Questions on CRAFT when skinning a dragon

[Kealios]

My players met and killed their first dragon. They are very excited about this, and have set about skinning the dragon in its lair for any and everything even remotely valuable or useful for bragging rights.

I decided that to skin the beast (and this is going off the Dragonhide rules on p.283 of DMG), it would require a Craft (armorcraft) skill check, as the rules say that the armorer selects "choice" bits of scales and hide to use, and the armorer isnt there. Therefore, the PCs are using an untrained Craft (armorcraft) check to do the selecting for him.

I decided the DC would be 15. This seems to be a High Quality item, per the Craft chart on p. 71 of PHB.

As the dragon was Huge, it can provide MW Banded Mail for a medium creature. Banded is 250 gp, +150 for Masterworked. Dragonhide is double this, so the suit is valued at 800 gp. 1/3 of this cost (for raw materials for the Craft skill) is 266 gp, roughly. In Silver Pieces this is 2,666.

The players managed a roll of 19, multiplied by the DC = 285. Does this really mean the players are only one-tenth of the way through skinning this 55-foot long, 20,000 pound monster? Or am I way off base, seeing as how my players really wont want to be here for 10 weeks while they carve this corpse to bits?

Thanks for the advice.
Kealios

 

[Lord Pendragon]

The 285 days is the calculation for making the masterwork banded mail, isn't it? You're ad-hocing the rules to use for skinning.

In this case, I'd have done it differently. I'd have assigned Survival as the skill in question, since the PCs aren't actually choosing the best pieces for armor, they're choosing all the pieces they can skin off the beast. When they put the hide on the table in front of the armorer, he'll be the one to actually choose which pieces he wants to use and go from there.

So, Survival, DC 5 for skinning an animal, +5 to that for it being an unusual creature with an unusual body (this ain't no antelope!) So overall, a DC 10.

Time I'd figure as about a week. That's a lot of hide. My dad is an avid hunter, and can dress a deer in under an hour, but we're talking about a huge dragon here, after all. A week sounds about right.

So a week for the PCs to skin the dragon. Then another 10 weeks for the armorer to actually make a masterwork suit of banded mail from the hide.

That's how I'd have handled it, anyway.

 

[Scharlata]

[...]skinning the dragon[...]

Hi!

Don't have my books here around, but take a look into the DRACONOMICON (Dragoncrafter Feat, p. 105).

Enjoy!

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I'm with LP on this one.

 

[Scharlata]

DRACONOMICON

Hi!

Skip to pages 115/116 and familiarize yourself with the Special Properties of Dragonhide Armor and later Dragoncraft Items, like Blood Elixir, Dragonfang Weapons, and the like.

Have fun!

 

[Starglim]

My earlier thought was to treat skinning, foraging, gold-panning and similar activities as Profession skills, because they don't cost you resources (as Craft does) but rather gain resources that you can then sell or use to Craft. It's very easy to rule that the GP value gained by a Profession roll is in the form of raw materials or trade goods.

I don't know how the numbers would work out, though, or what sort of modifier (multiplier, probably) you'd apply for having a large source of valuables such as a dragon carcass ready to hand.