Useful Materials (5e Variant Rule)

Useful Materials

Reasoning

Materials such as silver tend to become obsolete early on, and magic items make silvered ones pointless. If you believe that the material which a weapon or set of armor is made of should always be important, this rule is for you.

Changes

Lycanthropes no longer have immunity to non-magical piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning damage. Instead, they are now immune to piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage from non-silvered weapons (even magical ones). Weapons that deal other types of damage will deal those damages as normal, but weapon damage must be from a silvered weapon.

Each of the following materials are introduced in some way in the PHB and/or DMG. As a result, they are covered here with possible rules/uses.

Silvered

• Silvered weapons overcome damage immunity as normal, but are never entirely useless because lycanthropes are now damaged by silvered weapons, not magic weapons.

• Silvered armor causes pain to lycanthropes, causing them to recoil. When hit by the natural weapon of any lycanthrope, a creature wearing silvered armor gains damage threshold equal to their proficiency modifier. Lycanthropy cannot be transmitted by natural weapons to a creature that is wearing this armor.

Mithril

• Mithril weapons gain the light property unless they are heavy, in which case they lose the heavy property. All mithril weapons gain the finesse property, and have their damage die size decreased by one.

• Mithril armor has no strength requirement and doesn't give disadvantage on stealth or acrobatics checks.

Adamantine

• Adamantine weapons gain the heavy property unless they are light, in which case they lose the light property. All adamantine weapons lose finesse and have an increased critical range of 19-20.

• Adamantine armor protects the wearer from any critical hit, causing them to be normal hits instead.

Dragon (bone, hide, scale)

• When enchanted, any critical hit with a dragon bone weapon deals an additional damage die of the same type as the breath weapon of the dragon they were made from for each +1 bonus.

• Armor made entirely or mostly from parts of a dragon will grant resistance to the same type of damage as the breath weapon of the dragon they were made from.

Multiple Materials

Weapons and armor of nearly any material may be silvered, costing 100 gp per item in addition to it's normal cost. Other materials cannot be mixed/combined for increased benefits.

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Built for use with the Voidhaven campaign setting.