Ferret said:
Where do the studs come from?
I didn't say it WAS Studded, I said that it had the same in-game effects as Studded Leather. That is, the same Max DEX, Armor Check Penalty, etc. Since there's no metal involved, Druids will still love it, of course.
Look at Snakeskin. They're reptiles, sure, but their skin is closer to a leather than it is to metal plating. It's thin and flexible, with the same sort of toughness that treated leather has (assuming, of course, that you can find a snake big enough to make a good amount of skin.)
Gatorskin is similar, although tougher a bit less flexible; not all reptiles are created equally. I was thinking of Dragon skin in the same way; they're not covered in plates, after all, so a lot of their skin should be relatively flexible, moreso than chainmail. For example, look at a dragon's wings. The membrane in the wings has to be relatively thin and flexible; there's no way you can think of THAT as plates. So, why can't I make armor out of the wing material?
Bottom line, the skin of a dragon won't be all plates. Most of it will be a simple, scaly skin that's thicker than leather but is more flexible than chainmail, so it should have the base stats of Studded Leather (with a bunch of bonuses thrown on, of course). There's a similar issue here for other animals. If I wanted to make leather armor out of an Elephant's hide, it should have the stats of Studded Leather even without adding studs. It's a tougher and less flexible material on its own, and adding studs won't have quite as much of a benefit.
