A weapon made of fine or sterling silver will overcome the damage reduction of monsters that require it, but it will suffer greatly for it. In fact, it will actually suffer by an *undefined* amount that I can, if needed, figure out based on other materials. Generally, these metals are too soft to handle the conditions of battle- an attack round is not composed of a single strike that hits or wiffs, it deals with blocks, dodges, parries, contact with armor, etc. For this reason, fine silver, sterling silver, or other real world alloys are just avoided by the game.
Enter Alchemical Silver. Introduced in D&D 3.0, this has been the what a "silver weapon" means in dungeons and dragons since the late 90s.
The pathfinder version is here:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/special-materials/PRD wrote:
Silver, Alchemical
Source: PZO1110
HP/inch 10; Hardness 8; Cost see table
Code:
Type of Item Item Cost Modifier
Ammunition +2 gp
Light weapon +20 gp
One-handed weapon, or one head of a double weapon +90 gp
Two-handed weapon, or both heads of a double weapon +180 gp
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.
On a successful attack with a silvered slashing or piercing weapon, the wielder takes a –1 penalty on the damage roll (with a minimum of 1 point of damage). 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.
The first thing you will notice is that this is pretty cheap compared to other metal types, especially the excellent adamantium. It is also the only metal that has a downside inherently- the minus one to damage rolls.
The second, and less balanced way to get metals without doing much is weapon blanche, which appeared in an expansion book. If you guys are interested in these, I'll houserule them in in some fashion, but as written they are straight buffs and I don't like them. This is covered here:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/good ... pon-BlanchI don't like this, however, mostly because it gives an alternative (and cheaper) way to coat ammunition. For melee weapons, this is an interesting thing- you prepare it ahead of time, and it is useful for exactly one attack.
What I will allow: The use on melee weapons, for the listed amount (or possibly lower).
What I won't allow: The use on ammunition. Because ammunition only strikes once, a weapon blanched silver arrow (at 5 gold per 10 arrows) is strictly better than the standard alchemical silver arrows (at 2 gold per arrow)- it doesn't even have the damage penalty. Even if the price was fixed, there would be precious little difference between these extremely similar mechanics.
Finally, in Caligo, there is the houserule option of an "Argentic" weapon. Like the "Auric" weapons, these hard-to-destroy weapons grant passive bonuses, but are generally not present in Caligo's current age.
Basically, you can buy silver versions of your favorite weapons and slap your Turas into them, or if you are really interested in the weapon blanche on melee weapons we can talk about it. But I think that the existence of Tura games makes this reasonably fair to begin with for the melee users- you don't need magical versions of all your favorite weapons in three delightful colors of metal, after all.
Archers, of course, have this all very easily, one of the strengths of the attack mode.
