When sundering a weapon, knowing its material is important to determine HP and hardness.
As I understand it, metal-hafted weapons are weapons that use metal as their handle's material. Are any standard weapons metal-hafted? What is the difference between a one-handed blade and a one-handed hafted weapon? Are some weapons considered not hafted at all?
[RPG] What are hafted weapons
dnd-3.5eweapons
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Best Answer
The rules don’t ever say what different parts of a weapon are made from
They just don’t get into that level of detail. The default materials are leather, wood, and steel, but which parts are made from which materials (and what type of leather, wood, or steel, for that matter) just isn’t brought up.
Weapons do some times have brief descriptions of their physical appearance and construction; there probably exist a few weapons where the wood or metal of the haft are mentioned, but that’s almost entirely coincidental. For the most part, the rules assume that weapons are made in a reasonably realistic manner, but don’t actually care that much.
A “haft” usually refers to a relatively long handle
This is just English at this point, but it would be weird to call the handle of a sword a “haft.” Typically, when the handle is much longer than the “business” part of the weapon, the handle is called a haft. I’m sure there’s a technical definition somewhere, but I’m equally sure that Dungeons and Dragons is not a game that pays too much attention to such technicalities. Anyway, axes, spears, polearms are typically considered hafted. Swords, knives, and so on typically are not.
Historically, hafts are made from wood, just for the sake of cutting costs; steel was rather expensive and time-consuming to work with back in the day. But as a “regular” material, Dungeons and Dragons does not have rules for a “special” all-metal haft; that’s just a choice available to the person who makes it.