New Material: Elf Glass


Homebrew and House Rules

Shadow Lodge

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Wanted a flavourful material for my city of elf wizards, other than mithral. Would appreciate feedback on balance/pricing.

Elf Glass wrote:

Elf-Glass can be used to make any item normally made from metal. Items made from Elf-glass are immune to rust and magnetism effects. The cost for adding the spell-storing enchantment is 75% of normal. Elf-glass items cannot grant spell resistance, though they can grant spell turning effects.​

Elf-glass items are capable of making use of additional armour crystals or weapon crystals. A weapon, shield, or piece of light armour can use one additional crystal; a medium or heavy suit of armour can use two additional crystals.​

​Weapons made from elf-glass are exceptionally sharp. They grant a +1 enhancement bonus to damage and a +1 bonus to confirm critical hits.
Ammo: +10 gp
Light: +500gp
One-handed: +750gp
Two-handed: +1000gp​

​Armour or shields made from Elf-glass have an Arcane Spell Failure 10% lower than usual. Armour is also considered one category lighter than normal for purposes of whether the wearer can cast arcane spells in the armour.
Shield: +2000gp
Light: +2000gp
Medium: +4000gp
Heavy: +8000gp​

HP/inch 15 (half that of steel); Hardness 8; Weight 3/4 normal​

The armour benefit is intentionally less useful than that provided by mithral for most classes, but would be useful with arcane armour training (which gives you 0% ASF wearing an elf glass chain shirt - and with a houserule doesn't take your swift action).

I stole/adapted Armour & Weapon Crystals from 3.5; they are items that can be attached to a weapon or armour in order to grant cheap circumstantial bonuses like +d6 damage to a creature type for 1,000gp, or Endure Elements for 300gp. Since the most significant limitation is only being able to use one crystal at a time, the ability to get an additional cheap bonus is supposed to be the main mechanical draw for elf-glass items.


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kind of reminds me of glass steel from 3.5

Shadow Lodge

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That was the starting point. I thought I'd make it more interesting by making it magically conductive.

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How is it made?


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Weirdo wrote wrote:
Weapons made from elf-glass are exceptionally sharp. They grant a +1 enhancement bonus to damage and a +1 bonus to confirm critical hits.

Does this include bludgeoning weapons?


Daaaaaaauuuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhht.

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The glass shouldn't grant a +1 enhancement bonus to damage. Then a masterwork elf glass weapon has the same bonuses as a +1 weapon.


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I "resurrected" the Glassteel spell for my PF games. There's a nation that awards glassteel weapons to its elite warriors. They don't have any special qualities save their rareness and the honor they bestow upon the bearer.

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A few novel series I've been reading lately have elfglass buildings and bridges. It's generally indestructible.

A lot of these series are post-apocalyptic, far far far future settings.

Shadow Lodge

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Cyrad wrote:
The glass shouldn't grant a +1 enhancement bonus to damage. Then a masterwork elf glass weapon has the same bonuses as a +1 weapon.

That was the idea, actually. I thought it might be balanced anyway because it can't bypass DR or incorporeal defenses like an actual magic weapon, which is a significant downside.

Do you think it would be fair to remove the damage bonus, but increase the crit confirmation bonus to +2?

Lost In Limbo wrote:
Weirdo wrote wrote:
Weapons made from elf-glass are exceptionally sharp. They grant a +1 enhancement bonus to damage and a +1 bonus to confirm critical hits.

Does this include bludgeoning weapons?

Good catch. I will rewrite so that only piercing and slashing weapons get the sharpness bonus - you can still make bludgeoning elf-glass weapons but they only get the general benefits.

Cyrad wrote:
How is it made?

Working explanation is "closely guarded magical and alchemical secrets" but I'd like to develop it a bit more. Maybe incorporating quartz sand collected from the elemental plane of earth?

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Weirdo wrote:
Cyrad wrote:
The glass shouldn't grant a +1 enhancement bonus to damage. Then a masterwork elf glass weapon has the same bonuses as a +1 weapon.

That was the idea, actually. I thought it might be balanced anyway because it can't bypass DR or incorporeal defenses like an actual magic weapon, which is a significant downside.

Do you think it would be fair to remove the damage bonus, but increase the crit confirmation bonus to +2?

Yeah, remove the damage bonus or change it to a different bonus type. +2 confirmation is fine.

Giving +1/+1 would be too much because you get the same statistics as a +1 weapon at 75% discount. It also treads on murky water because a +1 weapon is a magical weapon by definition and a +1 weapon by definition is a weapon with a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage.

Weirdo wrote:
Cyrad wrote:
How is it made?
Working explanation is "closely guarded magical and alchemical secrets" but I'd like to develop it a bit more. Maybe incorporating quartz sand collected from the elemental plane of earth?

In my opinion, flavor is the most important part of a special material. So figuring out the flavor is really important. Why are elves more able to travel the Plane of Earth to get this material and craft it into glassteel? Do they have a portal? Are they miners?

Shadow Lodge

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The flavour in this case is more about the cultural significance rather than the specifics of the manufacturing process.

The group of elves that produces elf-glass settled in the desert after fleeing from a divine war. They discovered that they had little access to metals or wood, but lots of quartz sand. Hesitant to seek out resources outside their new sanctuary, and motivated by an elven deity of magic and gemstones, they developed increasingly sophisticated glassworking methods. Elf-glass is the most advanced and valuable product of this development.

Elf-glass is now used in high-quality armour and weapons among the elves, both for practical and ornamental reasons, as well as in wands and magical jewelry. A less refined version, simply durable rather than magically conductive, is used for more mundane tools.

I'm still not sure whether I want them to have a permanent portal, but they do have access to extraplanar travel, and the desert they live in is known to have close connections to the elemental planes so it's not a stretch for them to have settled specifically on a site with innate access to sand from the plane of earth.


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Pure elemental fire, or a sunlight focused through special lenses for the kiln could also be a creation requirement.

Shadow Lodge

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I like the sunlight idea! The elves see the light of heavenly bodies as a relatively pure form of energy, and lenses reflect previous investments in glass.

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Elfglass refined by moonshine can bypass DR/silver!

The Exchange

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I can see an Elf Glass mace giving that +1 damage. Due to its solid nature. I can see bludgeoning weapons getting a bonus.

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Or you can be crazy and have bludgeoning weapons crafted from elfglass be covered in razor sharp shards, so the additional damage is piercing or slashing.


SmiloDan wrote:
Elfglass refined by moonshine can bypass DR/silver!

Or at least make the elves and/or werecritters be so blitzed by the time the battle is over that they feel like the DR is bypassed!

silverthorne wrote:
I can see an Elf Glass mace giving that +1 damage. Due to its solid nature. I can see bludgeoning weapons getting a bonus.

I was going to say something similar.

It's nearly indestructable, hard, and a bludgeoning weapon would be pretty weird-but-neat.

Beyond that, I'd suggest (from personal feelings alone) that you could have masterwork weapons be treated as magic for bypassing damage reduction or striking incoporeal creatures only, (but maybe have it very mildly less expensive to enchant); and/or, if it's actually turned into a magic item from the masterwork base, then giving it (or increasing) the crit bonus of +2.

Making it useful in that fashion also serves as a good reason to acquire non-magical versions of the thing for lower-level adventurers, without invalidating low-level spells: it's kind of like being magical without the '+' boons that actually qualify as magical.

(The primary reason for this, I must confess, is that, for my own personal sensations alone, I find "bonus to confirm" fabulously uninteresting; I know I'm kind of rare in that, and it's actually an artifact of the way we play our home games, so it's not necessarily the most sound advice...)

But I like the basic concept - a lot, actually - and I find the backstory interesting. I might integrate something similar in my own current "drow" game*...

After all, there's a whole "hellscape" to populate with weird bizarre creatures and their constructions...

* Though we're using vastly different rules (with the new Firefly RPG version of Cortex+ as a base) and a nearly-unrecognizeable campaign setting.


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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I "resurrected" the Glassteel spell for my PF games. There's a nation that awards glassteel weapons to its elite warriors. They don't have any special qualities save their rareness and the honor they bestow upon the bearer.

Ya know, it just occurred to me they should at least be masterwork weapons so the user could have them enchanted if he/she wanted to. Sometimes my thought processes run pretty slowly.


Another flavor idea could be that elf-glass takes far longer to create due to how sophisticated the glassworking methods and equipment is. A single piece could take a day or more of continuous work to create, making it extremely valuable because of the extreme quality.

You can actually grant a +1 bonus to confirming criticals and in essence make it a +2 by saying that items crafted with elf-glass are always masterwork quality. That grants a +1 to hit/+1 to damage from masterwork and the additional +1 to confirm crits is just part of its special abilities.

As for pricing, you should look at increasing the prices some. I'd double the current weapon prices and adjust the prices on armor to match that of mithral.


Sounds like a material that should take double damage from Shatter and like spells.

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Your elf glass is 'light' (see your armor). That means it is VERY unsuitable for bludgeoning weapons, which rely on weight and mass to do their damage.

Having a non-magic masterwork weapon be the equal of a +1 weapon means it should cost what a magic weapon does. Price for weapons should reflect that.

Repair costs should require magic. You don't just bend glass links back into shape.

The standard magical forge would run on Permanent Heat Metal or a Permanent (small) Wall of Fire. Note that a fire has to do 20 hp/dmg round to melt steel (since metals take half fire dmg), so you're looking at an Empowered Wall of Fire cast at 10th, minimum. For melting adamantium, you'd need a Maximized Empowered Wall cast at 20th to do the 40 dmg.

It would be more of: ELfglass weapons refined in a Ritual by moonlight are as effective as silver against werecreatures.
Elfglass weapons instead refined under sunlight are effective as magic weapons against undead.
Cost: +1000 Gp.

==Aelryinth

Shadow Lodge

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I like Tacticslion's suggestion that the weapon bypass DR as if magic. Does 1500gp sound fair for:

1) The ability to bypass DR/magic
2) A second weapon crystal slot
3) Masterwork cost included?

There would then be a 500gp discount on the initial enchantment, since the ability to bypass DR is redundant, meaning you're paying 700gp for the crystal slot.

Though elf-glass weapons and armour lack the fragile property, the material is not quite as durable as steel - it has the same weight as stone or obsidian and the same hardness and HP/inch. It also certainly is treated as glass for purposes of shatter, and I can include reminder text in the material description. I expect these two things balance out the benefit of being immune to rust.

Given the weight comparison with stone, which does the same damage as steel, I think it makes sense for bludgeoning elf-glass weapons to be neither more nor less damaging than their metal counterparts. (Thematically speaking, they'd have to be custom work since the elves don't normally make maces or warhammers.)

Note while the original masterwork elf-glass weapon would have had the same +1 attack and damage bonus as a magic weapon, it is definitely not the same thing. It wouldn't bypass DR/magic or incorporeal defense, and is much more fragile, with hardness 8 and HP 5 for an elf-glass longsword, compared to hardness 12 and HP 15 for a +1 longsword made from steel. I can definitely appreciate the consensus that the original 750gp price was too low, but it's because I was placing too much weight on the DR-penetrating properties of a magic weapon, not because I was unaware of the comparison.

I like the idea of silver-glass, but am not sure whether I want to tie it to creature types. Given that silversheen costs 450gp on top of a masterwork weapon, would it be fair to add 750gp for a silver-glass weapon that bypasses all DR/silver (+50% cost for “stacking” two material types), or 400gp for a version that is only effective against one creature type?

Aelryinth wrote:
Repair costs should require magic. You don't just bend glass links back into shape.

That would be reflected by a higher Craft DC to make (and thus repair) elf-glass items. I'd also probably require specific tools, such that if you were trying to repair it with standard Craft (armourmaking) tools you'd take a -2 penalty.

Note that glass has a melting temperature of about 1500C compared to steel at 2500, so it should require less heat to work – or in game terms, before the raw glass has been worked into elf-glass it has only hardness 1 and thus requires only 3 points of fire damage/round to melt.

Litchfield wrote:
As for pricing, you should look at increasing the prices some. I'd double the current weapon prices and adjust the prices on armor to match that of mithral.

The armour almost does match mithral pricing. However, I made the light armour cost 1,000gp more than mithral and heavy armour cost 1,000gp less. This is because elf-glass doesn't get the max dex, ACP, or general movement improvements that mithral heavy armour does. With a chain shirt those benefits are less relevant compared to the extra armour crystal slot and 0% ASF with arcane armour training.

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