Dragonhide Armor

[dama]

Reposting this in house rules so i can expand my scrapnel collection & get more ppl to express their opinions on how it should work.

"There's got to be a way to make light & medium armor, not just heavy armor from ANY hide or skin that is thick enough or an ample enough supply. Alligator skin (porobably the closest thing to a dragon in the real world) is used to make boots. That's thin, supple leather! There's a huge, untapped market for dragonhide light & medium armor! I know it!! What I don't know is what the attributes would be.

Ok, for my next trick, i will pull sets of dragonhide armor out of my... hat. Dragons in the MM are divided into 12 ages. Each age allows for a corresponding +to natural AC inherent in the armor. This is NOT automatic. The crafter has to roll IN ADDITION to determining if the armor is masterwork or not. 20 on a 20 sider works for me. A wyrmlings maximum armor bonus would be +1 in addition to the armor type; leather is AC2, full plate is AC 8. That's without enhancements, but pricing & rarity would treat the armor as if it were enhanced. So, a set of wyrmling dragonhide LEATHER armor would be AC 3, full plate made from wyrmling dragonhide (we are talking 16 wyrmlings for a medium sized set of armor) would be AC 9. UNENHANCED full plate made from the hide of a great wyrm would be AC 20. There's only enough "suitable" no pun intended dragon hide on a colossal sized dragon for 1 set of medium sized full plate armor.

For those of you that say that's too uber & everybody will want one, i say this. 16 wyrmlings to make one set of medium sized masterwork armor, 1 out of 20 sets of masterwork dragonhide armor has the additional natural AC bonus. All things being equal, the party has to kill 20 great wyrms to get one set of AC 20 full plate. Breastplate is supposed to be the same amout of dragonhide to make, but you can make twice as many sets of banded suits from the same amount of dragonhide. That's crazy. Full plate is AC 8, chain shirt is AC 4, leather is AC 2. If you can make 1 set of full plate, you can make 2 sets of AC 4 armor or 4 sets of AC 2 armor or 8 sets of AC 0 armor.

I also think dragonhide should have resistance to the breath of that kind of dragon. Going back to the 12 ages, I say 3% resistance for each age. The worked dragonhide from a white dragon wyrmling would have 3% resistance to white dragon breath. The worked hide from a gold dragon great wyrm would have 36% resistance to gold dragon breath.

Sound fair?"

 

[Nifft]

My House Rules

Dragon Armor: This exceptional armor is made from the hide, scale and bone of a True Dragon. Five types are possible:

• Dragon Hide: Light, AC +5, Max Dex +5, ACP -2, ASF 15%, Energy Resistance 5, 15 lbs., Cost: 12,500 gp
• Dragon Breastplate: Medium, AC +7, Max Dex +5, ACP -3, ASF 20%, Energy Resistance 5, 20 lbs., Cost: 16,000 gp
• Dragon Scale Mail: Medium, AC +7, Max Dex +4, ACP -3, ASF 20%, Energy Resistance 10, 20 lbs., Cost: 23,000 gp
• Dragon Half-Plate: Heavy, AC +9, Max Dex +1, ACP -6, ASF 35%, Energy Resistance 10, 35 lbs., Cost: 33,500 gp
• Dragon Full Plate: Heavy, AC +10, Max Dex +2, ACP -5, ASF 30%, Energy Resistance 15, 35 lbs., Cost: 60,000 gp

Shields can also be made with Dragon scales. If worn with armor of the same type, it provides a synergistic bonus beyond its own abilities: a matched pair of Armor and Small, Large or Tower Shield grant an additional Energy Resistance over the armor's natural bonus.

• Dragon Scale Small Shield: AC +2, ACP -1, ASF +5%, Energy Resistance +5, 5 lbs., Cost: 12,000 gp
• Dragon Scale Large Shield: AC +4, ACP -2, ASF +15%, Energy Resistance +10, 10 lbs., Cost: 24,000 gp
• Dragon Scale Tower Shield: AC +6, ACP -8, ASF +50%, Energy Resistance +15, 30 lbs., Cost: 48,000 gp

Notes: Dragons are not spikey creatures. Armor made from their skin cannot have armor spikes. Also note that Dragon Armor is immune to the element that it provides resistance against. (In other words, if you roll a 1 on a Reflex save vs. a Fireball, your Red Dragon Scale Shield is immune to its effect.)

 

[AeroDm]

So... when you say AC 20 do you mean it would grant an Armor Bonus to AC equal to 20? As in, currently Full Plate is +8, but this armor would be +20? If so I would argue that it is too powerful.

It will end up one of three ways.

a) you will 'balance' the armor by making it sufficiently challenging to acqurie for the +20 bonus, and thus no one will get it.
b) you will allow it in the game too easily, unbalance the characters, and ruin your game.
c) you will give it to a villain who will murder all your PCs with his invincible AC.
d) you will give it to a villain who will die, a player will get the armor, go to b)

None of those are good options.

 

[Evilhalfling]

If you can check out the rules for Dragoncraft armor from the Draconomicon
It adds cost but provides 5 energy reduction for that energy tye. The armor also has
armor check and/or dex mod benifits (I have forgotten) over the PH armor list.

I think your system is a little to random, as in most campaigns people will not be killing enormus numbers of dragons, and it does not balance benifits for cost as does all other D&D item creation rules.

Nift -
Is any of the costs you listed made up for by the fact you are using actual dragon hide? or are these costs in addtion to the value of the hide itself.
Also do you use size limitations based on the size of the dragon killed, per MM?


IMC
the 5 pts of elemental reistance also reduce the cost to add 10 by 1/2 -
and the armor has a +1 natural enchancement. (+2 for Dragons with NAC of above +20)
what this really does is equalize the substandard types of armor that dragon hide makes -
i.e. Hide and 1/2 plate with what the PC's would prefer i.e. chain shirt and full plate.

 

[dama]

How many medium sized dragons does it take to make 1 suit of full plate for a medium sized player? First, we have to define size categories. Page 131 of the 3e PHB shows 9 sizes;
fine
dimunutive
tiny
small
medium
large (tall & long)
gargantuan (tall & long)
Colossal (tall & long)

MM (again 3e, page 63 under dragonhide) says a dragon has enough hide to make a suit of full plate 4 sizes smaller than the dragon. That would work out to be 4 dragons of medium size to make one medium sized full plate suit. I assume that each size larger or smaller is an increment of double or half.

I am not trying to make dragonhide armor incredibly difficult to attain, just trying to find a reasonable path by which it is attained. I think that if you manage to kill a single great wyrm & preserve the hide, you should end up with a superior product compared to killing & skinning 16 small wyrmlings.

I also think it obvious that any dragon would likely take offense to any dragonhide armor, becoming more upset the more personal the insult of an inferior race wearing the skin of one of their own. Wearing the hide of your mate or children would be right up there. If an enterprise developed to sell dragonhide harvested from healthy, living dragons, I think the enterprise would soon be under fire. To me, dragonhide armor is a dangerous item to have. What intelligent race would find acceptable the killing of their race by vermin to make an ornament to appease the vermin's ego?

Lastly, I am asking to get a benchmark for Neverwinter Nights, the online game & dragons there breed like vermin too. But, consider this, for the last few days we have done a lot of hashing things out. How many sets of dragon... anything that were taken from the still warm & bleeding corpse of a dragon adorn your world? What are the dragons doing about this? Which of the dragons is going to be sacrificed next to feed this new fad?

 

[Treebore]

I'll probably be called a monty haul powergamer for this, but I don't care. This is what I do. If the player or players want to have a dragon hide they must kill the dragon with as little physical damage as possible. So they had better do as much damage as they can in as few hits as possible or get lucky with a hold monster type of spell and pull off a coup de grace.
Enough hide is recovered from a creature to create armor for someone one size category smaller than the hide, for every category smaller increase the number of suits that can be made by 1. Example: 1 large can make one medium or two small size suits of armor.

To minimize the damage to the hide the attackers must take what is essentially a called shot penalty of -5 to their BAB. This is to reflect their attempt to minimize damage to the overall hide by trying to attack the same areas with every successive attack.

Benefits from armor in my game is as follows:

Any hide off of any creature provides 1/2 of its natural armor bonus when constructed as mastercraft. It is also classified as leather armor.

Enchantment: any resistances the creature had can be enchanted into the newly made armor for half the normal cost and xp, a base +1 enchantment to AC must still be done before any other enchantments may be cast on the hide. However the enhancement bonus is still the same. IE if it is equivelant to a +2 enhancment bonus it still take up 2 slots of enhancement when determining how many enchantments can be cast on the armor, as well as how much its street value would be.

So there you have it, my totally unbalanced and game breaking house rules for handling creatures with good natural AC bonuses, not just dragons.

Of course the only time I ever found this to be faintly game breaking is when I had a party of characters walking around with +12 Dragon armor. After awhile they quit wearing the armor because they did not like the xp awards being cut down due to the encounters being rated as "easy". Once their AC bonuses came in line with their character level (I believe it was around 12th level) they started wearing it regularly. At least until they ran into a pack of barbarians that specialized in Sundering items/armor.

 

[Nifft]

Is any of the costs you listed made up for by the fact you are using actual dragon hide? or are these costs in addtion to the value of the hide itself.
Also do you use size limitations based on the size of the dragon killed, per MM?

Actual dragon hide makes it possible, not cheap!

The size of the dragon vs. size of armor is enforced, except that I consider a Breastplate to be far less work than half-plate, and thus it only requires a dragon two sizes larger.

-- N