Do adamantine weapons get more magical HP?


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So adamantine weapons get 1/3 more hit points than an equivalent weapon of common metal. Also, every +1 enhancement added to a weapon gives it +10 hit points, according to the footnotes on this table.

Do magical adamantine weapons get an extra +1/3 of the enhancement bonus hit points, too? My initial instinct was no, since enhancement HP is being added as a separate thing after the weapon's construction, but since the average item's HP is between 2 and 20, that would mean your incredibly expensive adamantine weapon has at most a measly 6 HP more than a common-metal weapon, so now I'm not so sure.

(Of course, it does also have hardness 20, which might rather make up for it.)


I suspect it's 1/3 more HP than base HP, although a convincing argument could be made for 1/3 more HP than base+enhancement HP. Hardness 20 effectively gives you 10 more HP versus a single strong sunder, but hardness will go much further than extra HP if the GM doesn't just go around with giant evil sunder monsters, since it prevents damage instead of taking damage. I'd much rather have 20 hardness and 1 HP than 1 hardness and 20 HP. I'd say it more or less makes up for it, even if the boost is only 1/3 more than base. Statwise, a steel longsword will have 10 hardness and 5 HP, for a total of 15 single-strike HP. An adamantine longsword will have 20 hardness and 6 hp, for a total of 26 single-strike HP. And it gets better when you factor in that damage against hardness isn't really damage, so a strike that does 20 damage or less will not even scratch an adamantine weapon, while it only takes 11 to deal permanent damage to a steel sword. That's pretty significant.

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