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What are cold iron and silver weapons?

Monkeying around with DLTCEP I see that I can set weapons to be either cold iron, silver, or both.

I know one boss in TotSC needs a silver weapon to kill him, but I had assumed that that was just a scripted property or whatever of those particular weapons.

So what do silver and cold iron do? How are they different? And what weapons have these properties?

Comments

  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,344
    Some enemies (mostly wolfweres and werewolves) can only be damaged by weapons with those flags. They don't have any effects besides that. There's a handful of weapons in BGEE with them iirc: the Werebane dagger, the sword of Balduran, Albruin (silver only) and the bastard sword Kondar.
  • stargazerbstargazerb Member Posts: 57
    Ok, thanks.
  • DragonspearDragonspear Member Posts: 1,838
    @Shin

    Also the longsword you can get in durlag's tower works as well. I think it's Flametongue? Anyway its +2 versus regen, +3 verse something else and I think +4 versus undead. Definitely hits the Greater Wolfwere since my blade just destroyed him in my last game.
  • SCARY_WIZARDSCARY_WIZARD Member Posts: 1,438

    @Shin

    Also the longsword you can get in durlag's tower works as well. I think it's Flametongue? Anyway its +2 versus regen, +3 verse something else and I think +4 versus undead. Definitely hits the Greater Wolfwere since my blade just destroyed him in my last game.

    Yep.

    Cold iron is some sort of special iron that's really sensitive to...stuff and things and hurts faeries and demons and other creatures more better than normal iron. Mostly going off of v3.5, but uuugh, enchanting it is expensive!
  • KurumiKurumi Member Posts: 520
    Cold Iron
    This iron, mined deep underground, known for its effectiveness against fey creatures, is forged at a lower temperature to preserve its delicate properties. Weapons made of cold iron cost twice as much to make as their normal counterparts. Also, any magical enhancements cost an additional 2,000 gp.

    Items without metal parts cannot be made from cold iron. An arrow could be made of cold iron, but a quarterstaff could not.

    A double weapon that has only half of it made of cold iron increases its cost by 50%.

    Cold iron has 30 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 10.


    (Alchemical) Silver
    A complex process involving metallurgy and alchemy can bond silver to a weapon made of steel so that it bypasses the damage reduction of creatures such as lycanthropes.

    The alchemical silvering process can’t be applied to nonmetal items, and it doesn’t work on rare metals such as adamantine, cold iron, and mithral.

    Alchemical silver has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 8.
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    Yeah in traditional Folklore most Werewolves and the Sidhe are all extra vulnerable to cold iron, and it would actually burn them on simple touch causing excruciating pain.
  • FafnirFafnir Member Posts: 232
    @Kurumi Ironically, the rules you posted imply you can't have a weapon both Silver and Cold Iron.
  • GemHoundGemHound Member Posts: 801
    edited December 2013
    Silver weaponry are essentially weapons specialized in killing lycanthropes.

    Cold Iron weapons are essentially weapons designed to kill fairies and other fey creatures like pixies, Fomorians, Gnomes, Hags, Faerie Dragons, Mirage Dragons, Sprites, Sylphs, Nymphs, Dryads, etc.
    Basically anything that originated in the Feywild.
  • ShinShin Member Posts: 2,344
    edited December 2013
    In BG1/EE the coding is such that greater wolfweres (like Karoug) are immune to non-silver whereas greater werewolves/loup garou (like Selaad) are immune to non-cold iron.
    In practice this doesn't have many real consequences though since all weapons with one of those flags also have the other, with the exception of Albruin which is silver only.
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    Kurumi said:



    Alchemical silver has 10 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 8.

    Hmmmm... sounds familiar :o
  • KurumiKurumi Member Posts: 520
    Fafnir said:

    @Kurumi Ironically, the rules you posted imply you can't have a weapon both Silver and Cold Iron.

    Yup. That's correct, but bear in mind, that the posted rules are from PnP (3.5e), so there might be some differences how it's handled in BG/BG2.
  • TressetTresset Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
    There are quite a few additional weapons with one or both of these flags in BG2. Why, I have no idea. Carsomyr has both for instance.
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