Bronze to Steel (skipping iron)

[Alibear]

I am toying with playing the backstory to my campaign which is basically the Bronze Age time of myth and legend. I am interested in a time when an Articifer develops steel weapons and armour (magical process) (straight to quenched weapons here)

 

I know Bronze is softer than steel but not sure what it's hero stats are? Is bronze armour less effective against steel weapons? Do Bronze weapons have less def or what?

 

How would you build the difference?

[Old Man]

I’d make bronze significantly heavier for equivalent DEF or damage. I’m not sure modeling steel vs. bronze in any greater detail is worth it unless it’s key to the campaign somehow. 

[Duke Bushido]

First:

 

Excellent question!

 

Which makes it that much more painful for me to have to say "well, that's up to you."  Unfortunately, though: it's up to you.  You _can_, if you so choose, take real-world information and build your weapons that way.  It's perfectly valid within the rules.

 

You can _also_ completely ignore what you know about the real world and make Bronze weapons completely unbreakable-- also perfectly valid within the rules.

 

 

Now if you are just asking which part of the bronze weapon is inferior to the steel weapon: the DEF or the BODY, well...   that's harder to answer.

 

If I take a twelve-pound hammer head and drop it onto a cut slug of bronze, I get noticeable deformation.  If I do the same thing with the same volume (or even the same mass) of steel, I get a small divot.

 

This suggests that the damage is more easily transmitted to the bronze than the steel.  Of course, you knew that.  Here comes the much harder question:

 

Did either of them take BODY?  They are both the same mass / volume that they were before.  Neither of them is less effective at being a cylindrical cross-section of metal.

 

 

I don't have the equipment to make swords out of either  (probably because I don't have the know-how, so the need never really came up   ).   I can buy rods, though (or waste gobs of money and turn them on the late from larger stock.  Either is fine, really).   So let's define the object-- intact and straight-- as being "a sword."  Anything that changes its shape is BODY damage.

 

All things being equal, ---

 

ah-- I see Old Man has replied.  Whatever he said, it's guaranteed to be much shorter, and most likely correct.--

 

anyway, all things being equal, when I clang the two "swords" together, with enough force, it's much easier to deform the bronze one.  If we define loss of shape as body damage (since it becomes less and less useful as the original item), then it was easier to inflict BODY damage with the same force, it would appear that DEF is lower for the bronze item.

 

It's harder to measure the amount of torsion and flexing the two will stand up against, at least in a thought experiment, but suffice it to say that mild steel tends to take more of  a beating, too.

 

 

Problematically, though, you can make the bronze equally durable-- even moreso-- by adding more of it.  That is to say that you can make a bronze rod equal in strength to a steel rod of a 1/2" diameter.  You'll end up with something like 7/8" diameter bronze rod  (though it depends on the usage, the length, etc-- but the point is you can gain "equality" of BODY and STR by pouring on more of the softer material.

 

And honestly, that's probably the easiest way to go about it:  give them equal  (or _roughly_ equal BODY and DEF-- particularly if they are to be weapons or armor), and add more cost for the steel items and more mass / encumbrance penalties for the bronze ones.

 

It's probably not the answer you want, but it saves you a huge investment in science experiments. 

 

 

HA!

 

 

Yep:  Old Man was both more brief and dead-on, as expected. 

 

Gad!

 

I forgot about the new "merging answers" feature!

 

I wonder if this one will, too....

Yup.

 

Neat.

 

[Ockham's Spoon]

For armor, I would just increase the weight relative to steel, and require it to be repaired more often since it is a softer metal.  For weapons, bronze weapons will likely do just as much damage to something squishy like the human body.  But they are also likely to wear out faster than steel, especially weapons that have to hold an edge like a sword, so again, more maintenance.

[archer]

3 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

For armor, I would just increase the weight relative to steel, and require it to be repaired more often since it is a softer metal.  For weapons, bronze weapons will likely do just as much damage to something squishy like the human body.  But they are also likely to wear out faster than steel, especially weapons that have to hold an edge like a sword, so again, more maintenance.

 

Yeah, I'm no expert but my understanding is that bronze swords were swords for a while but if you hit them against a solid surface very much that you were swinging a metal bar rather than something with a noticeable edge.

 

Not that it wouldn't do damage, it just wouldn't cut with its edge like you'd expect a sword to do. I'd imagine it could still pierce.

[eepjr24]

First, I agree with Duke on this much: It's your game, it will work however you want.

 

That said, I think about it a bit differently. DEF is the amount of force prevented from causing meaningful distortion in the material. Body is how much meaningful distortion the material can take and still serve it's original purpose.

 

So for me, Bronze would have a lower DEF. You can certainly up the BODY to help compensate for that (probably at the expense of additional weight and material cost). As far as the effect in game terms, I would likely give 1 less DEF to Bronze armor in addition to having it weigh more (about 10%) for the same amount of BODY. The effect would be nothing if you were using Bronze against Bronze but would tell in a fight of Steel against Bronze. Generally it would end in the Bronze armor needing extensive repairs if the wearer survived. 

 

[Technical bits probably no one cares about: Bronze is a 3 on the Moh's scale of hardness, Steel is a 4. A 1 foot cube of Bronze weighs about 54 more pounds (roughly 10 percent more) than the same size cube of Steel (depending on the exact alloys of bronze and steel used). The tensile yield of Bronze (tinned or early type) would have been in the 15-20,000 PSI range, early hardened steels would have been about 50,000 PSI (maybe a little less, hard to find exact stats on that).]

 

Obviously, YMMV, this is just the way I would think about it.

 

- E

[Ockham's Spoon]

FWIW the Sword of Spirits trilogy by John Christopher touches upon how a jump in metallurgical advances might play out; the sword of spirits in the title is a well-made steel sword in a world that has lost that technology.  Probably more background reading that you are interested in, but the books are worth reading on their own.

[assault]

Personally, I would model any armour used on Bronze Age types, and not sneak in later forms. To me, they would feel anachronistic.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

FWIW the Sword of Spirits trilogy by John Christopher touches upon how a jump in metallurgical advances might play out; the sword of spirits in the title is a well-made steel sword in a world that has lost that technology.  Probably more background reading that you are interested in, but the books are worth reading on their own.

 

That's fitting since the secret of good steel was lost at least twice in history.  It probably wasn't even understood to begin with, just a happy accident.

[DShomshak]

Another factor is cost, though this is another factor where your world may differ significantly from real history. The Bronze Age, I am told, was an age of aristocratic warriors fighting other aristocratic warriors (as depicted in Homer's Iliad) because bronze was really expensive: Copper and tin were both fairly rare metals, and you needed a supply of both. Iron ore was much more common, in larger quantities: Thus, Homer speaks of "democratic iron." So once people learn to smelt iron, they have a cheaper material that's harder than bronze, and the whole shape of warfare changes.

 

But steel is another matter. IIRC (and I might not, eyeroll) steel could only be made by prolonged heating of iron with charcoal. A layer of steel formed on the iron, which was hammered off. Then the blacksmith had to try forging the bits of steel together. The result was that while a well-made steel weapon was superior to an iron weapon, it took a long time to make and cost a great deal more. At least that was the case at some places and times. I think there was an episode of NOVA, "Secret of the Viking Sword," which said the Medieval Norse obtained ingots of steel from the Middle East, where technology was considerably more advanced.

 

For gaming purposes, this could mean that steel has higher DEF (and maybe BODY) for a given weight, but it might cost even more than bronze. Its production might be considered a magical secret known only to master smiths, or something that has to be brought from far away and the locals don't know how it's made. Maybe you can only get it from the dwarfs. Leaving out the middle stage of iron, though, seems... odd, unless somebody, somehow, has invented the Bessemer converter or some other way of making steel directly.

 

I'd suggest rigging the DEF and BODY ranges of materials to suit the kind of story you want to tell, and the kind of world you want to create stories in. But rigging the availability of steel, bronze and iron can matter just as much.

 

Incidentally, is there meteoric iron in this setting? Because if you want a fantastically rare and precious magical metal for your setting, meteoric iron could work well.

 

Dean Shomshak

[LoneWolf]

Are you going to have both types of metal available at the same time?  If you are going to have both types of metal available how common will the steel weapons be?

 

If I were running bronze age campaign where steel weapon existed but were rare I would probably just use the normal stats for bronze weapons and armor and treat steel weapons as magic items.  It may not be realistic or have any basis in science but it would simplify things for the players.  I would however require more maintenance  for  gear made out of bronze.  Since this is mainly not a big issue and usually hand waved in most campaigns it should not be a big deal.  
 

[archer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel

[DShomshak]

14 hours ago, archer said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel

This is excellent, and an example of why one should do real-world research in building  Fantasy worlds. You'll find stuff that's more wondrous and fantastical than anything you could imagine. (Or at least than I could imagine.) A wind furnace driven by the monsoon? Oh yes, I could work with that.

 

Searching my memory further, I think I heard the "hammer off the steel bits" story on an episode of Connections, or maybe Day the Universe Changed. The subject was watch springs, and James Burke said the development of spring-driven chronometers was impeded by Europe's difficulty in making good steel.

 

Dean Shomshak

[archer]

23 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

This is excellent, and an example of why one should do real-world research in building  Fantasy worlds. You'll find stuff that's more wondrous and fantastical than anything you could imagine. (Or at least than I could imagine.) A wind furnace driven by the monsoon? Oh yes, I could work with that.

 

Searching my memory further, I think I heard the "hammer off the steel bits" story on an episode of Connections, or maybe Day the Universe Changed. The subject was watch springs, and James Burke said the development of spring-driven chronometers was impeded by Europe's difficulty in making good steel.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

I hadn't heard of bamboo being used. I've heard of wool being used because it was something the civilizations northeast of Byzantine and northwest of India had in abundance. Of course those civilizations got wiped out down to their foundations by the Mongols so having good steel weapons didn't do them a heck of a lot of good.

 

Seems like I remember that part of their process was at one point to embed the steel in wool (no pun intended), heat the exterior of the kiln but starve the interior of oxygen so the wool would carbonize. Don't know, fuzzy memories from years ago.

[archer]

Ah, here's a bit better of a look at the crucible process than Wikipedia gives:

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/wootz-steel-damascus-blades-0010148

 

The crucible process is one of the three main types of iron manufacture used during the pre-modern period, the other two being the bloomery and the blast furnace. The crucible process involves the placement of an iron source, such as bloomery iron or wrought iron, and carbon-rich materials, such as wood chips, into a clay crucible.

 

This vessel is then closed and heated over a period of several days at a temperature of between 1300 °C and 1400 °C. As a result of this, the carbon is absorbed by the iron, lowering its melting point, and causing it to liquefy. This addition of carbon to iron (which is between 1% and 2%) also imparts certain qualities, such as high ductility, high impact strength, and reduced brittleness, to the new product.  After a slow cooling process, the Wootz cakes were ready to be fashioned....

[assault]

Reading those links, it's clear that there is nothing implausible (or inherently magical) about steel being introduced into a Bronze Age society. It just means that making it was introduced "somewhere else" or "in the past".

 

In the latter case, you wouldn't need an Artificer - a Necromancer or anyone who can speak to the spirits of the dead would do just fine. In fact, this would sit better with my early D&D-influenced sensibilities.

 

This still doesn't answer the original question. Personally, I'd start with the old dual-statted ICE Age of Heroes and Mythic Egypt supplements. But of course that's because I have them sitting around.

[Alibear]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun's_meteoric_iron_dagger

 

More food for thought 

[massey]

My view on this is a little different.  A bronze weapon/shield/armor won't have significantly different stats than a steel version would.  In game terms, there's not enough difference to make a difference.  Def, Body, damage classes, those would be the same or very close.  The real difference will be in the types of weapons and armor available (particularly with weapons).  You just can't make certain types of sword out of bronze.

 

There's a reason that historical weapons looked the way they did.  That was the best version that people of the time could realistically make, for their situation.  Most of the bronze age swords were short, stabby weapons.  As I understand it, the Roman gladius was made out of iron, but it still resembled bronze age designs.  You can't make a katana with bronze, or a medieval knight's arming sword.  You'd have to make them too thick to really be functional.

 

Your artificer is going to be able to produce weapons that no one has seen before.  His swords will have a huge reach advantage over everyone else's.  They'll do more damage because they're larger weapons.  They might also have OCV/DCV advantages once the wielder knows how to use them, because opponents are so unfamiliar with them.  How would you fight a guy with a 19th century US cavalry saber if you've never seen one before?  How close can you stand before you're in danger?  People wouldn't know that stuff.

[assault]

6 hours ago, massey said:

Your artificer is going to be able to produce weapons that no one has seen before.

"Able to" and "will" are different things.

 

Specifically, he or she will need to conceptually move from "what we already have, but better" to "something almost completely different, which may or may not work".

 

Granted, that might be part of the definition of "artificer", but the "may or may not work" part probably isn't. I doubt most artificers are good at developing new weapon skills.

[massey]

53 minutes ago, assault said:

"Able to" and "will" are different things.

 

Specifically, he or she will need to conceptually move from "what we already have, but better" to "something almost completely different, which may or may not work".

 

Granted, that might be part of the definition of "artificer", but the "may or may not work" part probably isn't. I doubt most artificers are good at developing new weapon skills.

 

Yeah, but given that we're talking about "longer, thinner sword", I don't know that it's that big a leap.

 

There's very little difference between a bronze dagger and a steel dagger.  You'd have to sharpen the bronze dagger more often, but being a softer metal it would also take less time.  All that stuff is offscreen anyway.  The big difference would be you can now make weapons that you couldn't make before.

 

I don't think the artificer would be the one developing the weapon skills.  You'd need a competent warrior to experiment with the weapon for a time and develop those.  The artificer's job is just to make the weapon itself.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 11/4/2020 at 3:18 AM, Alibear said:

I am toying with playing the backstory to my campaign which is basically the Bronze Age time of myth and legend. I am interested in a time when an Articifer develops steel weapons and armour (magical process) (straight to quenched weapons here)

 

I know Bronze is softer than steel but not sure what it's hero stats are? Is bronze armour less effective against steel weapons? Do Bronze weapons have less def or what?

 

How would you build the difference?

Testament the RPG sourcebook from Green Ronin touched upon this. (The book is for True D20.) So they said Steel is easier to cut through Bronze and Bronze is harder to defend against Steel. So I would mechanically have Steel weapons be automatically AP versus Bronze Armor. Bronze weapons are Red Pen. versus Steel Armor. Realistic? I don’t know but this might be what you’re looking for. Minimum though you could make Bronze have normal body for breaking and steel durable. 

[Tryskhell]

Small necro, but the way I'd do it :

 

Make bronze the baseline, but some things are not possible to make with bronze (longswords, for instance, wouldn't work in bronze). 

 

Then, steel is better than that. One way you could do it is make steel do more damage, another has been mentioned already : making it AP for weapons, and hardened for armor. 

 

Steel is decently harder than bronze, and bronze is quite soft period (as a weapon-grade material). Maybe if someone using a bronze weapon blocks a steel weapon, their weapon takes damage?