Aaron Elsaesser's page

Arrowheads are a poor comparative tool because the weight of an arrowhead is so negligible. With larger weapons, bone's honeycomb structure makes for great pressure strength, but it's low mass makes for difficulty getting the same force behind a blow. Hence, the minus to damage.

I could understand that logic if they also put bone as a lighter material but as it is stone and obsidian weapons wieght 75% of what the base weapon does with no damage penalty whereas bone has no reduction to wieght at all.

Okay I got some beef with the rules for Bone as the material in weapons and armor. Let's start with weapons. "Bone weapons take a -2 penalty on damage rolls." Why? I can't speak for using bones as bludgeoning weapons but there is physical evidence that bone arrowheads are just as effective as stone and in fact are more readily used because they can be worked easier than stone. There are tribes in Africa that still make and use bone arrowheads today.

Now on to armor, "Studded leather, scale mail, breastplates, and wooden shields can all be constructed using bone." "The armor/shield bonus of bone armor is reduced by 1, but in the case of studded leather, the armor check penalty is also reduced by 1(to 0)." So with this we can buy bone studded leather that gives us the same armor bonus as regular leather it just weights more, has a lower Max DEX Bonus, higher arcane spell failure chance, and it costs more. So why would any culture, primitive or not, use that?

And somehow bone weights more than stone and obsidian, I don't know if that's a mistake but I get the feeling that not a lot of research or time was put into the bone material. And as far as why I'm making such a fuss about it, and what brought it to my attention, is that I'm trying to make a Skraeling character from Arcadia. You know, the ones in the 3.5 Campaign Setting that appear to be based off of Native Americans. But then I realized that he wouldn't get any sort of armor bonus from adding those shells and beads to his leathers.