Thoughts on Dragon hide armor

[Bruno]

One of the traditional fantasy RPG "things" is cool armour made of nifty things, and one that perpetually floats about is dragon scale or dragon hide armour.

At its simplest, this can be treated as simply a very expensive suit of armour that attracts reactions from dragons, but there's an urge to hang more game mechanics off something that fancy.

Dungeon Fantasy makes dragonskin a thicker, heavier, more expensive kind of leather - an option for higher DR for PCs otherwise unable to use metal armour, but a bit boring. It's mostly just "More leather" without a layering penalty.

I won't pooh-pooh heavier armour, but I like other options. One step up from "it's a heavier kind of leather" is "same weight, same regular DR, some other kind of bonus" - +100% DR against fire damage, or another appropriate elemental type, is simple but has some flair.

+DR or +2*DR to HT checks to resist poison, for venomous dragons, gives another interesting twist.

Leather helments made of the stuff might give an additional benefit - water breathing, Filter Lungs, or simple Breath Holding, depending on the dragon type.

What interesting things have you done with dragon skin and scales?

[PseudoFenton]

I've seen elemental immunities conferred by dragon armour when its sufficiently hard to obtain, also stat boosts to mimic the dragon (often lots of ST or HT, but others are not too uncommon).

I personally like the idea of granting +DR against magic, as they're magical creatures (or allowing DR/defences against magical attacks that wouldn't normally allow them). Passive detection as a dragon might be a minor but interesting boon, allowing you to access dragon areas/bypass dragon traps, and potentially hide yourself from normal scrying/detection.

Other ideas are increased flexibility to remove penalties from armour, or a "best of both worlds" type of flexibility where it is supple but counts as rigid armour for the purposes of things that'd do more injury against flexible armour.

You can also have them come with snazzy wings built in, either for cloaks or actual flight (if the dragon was small enough). Have the head still built in and throw the teeth to summon up temporary armies (again size dependant, but one could just attach section of jaw bones or sow in teeth).

Regenerating hide (as in the intact-sections seem to heal normally, either when exposed to the element of that dragon, healing magic, or just naturally) allows your armour to never need costly repairs - and would make dragon hide armour very unique.

You could also have dragon armour just confer huge reaction bonuses in your world due to social elements surrounding the rarity and prestigious qualities of the material, or perhaps mere humans/morals/non-dragons are always in awe/terror and the hide confers this property past death.

They might take half, or even a tenth of the magical energy to magically enchant, allowing for many of the above properties to be achieved though normal magical means but at a fraction of the cost (and effort, as there's no need to get so many enchanters all in the same place or a limitless source of energy or several years/generations of work to produce that excessively magical set of armour anymore).

Basically, you can do almost anything you want with dragon hide, they're magical beasts who are often put at the top of the food chain (or at least top of the awesome chart) and therefore armour made of them should also be massively impressive and allow exemption from many standard notions and restrictions.

[Kromm]

This depends greatly on what a "dragon" is in your world. In the campaign that inspired Dungeon Fantasy, dragons were dumb reptile-things that spewed digestive acid. While magic was involved, it was on the "how something so improbable came to exist" level – these were animals with no magical powers under their own control. The PCs made armor out of their hide because it was thicker than cow or horse or pig hide. It was acid-resistant, though.

In another campaign, dragons followed the D&D habit of coming in endless colors with vast numbers of different deadly exhalations, and used magic. There, dragon-hide armor was no heavier or bulkier than any other heavy leather armor, but had the dragon's own DR by way of a free Fortify enchantment. It didn't give DR vs. the dragon's own attack form (because dragons didn't have that . . . they just had big DR vs. all attacks), but it did increase the effective mana level for the wearer where spells in that realm were concerned. For instance, frost-breathers raised the armor-wearer's mana level by one for cold- and ice-related spells.

In a still earlier campaign, dragonhide didn't have any special properties other than looking cool, giving a big reaction bonus from everybody but dragons, and a rather nasty penalty with dragons. That was because dragons there were smart but nonmagical, with funky-looking skin.

As you can tell, I lean away from dragons as super-intelligent magic-users with endless different breath weapons, and toward dragons as big, physical eaters of men.

[Anthony]

Another possibility is that dragon hide is only modest DR, but very light weight; if dragons don't use magic for lift, their scales are probably actually very very light (similar to feathers).

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kromm

This depends greatly on what a "dragon" is in your world.

Originally Posted by Kromm

As you can tell, I lean away from dragons as super-intelligent magic-users with endless different breath weapons, and toward dragons as big, physical eaters of men.

I lean towards a middle ground - big stupid magical man-eaters with an entertaining but not endless variety of breath weapons. Not colour coded for your elemental-rock-paper-scissors convenience, but tending to have hides inspired by snakes (ie ranging from camo to technicolour).

IMO you get smart spell-casting dragons the same way you get smart spell-casting T-Rexes - usually via demonic possession (or a wizard did something REALLY exotic)

[DanHoward]

In my campaigns it depends on the dragon. The hide from younger dragons are treated as fine quality leather armour. Older dragons have large thick scales that can be fashioned into various pieces of plate. Generally I just use steel plate stats. All types of dragon hide also get some kind of resistance to magic - usually vs fire.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Bruno

IMO you get smart spell-casting dragons the same way you get smart spell-casting T-Rexes - usually via demonic possession (or a wizard did something REALLY exotic)

In my Shielded-Lands campaign setting they're the result of Spilled God's blood at the creation of the world and the Ruled the First age making chattle of the other sentient races when they showed up.

The goddess of Knowledge and Magic taught the first mages when the gods where making the first clerics tho throw off their rule.

But unless you using special processes in the collection and manfactor the dradon scale armor it not better metal scale armor other than being lighter.

However if you know the secrete of making dragon hide armor and the dragon wasn't killed in away that the reuins it for this process it can have magical properties.

[PseudoFenton]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I lean towards a middle ground - big stupid magical man-eaters with an entertaining but not endless variety of breath weapons. Not colour coded for your elemental-rock-paper-scissors convenience, but tending to have hides inspired by snakes (ie ranging from camo to technicolour).

IMO you get smart spell-casting dragons the same way you get smart spell-casting T-Rexes - usually via demonic possession (or a wizard did something REALLY exotic)

Yeah 'colour coded for your convenience' is something I moved away from when I dropped d&d in favour of gurps, it makes sense on some levels, but it does ruin the surprise and can cause more complexity than its worth in the long run. As such my dragons are more fae like in their appearance, in that no two are exactly the same, but you do tend to get 'breeds' that look similar, but often because they're related.

Ultimately though they're magical creatures with a variety of different powers and IQ/behaviour, that live pretty much forever (so long as they stay in normal or better mana zones) and increase in power as they do so, and any amour made from their hide reflects that. Of cause because there is so much variety and individuality in both powers and morphology for any specific dragon, every piece of armour is generally quite unique in its properties (unless all made from the same dragon, which does allow for a few sets in some cases). So other than its relatively high DR and reaction bonuses/penalties it carries, dragon armour is basically short hand for any "cool magical armour that is powered by handwavium".

[Kromm]

Well, when I'm being really honest, I'll admit that I prefer my dragons to be Alien-style xenomorphs poured into heraldic dragon molds to better match genre visuals. I'm not sure what kind of armor you would get from those, but the acid-resistant, high-DR kind I mentioned earlier is where I went with it the last time.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Bruno

What interesting things have you done with dragon skin and scales?

Nothing. I'm boring that way. I just do material properties: "Like leather (or scale), except better in these specific numerical regards".

But one thing you could do, is to make it easier to put certain Enchantments into rare materials, such as body parts harvested from mana-dependent creatures, such as dragon scales or dragon leather, in settings where dragons are mana-dependent. Or you could have the Enchant discount anyway, even with non-mana-dependent dragons, because it's symbolically correct.

For instance Enchantments to give some DR or IT:DR vs fire and heat (or frost attacks for a cold-flavoured dragon). Or Enchantments to resist fear (levels of Fearlessness). Or to give Charisma.

In Sagatafl, the reduction would be to the Essence cost of the Enchantment, or possibly to the Enchantment Level. In GURPS, it'd instead be to the energy cost of the Enchantment, which in turn affects the monetary cost of the Enchantment, as per the usual formula (AFAIK GURPS Magic has one and GURPS DF has a different one).