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Ok, so like most of you who found their eyes glued to the pages or screen at Ultimate Equipment, this little gem, or nugget ( joke, read item description) of a special material came up to say hello. Here's the thing though, is it only for defensive purposes?
In better detail...
The living steels main ability besides auto repairing itself, which is soooo nice.. Which makes me want to have paizo allow more than 1 active special material, but that's for another day... The other main ability is to make the attackers who are hitting on your armor or shield rolls fort save 20 if they crit miss, or roll a nat 1. If they fail the fort save, their weapon now gains the broken condition. If it was broken before, it is now destroyed.
Now, this is mean for defensive purposes. But is their any point to have it as a weapon or ammunition? Especially as ammunition, considering 50% of those ammunition shots that miss are destroyed, as in cant be repaired or auto fix from the living steels effect.
Does the offensive opposite exist? As in, if I am using a living steel greatsword. I roll a nat 20 , I confirm the crit, does my enemy then make a fort save for their armor or shield or else it is broken, and if broken prior it is now destroyed?
If the offensive purposes for the living steel is to be a cheap adamantine, since it's hardness 15, and specifically states it doesn't affect adamantine, it is a cheaper version for some,purposes, but that shouldn't be th reason to purchase it.
In all I love the new materials, but this one especially for a material that lists every use for it, armor weapons, ammunition, doesn't have any use outside of being armor or a shield. Hence my question.
-Grizzly
Well... when a weapon hits an armour, the armour hits the weapon too. Action and Reaction, and all that.
Yes, but that's different than the weapon making the attack as the living steel weapon. The description only mentions the steel on the defensive, when used as a shield or armor.
Using basic logic or physics, of acting reacting isn't useful here. This is the rules section for a reason. Besides.. Following what you said, how am I 'attacking' with my shield? I'm not, because I'm not attacking their weapon. I don't make a crit roll when I'm defending. If they hit my AC, they hit, I don't roll to see if they somehow miss the crit or if I crit on their weapon with my shield. Makes no sense.
It sounds similar to mithril, which doesn't really weapons much good. A minor bonus, but nothing compared to the effect for armors.
Mithral weapons count as silver for purposes of overcoming damage reduction.
That is important.
This. Living Steel not granting any special DR bypass is a major difference from Mithral, which only cuts the item's weight in half otherwise.
I would think that Living Steel weapons (and ammo) would counteract Living Steel armor effects (though it's not explicitly stated, it says that Living Steel can be made into weapons, and it would make sense that Living Steel qualities would counteract when put up against itself). The only other reason you would want a Living Steel weapon is for auto-repair effects; you might as well just get a Mithral weapon instead, unless Living Steel counteracted its own effects (fighting with fire), which isn't as far-fetched as one would think.
The reverse can be said of cold iron and alchemical silver. They grant no benefit as armor.
I always thought that, given cold iron being proof against fey creatures in mythology, it would be interesting to grant a bonus to save vs. magic for cold iron armor wearers. Or DR against the natural attacks of creatures prone to silver or cold iron, respectively.
But I don't want to side-track this thread. To address the OP's topic, I think it's a matter of comparative mass. An arrow or weapon doesn't have enough mass to affect an armor in the same way the armor does a weapon.
Colecm: first, alchemical silver can't be made into armor. You could customize with GM fiat to do it, but by the RAW, there is no listing for price increase for armor, which means it can't be done. Same thing for the cold iron. There is 0 mention of armor in the description or text. It mentions items made of silver such as an arrow, but not a quarter staff. Double weapons can be cold iron, and so forth. Again, no mention of armor or shields. Meaning it can't be made into that, without GM fiat. So, due to that it's not out of the range of possibility to have the weapon do an effect to the armor. It could just be as you say a comparative mass issue as it were, but many times things that are small and are fragile, can easly destroy large nigh impenetrable substances and the like. Still, until an FAQ or something comes out for this, I'm gonna try to see what my GM thinks of it.
Reason this is an issue, is that for every special material that is listed for a weapon and armor and the like, it gives a description for uses for both. Those items that can't be made into a weapon, or into armor never mention anything about trying to make the material into something it's not. Sooooo, why is that this item has no description for it for the weapon quality side of things, as well as for ammunition? If the only thing that it benefits weapon wise, of which there is listings for it price wise, is to have hardness of 15 and can't affect adamantine weapons, then that's not actually answering the question.
It just seems odd that it is the only material listed that has armor/ shield and weapon/ ammunition listings, and yet oly mentions the defensive properties. Not a mention of the offensive weapon properties. There seems to be no benefit for it besides a weak adamantine copy for hardness, nothing more. I mean gold, which offensively has negatives and no positives as a weapon really except for aesthetics, but even then it lists the offense abilities. Oh well, I'll still wait for the errata/FAQ if there ever is any.
Thanks for the help.
If the auto repair function would work with weapons that'd be good enough.
Is there not an ability that allows you to give your thrown weapons the broken condition to cause bleed damage?
And for shields it's cool too. For exaple for use with the fortified armor training feat.