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[Urist McBusDriver]

The absence of a historical precedent for ceramic weapons and armor makes me very doubtful of any suggestions to that effect. Ceramics are brittle and impossible to repair. I see no use for them as weapons or armor in this time period. As containers for burning oil / hot sand / boiling water / poisonous spiders they have a use. A few creative applications beyond that? Sure. But lets not presume ourselves to be more clever at killing people than ten thousand years of our ancestors.

No historical precedent? Psssstt. What about the Terracotta Army? An entire army, all armoured and weapon'd with ceramics!

[Nikov]

The absence of a historical precedent for ceramic weapons and armor makes me very doubtful of any suggestions to that effect. Ceramics are brittle and impossible to repair. I see no use for them as weapons or armor in this time period. As containers for burning oil / hot sand / boiling water / poisonous spiders they have a use. A few creative applications beyond that? Sure. But lets not presume ourselves to be more clever at killing people than ten thousand years of our ancestors.

No historical precedent? Psssstt. What about the Terracotta Army? An entire army, all armoured and weapon'd with ceramics!

To date, they are the slowest-advancing army in history, having marched at a pace normally associated with tectonic drift, because that's how they've been moving.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ceramic arrowheads should certainly be possible at the very least.  There is plenty of historical precedent for stone axes and hammers, at that, including the obsidian swords dwarves have now.  Stoneware and possibly porcelain should be able to mimic obsidian fairly decently if made properly.  Obsidian bolts should certainly be possible, as well.

Native Americans were capable of making weapons without access to metal, after all.  That's where the obsidian shortsword comes from.  A stone tied on the end of a stick as a "stone hammer" would certainly be better than nothing if you have no metal. 

[expwnent]

Not exactly ceramic, but wouldn't a brick on a stick make a pretty effective warhammer?

Take a cinder block.  Lift it up to above waist high.  Drop it.  It'll probably shatter, or at least chip badly.  Imagine that, swung from the end of a stick as hard as you can.  It'll positively shatter any bone and crush whole organs, but if it hits a shield or solid breastplate, the stone will turn to powder.  Granted, the bone within that breastplate will suffer, but only on that one strike.  So, lethal yes, but not re-usable.

How about that as a trap? Would dropping a cinder block on someone's head do more or less damage than dropping a rock of equal weight?

[NW_Kohaku]

How about that as a trap? Would dropping a cinder block on someone's head do more or less damage than dropping a rock of equal weight?

The momentum of an object is its mass times its velocity.

Dropping objects of equal mass an equal distance would result in an equal amount of momentum provided we assume aerodynamics is a negligible factor.

The only things that would really make a sack full of bricks less painful than a sack full of rocks if they fell on your head would be the propensity for bricks to shatter in serious impacts - that shattering absorbs some of the force.

[Sheb]

Well, that and the shape. A cinder block will tend to hit you with a flat surface, while a rock is usually more rounded, hence a smaller contact area and a better chance to split your skull open. Plus it's less works to pick up a rock than to cook bricks.

[NW_Kohaku]

I actually considered mentioning you could bake an earthware lance instead of just a brick.  That way, you'd have a dangling spike that would drop down, instead, but the blunt impact types seem to work just fine, anyway. 

[agatharchides]

Ceramic arrowheads should certainly be possible at the very least.  There is plenty of historical precedent for stone axes and hammers, at that, including the obsidian swords dwarves have now.  Stoneware and possibly porcelain should be able to mimic obsidian fairly decently if made properly.  Obsidian bolts should certainly be possible, as well.

Native Americans were capable of making weapons without access to metal, after all.  That's where the obsidian shortsword comes from.  A stone tied on the end of a stick as a "stone hammer" would certainly be better than nothing if you have no metal.

Stone yes. Ceramic, no. Stone is more durable and easier to acquire. Almost any stone will shatter brick. I have never heard of a pottery weapon and I have read a good deal about primitive warfare. I don't think potsherds will take or hold an edge as well as obsidian, which is basically glass. I doubt an obsidian bolt would be easy or desirable. You 'shape' obsidian be hitting it so it comes off a core in shivers. Making a bolt of that would be pretty hard, and so fragile it would be unlikely to survive to see the battlefield.

[Sheb]

But flint arrowhead were common.

[agatharchides]

Yes. Flints in particular are easy to shape, find and holds an edge very well. They were commonly used for both knives and arrowheads, and occasionally axeheads as was obsidian where available. It is too brittle to be used for anything as long as a swordblade though.

[Sheb]

Yes, but you can make Macuahuitl with obsidian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl

[agatharchides]

Indeed, I have seen one.  You could probably make one from chert too, tbh. So are stone axes and all sorts of other non-metal weapons. I was only pointing out that fired clay in particular is not good weapon material and that making a whole bolt of obsidian is impractical and unnecessary. Just make an obsidian arrowhead and attach it a a wooden shaft, it will work better and be way less work.

 That said, none of these would be very effective against metal armor.

[NW_Kohaku]

We're still talking about very different things, however.  Stoneware and brick/earthware are not the same things.  Porcelain, especially, is functionally more like a glass like obsidian than like brick. 

A stoneware arrowhead, and stone arrowheads in general should be possible.  Making a flint arrowhead is easier than making a stone arrowhead, but that doesn't mean much in DF where all manufacturing processes take the same amount of effort, anyway.  After all, we use bricks in real life because it's much easier to fire soil into a brick shape than it is to chisel stone into blocks, but it's no problem for a dwarf.

[Malsqueek]

If ceramic pots shatter, it should be easy enough to just create a few drop points under a storage zone, and place oil filled pots on them to coat your entire entryway, then pull the magma lever (you DO have a front-door magma lever, don't you?) to ignite the whole lot of it.

Of course, I see dwarves on fire as well as goblins and trolls.

[C4lv1n]

I'm not totally sure but I recall hearing about ceramic knives in the modern era. The whole point was for it to break and it was intended for use against either unarmoured oponent or one that doesn't know you're there. You stick him with it, and either it hits something hard like a bone and breaks or you do it yourself. Now the guy has a bunch of sharp things inside him, internal bleeding, all that good stuff.

Assuming we ever get something like this it would be pretty good for wrestlerdorfs, give them a few of these to stick people with. They start wrestling someone, even an armoured foe, and then stick one of these somewhere soft. Yay bleeding!