They are mercs from Ireiabor, and were outfitted down there They are stronger than the local bandits as evidenced by them driving them out Weapon breakage? Hmm...perhaps poor maintenance? Or just an oversight Poor fighting skills? Well they don't need them per se. Remember how deadly a 12 man bandit ambush can be? They use tactics to win.
Plus hobgoblins are supposed to be disciplined fighters, and they die easily enough. Heck, if this was SoA, the bandits would all be lvl 7-8 and would carry +1 swords! Just like how Charname levels up rapidly, his enemies are always just strong enough for his current chapter
my friend works in HR and i work as a statistical analysis consultant. the large majority of people who buy expensive luxury items are earning minimum wage. for example, many of the low income districts have a large flat screen with the latest electronics in most of the households. it's presumed that feigning affluence is a much higher priority in the unskilled labor culture due to its overpopulation and high competition. my friend's company sells the info to advertisement creators for large companies. perhaps counterintuitively, the latest iphones will be marketed to low income districts, with models taken of the appropriate race and gender to facilitate spending 2 months salary on an upgrade people don't need.
on the other hand, lodging is obviously different. most people can accrue 200$ as a one time fee - say a car registration and a smog check. few people can afford a 200$ recurring fee for lodging.
i believe faerun is a dangerous place. as such, high end items could have high turnover rates. hobgoblins wearing armor didn't forge their armor, they found it after a battle and took the armor from the dead. all hobgoblins wear armor because the ones wearing armor survive; the rest become wolf or bear food.
these circumstances are less a subject of economic distribution than human psychology. weapons specifically may be mandatory. a castle or keep may give every able peasant a sword for an eminent invasion. this is fairly convincing with the threat of war with amn.
Hobgoblins are actually likely to have good gear of their own, they are the most lawful of Goblinoids, and are big on disciplined, organized combat. Iirc, you can expect functional and maintained gear for hobgoblins, whereas orcs are going to be less well equipped.
I respect your insights although I could see the bandits being outfitted en mass with Luxury Weapons only if by some 'stock pile' of Long Swords were available in or from Iriaebor. Yes I understand your insightful points about our time frame and what the poor ironically buy but you must understand friend that we have the luxury of mass production and technology that creates these high yields so that the poor can live better lives. In the Medieval times this was not the case, the poor had mostly recycled hand-sewn clothing, hand made tools, their food was mostly all grow by themselves and they never went to Walmart or Target or any Competitive Super Market and they never had the luxuries of regular freshly shipped goods from countries that work for a sliver of a fraction of their own daily wages in creating their overpriced 'luxury goods'. It is easy to forget this truth for most of us playing Baldur's Gate live in a consumer socially with the huge advancements in production, resource yield and labour saving technologies. People now a day in our countries get far more from their work and thus can produce far more product to sell than developing countries. If you look at the developing countries in our time one could make the argument that these poor countries are more akin as to what we are dealing with in the Sword Coast's feudalistic society. How many flat screen T.V.s and iPhones and luxury items do you see in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Somalia and Eritrea? Not a lot my friend and the people reflect the living style of the poor in the Western Heartlands with their way of life being of mostly dependent on sustaining on their own work of the land and not being huge wasteful unsustainable 'bubble' consumers like most of us here on this forum. I would argue that your insights are very insightful for THIS time frame in a, I presume a generally wealthy country; but my friend The Western Heart Lands does not have the ability to create oceans of disposable luxury goods for their poor. There are no Flat-screen T.V.s, No iPhones, No armadas of Automobiles, No fleets of Transport Airplanes, No infinite snakes of Cargo Trains across their lands and there are No armies of mind blowingly monstrously huge titanic sized Cargo Ships running night and day to bolster the buying power of people of Faerûn. Most peasants have to worry about being murdered by bandit or starving to death in the winter if their crops fail; the poor of our wealthiest countries worry about if they have a Cellphone or I they can afford the biggest digital entertainment package. The poor of Faerûn have no welfare and they have not a social safety net. If one gets raided by bandits? Tough shit, they live or die by your their own efforts and fortune or mis-fortune; most of the poor there don't even live to be 65. Yes what you said is insightful yes, but I feel that you are not taking into account the economic power of trade and commerce that the Western Heartlands has, nor the fraction of the buying power that most people suffer with there when compared to most of our generally wealthy selves. Also look at what happens to the price of goods when a country's trade is blockaded; it skyrockets and and the poorest people suffer the most. This is particularly insightful when one takes into account the recent plague of bandits afflicting the Sword Coast with their deathly stranglehold of trade in the region. I would wager that with one of the worst bandit plagues in recent history of the area that everyone who lacks a standing guard wants to buy a weapon and yet there is no good healthy iron in the local area of which to defend themselves with. However I do see the possibility of the idea that the typical 'successful' (e.g non-level one) raiding bandit is earning his or her equipment but like I said before, surely not everyone would have the exact same equipment if this were true; their is quite a healthy mixture of weapon preference within the honest folk of the Sword Coast. True it could be a recent stockpile and generous 'arming policy' of the puppeters behind the bandit forces from Iriaebor; although if one consults the campaign waring history of medieval Europe, One should quickly feel that such an argument would fall short if logical resource management was held in some priority within the bandit outfitters. Thus with such solid points sewn upon this argument by myself and others, I feel that this whole 'sha-bam' was just a mere oversight by the original developer(s) whom did not dwell on the subject for too long for they had hundreds of more Monsters and Non-Player Characters to design and equip within their development cycle in 1998.
Take care my friends and I hope that you enjoy the thread! Thank you very much for your insights @squiros .
On a more serious note, I think we can all agree that the economy in BG doesn't stand up to close examination. There's no really good way to reconcile prices of items/inns/drinks with expected levels of salary. But that's okay because BG is a heroic adventure simulator, not an economic model.
That said, I think it's important to note that the Forgotten Realms aren't actually medieval Europe. One key differences is that Forgotten Realms technology doesn't advance. There are stories from thousands of years ago where people used the same armor and weaponry as in the BG campaign.
That means armor and weapons are going to stay in use until they fall apart. In the real world they often became obsolete long before this happened. We don't really know what the long term implications of this would be as we have no real world analogy. But this means that it's not impossible that Forgotten Realms bandits are all using swords simply because there are so many around.
I think Faerun can't be compared to real life medieval times simply because the timeframe of progress is radically different.
In the real world, the secret to making hard enough longswords was come up with in the 10th century AD. The golden age of swords was around the 15th century, and this means the time when the ruling class could arm every soldier in their army with a sword, if they wanted to. After this, longswords started making way for firearms, halberds and rapiers. That makes the time they were in use to be around 500-600 years.
In the 14th century, swordmaking was getting pretty easy because blacksmiths knew what they were doing. An accomplished cutler could finish 8-10 swords per day because the blacksmiths end-result was close to perfect. The blades only needed minor polishing and sharpening.
In Faerun, the 1st mentions (I have found, I may be wrong) of longswords are from around -400 DR, and in BG, we're around the year 1360 DR. Even further, longswords are still around a 100 years later, if you've read any of the latest books. That's 1800 years. So those swords have been piling up for 3 times longer than in the real world.
Now, the thing to know about steel is that the appearance of rust takes a lot longer than for the said rust to spread. So if the blade is used and upkept, it may last for centuries, given it doesn't break in combat. Magical weapons don't even rust, that's their main attribute. A +1 longsword can sit in a dragons hoard for centuries, and it's still as usable as the day it was made.
One more thing, recasting a rusted blade is remarkably easy compared with making an entirely new blade.
I think the sword-prices in the games are wrong. Also applies to PnP. They should be a lot cheaper. Given that the availability is adequate, the manufacturing costs are not that big.
PS. If I was a Faerunian soldier, I would not fight with a sword anyway. Longswords, bastard swords or even the two-handed variant are next to useless against plate armor. Rather, I would use an axe, a mace or a flail, paired with a shield.
I don't know if these points have been raised already, but here's a couple of screenshots that I took during my most recent playthrough, which I think may give some food for thought.
In the first, a commoner says that "weapons ain't cheap like they used to be," referring to the effects of the iron shortage. In other words, metal weapons were apparently much less expensive just prior to the events of BG1 - and since swords probably require more metal than other weapons, it stands to reason that they would suffer a disproportionate increase in price.
In the other screenshot, a former bandit says that "those bandits out they're now, they're different" - which coincides with the fact that they're better equipped, in addition to being more numerous and better organized, than other bandits.
I don't mind and I don't find it hard to believe. In our real world, take the example of terrorists that live in the mountains, they are neither very rich nor living in luxury. Yet they have the automatic rifles, grenades, explosives and rocket launchers. Things a normal citizen can hardly afford.
Maybe a bigger, richer organisation is using them for their own gain and thus supplying them weapons? In bg, Iron Throne may be the financial force behind the elite talon archers armed with swords and freezing arrows and what not.
I don't mind and I don't find it hard to believe. In our real world, take the example of terrorists that live in the mountains, they are neither very rich nor living in luxury. Yet they have the automatic rifles, grenades, explosives and rocket launchers. Things a normal citizen can hardly afford.
a price of a mass-produced kalashnikov on the black market is many many times lower than what a longsword cost in the middle ages
as far as i know the only society that utilized mass production before the industrial revolution was china. they made completely identical mass-issued weapons during certain times of war.
some earlier examples of mass production was brickmaking in the ancient times (egypt etc.)
as far as i know the only society that utilized mass production before the industrial revolution was china. they made completely identical mass-issued weapons during certain times of war.
some earlier examples of mass production was brickmaking in the ancient times (egypt etc.)
I believe India had a form of mass production in the 'cottage industry' system they used to make textiles back in about the 17th, 18th Centuries. That got beaten out by British products post-Industrial Revolution, of course, which turned India from being one of the richest societies on the planet in 1750 to being much poorer in 1850.
The Romans did pretty much identical gear for a given legion, though the exact armour/spear used tended to vary from legion to legion. The gear was standardized though, and was definitely mass production.
their gear was less standardised then is commonly depicted. it was not mass production in a true sense because there wasn't a division of labor such as in a manufacture but equipment was made by many blacksmiths and their apprentices.
I stand by my statement. Every source I have come across has said gear was required to be consistent within a given legion. Legions varied from one another, not from within. There was even a strict height requirement, because equipment was all made to fit that size. Its mass production when a given worker almost always makes the exact same thing over and over, ie specialization. Thats what mass production means as a concept, specific areas of specialization to enable a much higher rate of production vs having 1 or 2 guys make every part of a car and assemble it.
I stand by my statement. Every source I have come across has said gear was required to be consistent within a given legion. Legions varied from one another, not from within. There was even a strict height requirement, because equipment was all made to fit that size. Its mass production when a given worker almost always makes the exact same thing over and over, ie specialization. Thats what mass production means as a concept, specific areas of specialization to enable a much higher rate of production vs having 1 or 2 guys make every part of a car and assemble it.
That and a unit/platoon/company/battalion/whatever of soldiers, all the same height, marching step? Probably looked tight, and would have impressed their foes.
I stand by my statement. Every source I have come across has said gear was required to be consistent within a given legion. Legions varied from one another, not from within. There was even a strict height requirement, because equipment was all made to fit that size. Its mass production when a given worker almost always makes the exact same thing over and over, ie specialization. Thats what mass production means as a concept, specific areas of specialization to enable a much higher rate of production vs having 1 or 2 guys make every part of a car and assemble it.
standardisation is not the same as mass-production
It is usually, because the reason you standardize gear is to streamline production. Custom gear is better for indivual soldiers, but standardized gear helps save money.
If your hired smith spends months or years making identical swords, thats mass production.
@DreadKhan Did you know that the Romans didn't make their armor out of steel but from iron? During the process the iron was carbonized from the surface, so it was essentially iron armor that had a hardened steel coating.
@DreadKhan Did you know that the Romans didn't make their armor out of steel but from iron? During the process the iron was carbonized from the surface, so it was essentially iron armor that had a hardened steel coating.
Should I make an ancient armour suit with that idea in mind? The Steel coated Iron? (While also referencing this thread in some way within the item's description?)
Well, people couldn't make really pure iron until pretty recently, but wrought iron was available. That'd be crummy to cold work I'd think, as wrought iron had tons of slag inclusions. Armour isn't heated typically either.
I do know steel was expensive enough that considerable labour increases were acceptable to use less steel. Most armour throughout history was strengthened by being cold worked, which increases strength and hardness. I wonder how they'd heat such thin pieces of iron without getting distortion problems.
No, its definately true that pure iron was not produced, and even now it has almost no applications; the only use I know of is that steel sheets have a fairly pure very thin layer due to their thinness and rolling process. Its more or less insignificant though, adding a nearly insignificant improvement to rust resistance and improving ductility when being bent.
Anyways, even the purest wrought iron isn't remotely pure. For one thing, good luck finding iron ore without any 'contaminent' alloying elements; most have traces of things like manganese, magnesium, titanium, nickle, chromium, vanadium, etc, and even .01% of an alloying element can have significant effects on mechanical characteristics.
This btw is ignoring carbon (pretty much all iron was smelted and forged with coal/coke/rarely charcol), next we have dexoidizers that make slag, including boron, aluminum, and especially silicon, and finally alloy elements detrimental to forging (nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus are pretty much all bad for forging, but nitrogen is added by some smiths later as a surface hardener).
Wrought iron has slag inclusions as a rule; this gives it remarkable rust resistance, for example, but makes it inferior for modern forming techniques/machining, which is why mild steel is used.
Ah I see that you meant to say this: "Well, people couldn't make completely 100% pure iron until pretty recently"
You did say this however: "Well, people couldn't make really pure iron until pretty recently"
I am aware that the, for instance: +Ulfberh+T was not made from 100% pure iron but rather it had really pure iron content. So yes you are right that 'people couldn't make completely 100% pure iron until pretty recently'
But you are wrong about people making really pure iron until pretty recently. 11:57 on the +Ulfberh+T documentry shows a comparison of the really pure iron vs. the popular crappy iron of its time.
Although I get your point, it is just a mistranslation of your original intent it seams. I have to watch out for this myself when I post things on the forums (and or on the internet in general) so that I am 100% confident that what I say is what I intend my audience to understand; 'The Medium is the Message'. I have to admit that I have made many embarrassing 'errors' by the stroke of a few wrong keys in mostly intended sentences. Although I thank you for your insights @DreadKhan and I wish to no longer argue and nit pick over how the ancient world could not humanly create 100% pure iron; although they could rarely create really pure iron , but not completely 100% Iron as you say that the ancient world could not.
It isn't nit picking actually... I think something being 99% pure iron sounds extremely pure, but from a metalurgical and chemistry perspective, thats quite impure; that purity remember is by weight, and you put in a substantial amount of carbon to add 1%. Graphite has a density of ~2.1g per cm cubed, iron 7.8 about, which should give a hint of how much carbon is actually in the matrix of iron. If you've got even .5% carbon, that has a MASSIVE effect on the properties and use of he iron, 1% even more. Thsts just carbon remember, many elements have a big effect at even more infintesimal concentrations; feel free to read about csrbon equivilancey in welding for more info.
The most salient thing you might find relevant, is found if you look up the iron carbon phase diagram... you find ferrite even in higher carbon steel, even if the carbon is distributed really evenly. In gray cast iron for example, the carbon content is incredibly high, but slow cooling causes some form form large (relatively speaking) flakes of graphite, despite the fact that iron carbide would be able to hold much more carbon.
Regarding wootz and related steels (Bulat, crucible steel, etc), the process was mainly about creating an uneven distribution of alloying elements. The best Japanese katanas and even many very high quality european swords (and of course Damascus steel) relied on two steels of substantially different alloy, yet that can be welded together via forge, and can be heat treated without splitting. The cool thing we know about the very well studied Katana is that the contaminints play a role in their impressive performance, ie titanium is found in the iron they used, enough to be useful. Titanium btw forms very useful small carbides. Anyways, if you get everything just perfect, you can make a steel very hardenable that retains enough impact toughness from the low carbon portions to allow them to either temper at a cooler temperature. Tempering makes steel softer after hardening, which is extremely important if you are using a homogenous high hardenability steel, ie tool steel. Many swordsmiths use differential hardening as a much easier alternative to pattern welding or crucible steel; You harden normally, then temper by using a very hot bar or two along the center of he blade... meaning the edges of the sword will be still quite hard, but the core will be much softer and very resistant to shattering. The final option I can think of is tempering consistently for springiness... which would be difficult with archaic techniques. You should get a springy blade from any of these techniques, with the least I expect from damascus/crucible steel that is uniformly heat treated. Such blades will be EXTREMELY hard though, and still very resistant to shattering.
The role of those impurities of other alloying elements was not known until swords were cut up and analyzed, and while I'm sure many weren't surprised, it was an important discovery. One of the most important steel families today is called High Strength Low Alloy Steel, which is metalurgically really fascinating, and should help explain why even a small change in chemical composition can have a very big impact.
TLDR; Science is more complicated than most online videos claim, since explaining metalurgy can be boring as hell to some people. 99.5% pure iron has very different properties from 100% pure.
Regardless, if you don't wish more discussion of metalurgy or science in your thread, I'll respect that and post in another thread.
@DreadKhan Your response is wonderful! I actual Learned something, such a reply as yours is not nit picking for the sake of argument; but rather it is a well structured informative reply. Please continue with your enlightening comments I greatly enjoy them; long or short. I honestly had no clue as to how much was at play before you gave your comment. If you have any further comment(s) as to add to the thread reader's (including myself) understanding of metallurgy and how er, 'science' (catch all phrase I know:S) works within the process to give certain properties and or how it inter acts with metals please post them. Thank You very much @DreadKhan for your reply and I hope to talk with you relatively soon. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @semiticgod "Some of us enjoy hearing other people nitpick." Ah, Some of Us Just Want to Watch the World Burn (" ͡° ' ͜ʖ ͡° ').
Really, it's the statistical differences that get me. For instance, 10 or so Amnish guards could walk all over 100 members of the Flaming Fist without even trying.
That's kind of crazy. All Amn would have needed to do to win their war with BG would be to march their supermen right into the Palace.
Comments
They are stronger than the local bandits as evidenced by them driving them out
Weapon breakage? Hmm...perhaps poor maintenance? Or just an oversight
Poor fighting skills? Well they don't need them per se. Remember how deadly a 12 man bandit ambush can be? They use tactics to win.
Plus hobgoblins are supposed to be disciplined fighters, and they die easily enough. Heck, if this was SoA, the bandits would all be lvl 7-8 and would carry +1 swords! Just like how Charname levels up rapidly, his enemies are always just strong enough for his current chapter
the large majority of people who buy expensive luxury items are earning minimum wage. for example, many of the low income districts have a large flat screen with the latest electronics in most of the households. it's presumed that feigning affluence is a much higher priority in the unskilled labor culture due to its overpopulation and high competition. my friend's company sells the info to advertisement creators for large companies. perhaps counterintuitively, the latest iphones will be marketed to low income districts, with models taken of the appropriate race and gender to facilitate spending 2 months salary on an upgrade people don't need.
on the other hand, lodging is obviously different. most people can accrue 200$ as a one time fee - say a car registration and a smog check. few people can afford a 200$ recurring fee for lodging.
i believe faerun is a dangerous place. as such, high end items could have high turnover rates. hobgoblins wearing armor didn't forge their armor, they found it after a battle and took the armor from the dead. all hobgoblins wear armor because the ones wearing armor survive; the rest become wolf or bear food.
these circumstances are less a subject of economic distribution than human psychology. weapons specifically may be mandatory. a castle or keep may give every able peasant a sword for an eminent invasion. this is fairly convincing with the threat of war with amn.
I respect your insights although I could see the bandits being outfitted en mass with Luxury Weapons only if by some 'stock pile' of Long Swords were available in or from Iriaebor. Yes I understand your insightful points about our time frame and what the poor ironically buy but you must understand friend that we have the luxury of mass production and technology that creates these high yields so that the poor can live better lives. In the Medieval times this was not the case, the poor had mostly recycled hand-sewn clothing, hand made tools, their food was mostly all grow by themselves and they never went to Walmart or Target or any Competitive Super Market and they never had the luxuries of regular freshly shipped goods from countries that work for a sliver of a fraction of their own daily wages in creating their overpriced 'luxury goods'. It is easy to forget this truth for most of us playing Baldur's Gate live in a consumer socially with the huge advancements in production, resource yield and labour saving technologies. People now a day in our countries get far more from their work and thus can produce far more product to sell than developing countries. If you look at the developing countries in our time one could make the argument that these poor countries are more akin as to what we are dealing with in the Sword Coast's feudalistic society. How many flat screen T.V.s and iPhones and luxury items do you see in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Somalia and Eritrea? Not a lot my friend and the people reflect the living style of the poor in the Western Heartlands with their way of life being of mostly dependent on sustaining on their own work of the land and not being huge wasteful unsustainable 'bubble' consumers like most of us here on this forum. I would argue that your insights are very insightful for THIS time frame in a, I presume a generally wealthy country; but my friend The Western Heart Lands does not have the ability to create oceans of disposable luxury goods for their poor. There are no Flat-screen T.V.s, No iPhones, No armadas of Automobiles, No fleets of Transport Airplanes, No infinite snakes of Cargo Trains across their lands and there are No armies of mind blowingly monstrously huge titanic sized Cargo Ships running night and day to bolster the buying power of people of Faerûn. Most peasants have to worry about being murdered by bandit or starving to death in the winter if their crops fail; the poor of our wealthiest countries worry about if they have a Cellphone or I they can afford the biggest digital entertainment package. The poor of Faerûn have no welfare and they have not a social safety net. If one gets raided by bandits? Tough shit, they live or die by your their own efforts and fortune or mis-fortune; most of the poor there don't even live to be 65. Yes what you said is insightful yes, but I feel that you are not taking into account the economic power of trade and commerce that the Western Heartlands has, nor the fraction of the buying power that most people suffer with there when compared to most of our generally wealthy selves. Also look at what happens to the price of goods when a country's trade is blockaded; it skyrockets and and the poorest people suffer the most. This is particularly insightful when one takes into account the recent plague of bandits afflicting the Sword Coast with their deathly stranglehold of trade in the region. I would wager that with one of the worst bandit plagues in recent history of the area that everyone who lacks a standing guard wants to buy a weapon and yet there is no good healthy iron in the local area of which to defend themselves with. However I do see the possibility of the idea that the typical 'successful' (e.g non-level one) raiding bandit is earning his or her equipment but like I said before, surely not everyone would have the exact same equipment if this were true; their is quite a healthy mixture of weapon preference within the honest folk of the Sword Coast. True it could be a recent stockpile and generous 'arming policy' of the puppeters behind the bandit forces from Iriaebor; although if one consults the campaign waring history of medieval Europe, One should quickly feel that such an argument would fall short if logical resource management was held in some priority within the bandit outfitters. Thus with such solid points sewn upon this argument by myself and others, I feel that this whole 'sha-bam' was just a mere oversight by the original developer(s) whom did not dwell on the subject for too long for they had hundreds of more Monsters and Non-Player Characters to design and equip within their development cycle in 1998.
Take care my friends and I hope that you enjoy the thread! Thank you very much for your insights @squiros .
On a more serious note, I think we can all agree that the economy in BG doesn't stand up to close examination. There's no really good way to reconcile prices of items/inns/drinks with expected levels of salary. But that's okay because BG is a heroic adventure simulator, not an economic model.
That said, I think it's important to note that the Forgotten Realms aren't actually medieval Europe. One key differences is that Forgotten Realms technology doesn't advance. There are stories from thousands of years ago where people used the same armor and weaponry as in the BG campaign.
That means armor and weapons are going to stay in use until they fall apart. In the real world they often became obsolete long before this happened. We don't really know what the long term implications of this would be as we have no real world analogy. But this means that it's not impossible that Forgotten Realms bandits are all using swords simply because there are so many around.
In the real world, the secret to making hard enough longswords was come up with in the 10th century AD. The golden age of swords was around the 15th century, and this means the time when the ruling class could arm every soldier in their army with a sword, if they wanted to. After this, longswords started making way for firearms, halberds and rapiers. That makes the time they were in use to be around 500-600 years.
In the 14th century, swordmaking was getting pretty easy because blacksmiths knew what they were doing. An accomplished cutler could finish 8-10 swords per day because the blacksmiths end-result was close to perfect. The blades only needed minor polishing and sharpening.
In Faerun, the 1st mentions (I have found, I may be wrong) of longswords are from around -400 DR, and in BG, we're around the year 1360 DR. Even further, longswords are still around a 100 years later, if you've read any of the latest books. That's 1800 years. So those swords have been piling up for 3 times longer than in the real world.
Now, the thing to know about steel is that the appearance of rust takes a lot longer than for the said rust to spread. So if the blade is used and upkept, it may last for centuries, given it doesn't break in combat. Magical weapons don't even rust, that's their main attribute. A +1 longsword can sit in a dragons hoard for centuries, and it's still as usable as the day it was made.
One more thing, recasting a rusted blade is remarkably easy compared with making an entirely new blade.
I think the sword-prices in the games are wrong. Also applies to PnP. They should be a lot cheaper. Given that the availability is adequate, the manufacturing costs are not that big.
PS. If I was a Faerunian soldier, I would not fight with a sword anyway. Longswords, bastard swords or even the two-handed variant are next to useless against plate armor. Rather, I would use an axe, a mace or a flail, paired with a shield.
I don't know if these points have been raised already, but here's a couple of screenshots that I took during my most recent playthrough, which I think may give some food for thought.
In the first, a commoner says that "weapons ain't cheap like they used to be," referring to the effects of the iron shortage. In other words, metal weapons were apparently much less expensive just prior to the events of BG1 - and since swords probably require more metal than other weapons, it stands to reason that they would suffer a disproportionate increase in price.
In the other screenshot, a former bandit says that "those bandits out they're now, they're different" - which coincides with the fact that they're better equipped, in addition to being more numerous and better organized, than other bandits.
Maybe a bigger, richer organisation is using them for their own gain and thus supplying them weapons? In bg, Iron Throne may be the financial force behind the elite talon archers armed with swords and freezing arrows and what not.
Here you guys go, everyone have a cookie for being yourselfs
Glory to BALDUR'S GATE! May it never die in the hearts of developers everywhere, and may it always Roll a 20 vs. Cyber Death!!
some earlier examples of mass production was brickmaking in the ancient times (egypt etc.)
Just saying...
If your hired smith spends months or years making identical swords, thats mass production.
I do know steel was expensive enough that considerable labour increases were acceptable to use less steel. Most armour throughout history was strengthened by being cold worked, which increases strength and hardness. I wonder how they'd heat such thin pieces of iron without getting distortion problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel
No, its definately true that pure iron was not produced, and even now it has almost no applications; the only use I know of is that steel sheets have a fairly pure very thin layer due to their thinness and rolling process. Its more or less insignificant though, adding a nearly insignificant improvement to rust resistance and improving ductility when being bent.
Anyways, even the purest wrought iron isn't remotely pure. For one thing, good luck finding iron ore without any 'contaminent' alloying elements; most have traces of things like manganese, magnesium, titanium, nickle, chromium, vanadium, etc, and even .01% of an alloying element can have significant effects on mechanical characteristics.
This btw is ignoring carbon (pretty much all iron was smelted and forged with coal/coke/rarely charcol), next we have dexoidizers that make slag, including boron, aluminum, and especially silicon, and finally alloy elements detrimental to forging (nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus are pretty much all bad for forging, but nitrogen is added by some smiths later as a surface hardener).
Wrought iron has slag inclusions as a rule; this gives it remarkable rust resistance, for example, but makes it inferior for modern forming techniques/machining, which is why mild steel is used.
You did say this however:
"Well, people couldn't make really pure iron until pretty recently"
I am aware that the, for instance: +Ulfberh+T was not made from 100% pure iron but rather it had really pure iron content. So yes you are right that 'people couldn't make completely 100% pure iron until pretty recently'
But you are wrong about people making really pure iron until pretty recently. 11:57 on the +Ulfberh+T documentry shows a comparison of the really pure iron vs. the popular crappy iron of its time.
Although I get your point, it is just a mistranslation of your original intent it seams. I have to watch out for this myself when I post things on the forums (and or on the internet in general) so that I am 100% confident that what I say is what I intend my audience to understand; 'The Medium is the Message'. I have to admit that I have made many embarrassing 'errors' by the stroke of a few wrong keys in mostly intended sentences. Although I thank you for your insights @DreadKhan and I wish to no longer argue and nit pick over how the ancient world could not humanly create 100% pure iron; although they could rarely create really pure iron , but not completely 100% Iron as you say that the ancient world could not.
The most salient thing you might find relevant, is found if you look up the iron carbon phase diagram... you find ferrite even in higher carbon steel, even if the carbon is distributed really evenly. In gray cast iron for example, the carbon content is incredibly high, but slow cooling causes some form form large (relatively speaking) flakes of graphite, despite the fact that iron carbide would be able to hold much more carbon.
Regarding wootz and related steels (Bulat, crucible steel, etc), the process was mainly about creating an uneven distribution of alloying elements. The best Japanese katanas and even many very high quality european swords (and of course Damascus steel) relied on two steels of substantially different alloy, yet that can be welded together via forge, and can be heat treated without splitting. The cool thing we know about the very well studied Katana is that the contaminints play a role in their impressive performance, ie titanium is found in the iron they used, enough to be useful. Titanium btw forms very useful small carbides. Anyways, if you get everything just perfect, you can make a steel very hardenable that retains enough impact toughness from the low carbon portions to allow them to either temper at a cooler temperature. Tempering makes steel softer after hardening, which is extremely important if you are using a homogenous high hardenability steel, ie tool steel. Many swordsmiths use differential hardening as a much easier alternative to pattern welding or crucible steel; You harden normally, then temper by using a very hot bar or two along the center of he blade... meaning the edges of the sword will be still quite hard, but the core will be much softer and very resistant to shattering. The final option I can think of is tempering consistently for springiness... which would be difficult with archaic techniques. You should get a springy blade from any of these techniques, with the least I expect from damascus/crucible steel that is uniformly heat treated. Such blades will be EXTREMELY hard though, and still very resistant to shattering.
The role of those impurities of other alloying elements was not known until swords were cut up and analyzed, and while I'm sure many weren't surprised, it was an important discovery. One of the most important steel families today is called High Strength Low Alloy Steel, which is metalurgically really fascinating, and should help explain why even a small change in chemical composition can have a very big impact.
TLDR; Science is more complicated than most online videos claim, since explaining metalurgy can be boring as hell to some people. 99.5% pure iron has very different properties from 100% pure.
Regardless, if you don't wish more discussion of metalurgy or science in your thread, I'll respect that and post in another thread.
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@semiticgod "Some of us enjoy hearing other people nitpick." Ah, Some of Us Just Want to Watch the World Burn (" ͡° ' ͜ʖ ͡° ').
That's kind of crazy. All Amn would have needed to do to win their war with BG would be to march their supermen right into the Palace.