Masterwork Armors

[MindWanderer]

Its simply that the word doesn't mean what it used to mean. Before, smith could craft them. Now, masterwork is a form of magic enhancement. It just isn't costed.

It's basically flavored wrong. The text says stuff about dwarven/tiefling/whatever master smiths with cool forging techniques, but in reality, any ritualist with a few pounds of alchemical stuff that can be bought at any 5-and-dime can transform 50-gp steel plate armor unto godplate, or whatever. They should have left out all the confusing language about masterwork quality and just said that +4 and +6 armor enhancments gain bonus plusses for free.

 

[hamishspence]

maybe they should

still, it was flavour text. Play up the whole: "techniques that have entered general knowledge" theme: the first to discover how to enchant items this way were high level members of X culture. Just because items exist doesn't mean PCs always know how to make them. Represent that in the leveling up. Once you can enchant +4 items, you have discovered the secrets of spiritmail, etc: your levelling up incorporates the reseach needed to forge unusual weapons.

 

[Kaffis]

In a fantasy setting, I have no difficulty wrapping my brain around the concept that the most masterful smiths use rituals in their forging.

Thus, those secret techniques of the legendary dwarven smiths are... their cool rituals.

As for why you can't just rearrange the the scales to make non-magical wyrmscale armor -- perhaps the configuration is too rigid for non-magical metal to mimic and retain the flexibility necessary to be, you know, worn. Or perhaps the configuration calls for joints and attachments that are too fragile unless they're magically reinforced. Since all dragons are magical, neither of these stretches the simulation's rules, though our non-magical minds and experience might have difficulty devising or imaginging what such a configuration (and its limits) might entail.