C.A.R.P.S.

Do Staves have to be wooden? or can their be iron or steel perhaps?

You could have a steel bound staff or iron bound staff for certain. Making a full staff of steel just doesn't sound right without some serious strength to lift/swing it.

I don't know, swinging a six foot steel pole with 2 hands is fairly easy, if its hollow. I could see it used as a effective weapon.

If it's hallow I see it bending and breaking really easily.

Grab a six-foot 3/4 inch galvanized steel pipe, and if you can bend it bare handed, i will go an entire re-pop in my underwear.

Heh..I'm just saying that if you had one light enough to actually move fast enough to fight with it would bend easy =)

The issue is being able to forge a well designed hollow pipe using technology of our game world... tricky.

Not at all.

You forge it around a lead core, then when its finished, you reheat it above 621 degrees Fahrenheit and just let the lead drain out.

Stag wrote:Grab a six-foot 3/4 inch galvanized steel pipe, and if you can bend it bare handed, i will go an entire re-pop in my underwear.

Now swing that pipe with both hands and hit something hard with it in the middle of the pipe (like a metal shield, or another weapon). It will probably bend.

Its not a club, its a stave. the top and bottom foot are the striking points, the middle 4 feet are mostly used for deflecting and redirecting blows.

**edited**

I see what you're saying.

I haven't trained extensively with a staff, but i know the basics, and some of the basic moves (at least in my art) involve sliding one hand down the weapon and striking with your hands on the bottom 1/4 to give yourself some reach, which would be hard to do well if it were as heavy as a pipe. I never liked fighting with CARPS staves because either they have grips in the middle which limits mobility, or if they don't have grips they are way too thick to use effectively.

Either way, a hollow core pipe is still going to be much heavier than a wooden staff, and a lot more unwieldy to use without some serious strength, just like a smaller metal pipe is going to be a lot heavier and more unwieldy to use than bamboo sticks (which is something I have extensive training in, and I sure as heck wouldn't want to use a steel pipe against a skilled opponent with bamboo sticks).

Right, but the only way i've even managed to bend a 3/4 steel pipe was to use a welding torch. Besides, the lowest grade steel piping's tensile strength is 485, where as pine wood is 40.

(Wow, i haven'y used my plumbing or carpentry text books since class ended. )

Though Bamboo is the best material because it has the strength of steel, has more flexibility, and is more compressible, without breaking.

So make a bamboo staff!

The way you use a staff would actuly complement the whight of a steal one but ya you should have atleast one rank of strength to use it, my alt willow uses a steel staff and
Has rone point of str the ruleing i got is that it acts like a tipped staff and still only does staff damage