answered, you can post it here. People post replies but can't discuss anything, so hopefully you get a quick and clear answer. It may or may not help, just seemed relevant.

 

[Tharkon]

Hardness according to varying real world scales:

        Mohs   Vickers   Brinell
Tin      1.5             51.0 MPa
Silver   2.5   251 MPa   24.5 MPa
Gold     2.5   216 MPa   25.0 MPa  
Copper   3.0   369 MPa  874.0 MPa
Iron     4.0   608 MPa  490.0 MPa
Platinum 4.5   549 MPa  392.0 MPa

It should be noted that Mohs scale is merely ordinal. And that the Vickers scale was developed later than the Brinell scale.

Bronze is an alloy between copper and tin and is harder than copper, bronze replaced copper as the main metal used in the bronze age for this reason. Iron was used later, so bronze is probably somewhere between iron and copper.
Electrum is an alloy between gold and silver and is harder than gold, but might not be harder than silver. I'd give electrum gold and silver the same hardness, seeing how little gold and silver differ, it's probably not detectable on the small scale in D&D.

It should also be noted that while all forms of steel and iron have hardness 10 in all cases in D&D, these are some real values in Brinell scale:

Ausformed steel:         850-1200
Martensitic steel:       600
Bainitic steel:          400
Pearlitic steel:         350
Cold-worked iron:        200
Small-grain iron:        100
Carbon-containing iron:   40
Pure, single-crystal iron: 3

So it really depends on what you do with it, and isn't really a property of the material. But that is a bit to complicated for D&D purposes probably.

If I had to give some numbers, guess I'd use these:
Tin: 4
Gold, Silver & Electrum: 6 (I think they're still harder than wood)
Copper: 7
Bronze: 8
Platinum: 10

 

[Tharkon]

We had a monster try to Sunder a Mighty Composite bow, using a Halfling as a weapon.

Talk about a nightmare to adjudicate! Hardness for wood is listed, or can be guessed at by looking at Darkwood (which says it's as hard as normal wood, but half the weight), but guessing the thickness of a mighty bow?

Of course, the fun-to-play factor outweighed the other issues by a ton.

(Note: If the Halfling is wearing +3 armor, does that make it a +3 Halfling? )

-4 on attack for improvised weapon
two-handed if the monster is medium-sized
one-handed if large, light if huge
probably 1d10 for damage plus str mods as appropiate
The +3 armor does not enhance the attack.
Also, assume the halfling gets hit by the bow at the same time, treat the bow as a club, but don't apply any str modifiers, since the bowman isn't attacking with it.

The bow would probably have hardness 5 and 10hp+5/str mod.
The string would probably have hardness 2 and 2hp+1/str mod.
The higher the str mod, the more likely the bow has a thicker string and is made of thicker wood.
Actually, ignore the string, with its elasticity and being placed behind the wood it's not likely to break before the wood does.

Btw, only intelligent monsters are likely to sunder. Since the concept of attack your opponent's weapons instead of your opponent is beyond the scope of monsters of lesser (but not neccesary animal) intelligence.

 

[Greenfield]

It was an Efreet, which means Large, swinging the Halfling 1 handed. Essentially, I added a D3 to the monster's hand to hand damage, and did the bonus Fire damage to the Halfling.

That attack sequence only lasted a few rounds before he dropped the Halfling. She kept stabbing his hand.

General advice? When you meet something trapped in a magic circle, don't break the circle. Not even when it holds out a pretty gemstone for you, and all you have to do is reach in and take it.

Nasty surprise, but a great scene when it all played out.