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I found a +1 electrum shortsword during a campaign. I know the +1 will damage most lycanthropic creatures, but will the electrum do any bonus damage? I'm asking because I find it silly to pay a monetary amount to put a monetary metal, on a monetary metal. Does electrum share any of the properties of silver that do damage to the werewolves, werebears, and so on?
Is there any Rules as Written or Rules as Interpreted evidence of either direction?
Vulnerability is detailed in the Basic Rules:
damage of that type is doubled against it
Lycanthropes do not have a vulnerability to Silver, but an Immunity against nonmagical attacks (see below.) The Magical source of damage (or a Silvered weapon) allows that Vulnerability to be bypassed, but they do not deal extra damage.
There currently are no rules in the existing books about the effects of Electrum weapons or Electrum Plating. That falls into Homebrew territory, but given that only Silvered weapons are included in the stat block, one could easily believe that impure Electrum (mixed with Gold,copper, and other metals) does not have a sufficiently pure silver for it to be effective. Had the stat block included Electrum (or other mixed metals) as acceptable, then those would suggest that they might be effective.
It's the +1 aspect of the shortsword that matters here, not the electrum aspect. All Lycanthropes include the following Damage Immunity clause in their stat blocks (emphasis mine) from PHB (pages 208-11) and the updated errata:
bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks that aren’t silvered.
Having a silvered weapon also bypasses their immunity, but in the case of your +1 electrum shortsword, it is the +1 that bypasses it without having to worry about the Electrum.
To be clear, the +1 from the Shortsword is not the only damage that bypasses the immunity. The +1 magic weapon makes ALL of the damage bypass the immunity. The weapon is fully magical and delivers full damage as it is a magical source of damage.
The rules state that a mundane weapon needs to be silvered in order to bypass the immunity of a lycanthrope (including a werewolf)
Damage Immunities ... damage from nonmagical weapons that aren't silvered
Silvering is the process of plating a weapon in silver so even a weapon made from silver would have to be silvered to damage a werewolf by the Rules as Written
...extra coin to plate their weapons with silver. You can silver a single weapon or ten pieces of ammunition for 100 gp.
It is likely Rules as Intended that a silver weapon would work in its own right (Although the consequences of having a weapon made of a soft metal like silver are another question entirely.)
Electrum historically is an alloy made of primarily gold and some silver. You can read more about this here
natural or artificial alloy of gold with at least 20 percent silver
Whether the silver in the electrum is enough to bypass the immunity is open to a DM overrule but according to the rules, the metal has to be pure silver.
If you satisfy both the requirements of a magic weapon and a silvered weapons you would not get bonus damage. Instead you simply bypass the damage immunity to actually deal any damage (as opposed to the zero you would deal with a mundane non-silvered weapon). D&D has different mechanics than the trope of werewolves being vulnerable to silver.
This is analogous to the ability to drive a car or hail an uber. Either ability will get you to the destination but not any quicker.
In my games the silver vulnerability is less about science and more about the curse inflicted on lycanthropes while relies on Pure Silver. There's no real way to reliably determine what percentage of a weapon must be silver to hurt a werewolf, so it's easier to just say that a weapon must be covered by 100% Pure Silver (meaning a steel sword can be coated in silver rather than just a sword made of silver since those would be horribly weak compared to steel weapons/ armor).
Even tho electrum is a combination of gold and silver, since it's not 100% Silver, I'd rule it doesn't have the silver property. The same would go for a steel/ iron/ wood weapon with silver filigree, because it's not 100%, it doesn't count as Silver.
As far as Rules As Written, the 100g price "represents not only the price of the silver, but the time and expertise needed to add silver to the weapon without making it less effective." So yeah, unless the weapon specifically says it's Silvered, I think you'd have to pay for it. Mayyyybe your personal DM might rule that it costs 3/4 or 1/2 normal cost bc of the silver already present in electrum but that's up to them.
