Imps- feel free to delete this if it's been covered previously.

I have often wondered about racial susceptibility to certain forces and their ability to use weapons that contain those forces. The only races that this does not seem to happen to are the elves which are forbidden to wield iron (and drow-mithril) and are susceptible to increased damage from these. Yet I seem to rather often see felars with flaming bardiches and staves, arials with shocking weapons, cloud giants and duergars with wrathing weapons, etc..

Because it's unlikey that these things will change, why not increase the risk of say dropping the weapon, or accidentally hitting themselves with it. I could envision a felar being so nervous about the flames that he loses his grip or a stray lightning from the sword hitting the arial. I'm just sort of brainstorming here.

Anyway, it seems like a bit of a contradiction in the story lines to allow these kinds of incompatibilities.

Then again, it's just my 2 cents. Not including inflation. If I missed a previous discussion on this it's because I wasn't paying attention, sorry..

If we're going to try be "realistic", I could see elves and drow being able to wield iron/mithril weapons. Presumably it's the weapon's blade (or appropriate working end) that's made of the offending material, not the hilt. The ban on armor would still apply.