Dragonhide Armor

[sithramir]

I was looking through the creating magical items section on materials and I am also making a new druid character for a campaign. I was looking at possible armors to have him wear to make wild so he keeps nice ac. The other option is to just go monk.

Anyways, I was looking at darkwood and it doesn't go into the benefits on armor but does on shields. So If I made darkwood full plate it'd just be half the weight? What about armor check penalties? Shouldn't they be less also? Will max dex go up due to the lighter weight?

What about dragonhide half-plates or full plates? They basically say it costs twice as much as masterwork armor of the same type. But do any other abilities come? I recall there used to be things like 5 resistance to a elemental type based on the dragon used. And more protections when it was dragonhide. Are these things found in some other section I missed? Or is dragonhide armor just another way a druid can wear fullplate for an expensive cost?

 

[kreynolds]

Anyways, I was looking at darkwood and it doesn't go into the benefits on armor but does on shields. So If I made darkwood full plate it'd just be half the weight? What about armor check penalties? Shouldn't they be less also? Will max dex go up due to the lighter weight?

By the rules, armor gets no benefit from being made of darkwood (except for weight reduction). You might use duskwood from MaoF as a model for a house rule though.

What about dragonhide half-plates or full plates? They basically say it costs twice as much as masterwork armor of the same type. But do any other abilities come?

Except for druids being able to wear it, nope.

I recall there used to be things like 5 resistance to a elemental type based on the dragon used. And more protections when it was dragonhide. Are these things found in some other section I missed?

Many house rules, including my own, have cropped up, but nothing official.

Or is dragonhide armor just another way a druid can wear fullplate for an expensive cost?

Pretty much, or for flavor.

 

[Spatzimaus]

kreynolds gave the book answers, but this is one of those things that screams HOUSE RULE!!!! to many people. If the only benefit of dragonhide is that druids can wear it, why bother?

A few third-party books include rules for this sort of thing, and quite a few exotic material systems have been posted over in the House Rule forum in months past. You can probably get some good ideas by asking over there, although you'll need your DM to agree to whatever rules you add.

 

[der_kluge]

Artificer's Handbook has dragonhide armor rules.

 

[kreynolds]

kreynolds gave the book answers, but this is one of those things that screams HOUSE RULE!!!! to many people.

Largely why I made mention of it.

 

[kreynolds]

Artificer's Handbook has dragonhide armor rules.

What are they? Or is this just more SPAM? You don't have to spell the whole thing out. Just a summary would do.

 

[der_kluge]

Here is the text from the entry:

Variant Dragonscale
Dragonscale and dragonhide are often used to craft armor and shields. They have innate properties that make premier materials for armor and shields. Since these properties are extraordinary
rather than magical, they work all of the time as long as the character is wearing them, even within an anti-magic field.
Dragonscale automatically adds the following properties to any armor or shields made from it.
The power of the properties is based on the age category of the dragon. The armor or shield itself has a hardness of 20 plus the age category of the dragon and 5 hit points per age category of the dragon per inch of thickness. Thus, armor made from a mature adult dragon (category 7) would have a hardness of 27 and 35 hit points per inch of thickness. Hide, scale mail, breastplate, banded mail, half-plate, and full-plate armors can be made from dragonscale and dragonhide. Small, large,
and tower shields can also be created. Shields created are half as effective (round down) in all categories as their armor equivalents. Shields incur only half as much arcane spell failure as
armor in the same age category, but stacks with the armor’s arcane spell failure. The elemental resistance, natural armor bonus, and arcane spell failure for shields stack with dragonscale
armor. The spell resistance of a shield does not stack with armor. For example, wearing great wyrm armor and wielding a great wyrm shield, you would have 37 points of elemental resistance
(25+12) and a natural armor bonus of +7 (5+2). The spell resistance would still be 20, and the arcane spell failure would be +22%. In this example, without the armor, the shield would provide the same values listed, and the wearer’s spell resistance would be 10. If using the armor breakout variant rules, all of the core components in a set of armor must be made from dragon scales or hide in order to receive all the benefit. Otherwise, fractional benefits are gained as determined by the GM.

The process for crafting dragonscale armor or shields is time-consuming and difficult. The DC to craft the armor or shield is 15, plus the AC bonus of the armor or shield, plus one per age
category of the dragon. Hence, crafting great wyrm full plate would have a Craft (blacksmith) DC of 35 (15 + 8 + 12).
Wearing dragonscale armor or shields is risky. It’s quite showy and sure to get a reaction, not only from NPCs, but from other dragons that might be watching.


Table 7.4 Dragon Elements
Dragon..............................................Element
Black, green, or copper dragons ........Acid
Blue or bronze dragons .................Electricity
Red, brass, or gold dragons ..............Fire
White or silver dragons .....................Cold

Table 7.3 shows the amount of spell resistance, natural armor, arcane spell failure, and market value modifiers per age category of dragon. You'll have to buy the book to get that table!

 

[DM2]

What are they? Or is this just more SPAM? You don't have to spell the whole thing out. Just a summary would do.

I keep noticing people mention "The artificer's handbook ahs rules for that!", instead of "The artificer's handbook assigns the following benefits..." or "From the artificer's handbook, the cost would be...".

I challenge you, Kreynolds, to go a whole day answering rules questions only with:

"The Dungeon Master's Guide has <insert name of what topic was asked about> rules in it!"

LOL

die_kluge: I didn't pay attention to the other people who have done this, so I'm not really singling you out....just singling out a string of similar responses that mention the handbook.

DM2

-edit- and even while I typed that, die_kluge came through. There you have it. -edit-

 

[kreynolds]

Thanks, die_kluge. Looks like it could be interesting.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Originally posted by kreynolds

Largely why I made mention of it.

Yeah, but I was trying to be subtle and sidetrack this into a house rules discussion. I'll be more blatant next time.


Originally posted by DM2
I challenge you, Kreynolds, to go a whole day answering rules questions only with:

"The Dungeon Master's Guide has <insert name of what topic was asked about> rules in it!"

Or, the short version: "RTFM!!!"

The thing is, everyone here has the DMG, plus its text is available for free online via the SRD. So, if you say "it's in the DMG", someone can go look it up themselves.

The Artificer's Handbook, on the other hand, is a third-party unofficial source. While it seems to be pretty popular, most people who play the game don't have it, so if you say "those rules are in the Artificer's Handbook", it doesn't really help the discussion much since most of us can't exactly go look it up. Besides which, they're not any more official than my house rules, although I'm sure they've been playtested more.