Dragonhide- silliest price/description combination ever?

[Elric]

I was reading the description for Dragonhide armor and it struck me that the description and price of Dragonhide armor are completely out of sync. Here’s the description of how you get the armor:

Armorsmiths can work with the hides of dragons to produce armor or shields of masterwork quality. One dragon produces enough hide for a single suit of masterwork hide armor for a creature one size category smaller than the dragon. By selecting only choice scales and bits of hide, an armorsmith can produce one suit of masterwork banded mail for a creature two sizes smaller, one suit of masterwork half-plate for a creature three sizes smaller, or one masterwork breastplate or suit of full plate for a creature four sizes smaller. In each case, enough hide is available to produce a small or large masterwork shield in addition to the armor, provided that the dragon is Large or larger.

Here’s the price:

Dragonhide armor costs double what masterwork armor of that type ordinarily costs, but it takes no longer to make than ordinary armor of that type.

So, to get this straight, you have to kill a Colossal-sized dragon to be able to produce a single Dragonhide suit of full-plate, but that suit of full-plate only costs an extra 1500 gp over a suit of normal full-plate? There must be a lot of dead Great Wyrm dragons out there. Has this been beaten to death in the years since 3.5 came out and I’m just not aware of it? Are there more things out there like this?

 

[pawsplay]

By that description, most dragonhide armor is going to be PC-crafted, yet it messes with the Craft rules (which work by final price, and further, treat masterwork as a separate component). It seems to me a colossal dragon hide would be worth more than that just as a curio.

 

[Ilium]

Yeah, I have nothing useful to add except "I agree." It might make more sense if you replaced one of the "or"s with "and". So maybe it could be:

One dragon produces enough hide for a single suit of masterwork hide armor for a creature one size category smaller than the dragon. By selecting only choice scales and bits of hide, an armorsmith can also produce one suit of masterwork banded mail for a creature two sizes smaller, one suit of masterwork half-plate for a creature three sizes smaller, or one masterwork breastplate or suit of full plate for a creature four sizes smaller. In each case, enough hide is available to produce a small or large masterwork shield in addition to the armor, provided that the dragon is Large or larger.

Just reduce the dragon's hoard by an appropriate amount and you're all set.

You could also include some kind of verbiage stating that you can get multiple suits of Hide armor for smaller creatures. So a Gargantuan dragon could produce 4 suits of Medium hide armor, plus one suit of Medium half-plate. That sounds more like it to me, but it might be too much.

 

[Jack Simth]

Pretty much.

Of course, the cost is based on the mechanics - the usefulness of the armor, which is primarily that it gives Druids access to the better types of armor.

If you change the name and the flavortext so that it's an instantaneous version of the Ironwood spell that never gives the +1 for being at half your limit, on the other hand, you don't change game balance, and can leave the prices as they stand. But that's house-rule territory, so....

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

There's an updated section on dragonhide armor in the 3.5e Draconominicon p115-116

Goes into more detail has a chart showing how many of what armors can be made from dragons of each size for characters of each size. Basically says that dragonhide does not give any special bonuses to the armor it simply allows armors that are normally made out of other materials to be made out of dragonhide. So druid who can't wear metal armor can wear full-plate as long as it's made from dragonhide rather than metal for example.

 

[Jhulae]

But, don't forget that 'regular' Masterwork armor can't be resurrected back into a (most likely ticked off) Dragon...

 

[Klaus]

I house-ruled that dragonhide armor is cheaper to enchant with certain armor special qualities:
- Resistance to the dragon's energy type costs 50% of the usual cost in gp (XP stays the same).
- If the dragon had DR, Invulnerability costs 25% less than the usual cost in gp (XP stays the same)
- If the dragon had SR, Spell Resistance costs 25% less than the usual cost in gp (XP stays the same).


And do notice that dragonhide armor by no means require a true dragon. A wyvern can yield a much easier-to-get suit of armor and a shield (albeit only hide for the average wyvern... you might want to look for an adanced Huge wyvern).

 

[Darklone]

I didn't care for these rules at all. Dragonhide armour and dragonscales are exotic materials necessary for certain magic items IMC.

 

[glass]

I was reading the description for Dragonhide armor and it struck me that the description and price of Dragonhide armor are completely out of sync. Here’s the description of how you get the armor:

I always took it that those prices were to have the armour crafted, with the comissioner supplying the dragon parts. But you're right, it doesn't actually say that.

Ah well, another accidental houserule converted to a deliberate one. *heads off to edit HR document*


glass.