Dragon Armor (3.5e Equipment)

Author: Sulacu (talk) Date Created: November 23, 2016 Status: Complete Editing: Clarity edits only please

Rate this article Your rating for this article: Favor Like Neutral Dislike Oppose Submit | Cancel Discuss this article

A hero clad in red dragon armor.

Dragon Armor

Ahh, dragon slaying. Knighthood's greatest calling. Throughout the ages, many great heroes partook in the campaigns against mighty and terrible dragons. These precious suits of armor serve as evidence of these great victories.

Dragon Armor (Heavy)

Size	Humanoid Cost	Nonhumanoid Cost	Armor Bonus	Weight	Hit Points
Small	7000 gp	14000 gp	+8	25 lb.	60
Medium	7000 gp	14000 gp	+8	50 lb.	60

Non-Standard Sizes
Fine	3500 gp	7000 gp	+2	5 lb.	60
Diminutive	3500 gp	7000 gp	+2	5 lb.	60
Tiny	3500 gp	7000 gp	+2	5 lb.	60
Large	14000 gp	28000 gp	+8	100 lb.	60
Huge	28000 gp	56000 gp	+8	250 lb.	60
Gargantuan	56000 gp	112000 gp	+8	400 lb.	60
Colossal	112000 gp	224000 gp	+8	600 lb.	60

Maximum Dex Bonus	Armor Check Penalty	Arcane Spell Failure	Hardness
+2	-4	25%	15

Speed1
Base	20 ft.	30 ft.	40 ft.	50 ft.	60 ft.	70 ft.	80 ft.	90 ft.	100 ft.
Armored	15 ft.	20 ft.	30 ft.	35 ft.	40 ft.	50 ft.	55 ft.	60 ft.	70 ft.
When running in heavy armor, you move only triple your speed, not quadruple.

Don	Don Hastily	Remove
4 minutes2	4 minutes1	1d4+1 minutes1
If the character has some help, cut this time in half. A single character doing nothing else can help one or two adjacent characters. Two characters can't help each other don armor at the same time. The wearer must have help to don this armor. Without help, it can be donned only hastily.

Dragon armor is a formidable full-body armor that grants protection similar to that of a full plate, but is surprisingly easy to move around in. The most flexible dragonhide and lightweight chainmail makes the underlay, while the breast-and-back, tassets, pauldrons, armets, greaves, gauntlets, sabatons and helmets are made from interwoven dragonscale reinforced with ridges of dragonbone.

Dragon armor is hard to refit, and with mundane tools the fit can only be altered by up to a few percent from the original tailoring without using additional material. Since dragonhide, scale and bone are exceedingly rare and the armors were tailored to a specific user, there is an enormously competitive market for dragon armor, where suits are traded between collectors for highly inflated prices in the hopes of obtaining one that can be modified to provide a proper fit. It is to the point that you can expect to spend at least twice the market price and a lot of time and effort to obtain an armor that fits you unless you have magic or unless you have the dragon materials and either craft it yourself or have it crafted by a skilled armorsmith.

It is possible to refit a dragon armor to any body shape of a similar creature type and size category with the help of a fabricate spell, but the caster must also succeed in the Craft checks necessary to craft the armor for the result to be effective.

Wearing dragon armor that isn't properly fit to your person reduces the maximum Dexterity bonus to AC by 2, and increases the armor check penalty by 3.

Dragon armor is fashioned from the hide, scales and bone of a specific type of dragon. The species of dragon determines some of the armor's effects, as below. Using only the premium parts, a Huge dragon or 2 Large dragons is enough for 1 suit of dragon armor for a Medium creature. A Gargantuan dragon can make 2 suits, and a Colossal dragon can make 4 suits. The dragon armor is always masterwork; price and benefits are subsumed in the above statistics.

The dragon armor grants the following benefits when worn, on top of its general protective capabilities:

• Dragon armor counts as a masterwork skill tool for the Intimidate skill. When you use the Intimidate skill, you may choose to effect any number of creatures within 20 feet of you.
• The AC counts as 2 higher when fighting enemies of the Dragon type.
• Some of the latent dragon magic is still within the scales of the armor. The armor grants additional resistances and benefits from the table below, depending on the species of dragon the armor is made from. All caster levels are equal to your character level and save DCs are Charisma-based. Note that wearing a dragon armor may incite unfriendliness or even outright hostility from certain species of dragonkind, depending on the situation.

Table: Dragon Armor by Species

d%1	Chromatic	Resistances	Secondary Effects
01-06	Black	Acid 15	Within 10 feet of you, bright illumination becomes shadowy, and shadowy illumination becomes darkness.
07-12	Blue	Electricity 15	Any sources of water-based liquid on your person last twice as long. This includes potions, which can be drunk twice before expiring.
13-18	Green	Acid 15	You can use speak with plants as a spell-like ability once per day.
19-24	Red	Fire 15	You can use locate object as a spell-like ability twice per day.
25-30	White	Cold 15	Your do not need to make any checks for walking or running on ice and may coat one 10-foot square in slippery ice as a standard action. This is equivalent to a grease spell-like ability usable three times per day.
d%1	Metallic	Resistances	Secondary Effects
31-36	Brass	Fire 15	You gain wild empathy.
37-42	Bronze	Electricity 15	You can use water breathing as a spell-like ability (self only) once per day.
43-48	Copper	Acid 15	You can use stone shape as a spell-like ability once per day, but the casting time is 1 minute for every cubic foot of stone you shape.
49-54	Gold	Fire 15	You can use the detect gems ability for 1 minute/level per day.
55-60	Silver	Acid 10, Cold 10	You may use feather fall as a spell-like ability twice per day.
d%1	Primeval	Resistances	Secondary Effects
61-63	Calefact	Acid 10, Fire 10	You gain damage reduction 3/cold iron and level 2 cold protection (see Protection against Cold, Frostburn pg. 9).
64-66	Cerulean	Cold 10, Electricity 10	You gain the cerulean shield of a very young cerulean dragon, without the deflection bonus.
67-69	Gelidus	Acid 10, Cold 10	You gain damage reduction 3/meteoric iron and level 2 heat protection (see Protection against Heat, Sandstorm pg. 14).
70-71	Lethus	Negative Energy 15	You may regain 1 extra power point/character level once per day. Furthermore, you have a +4 bonus to saving throws vs death effects.
72	Malcurion	Cold 10 and Fire 10	You gain 5 temporary hit points at the start of every turn. These do not stack. You gain a +4 bonus to saving throws against light and radiation effects.
73-74	Olympus	Acid 5, Cold 5, Electricity 5, Fire 5	You cast healing spells and spells with the Light descriptor at +2 caster level.
75-76	Orichalcum	Acid 10, Electricity 10	You gain 50% hindrance and a +4 bonus to saving throws against spells and effects that disintegrate, destroy or annihilate matter.
77-78	Qilung	Cold 15	You gain a +4 bonus to saves against water effects and cast spells with the Water descriptor at +2 caster level.
79-80	Tempest	Electricity 15	You may use the lightning blink ability of a wyrmling tempest dragon 3/day.
d%1	Other	Resistances	Secondary Effects
81-84	Dreg	Acid 15	You exude a sickening aura that affects any living creature within a 10- foot-emanation. Creatures that don't breathe, are immune to inhaled poisons, or that otherwise cover their nose and mouth are unaffected.
85-87	Force	Force 15	You gain a +8 bonus to saving throws aginst paralysis effects.
88-90	Lexicon	Sonic 15	The save DC of your utterances increases by +1, and the hit point threshold of your power word spells increases by 20%.
91-94	Opal	Positive Energy 15	You gain fast healing 1, and the armor standardly casts white light as a light spell. The light may be turned on and off as a free action.
95-97	Prismatic	Acid 5, Cold 5, Electricity 5, Fire 5	You gain a +4 bonus to saving throws against light effects. If the effect is prismatic in nature, the bonus increases to +8.
98-100	Time	Positive Energy 10, Negative Energy 10	You can use time hop (self only) as a psi-like ability once per day.
Loot table. These numbers are meant for the material plane. On other planes, certain types of dragons may be vastly more prevalent.

Craft (armorsmithing and hideworking) DC 35. Market Price 7,000 gp.

---

Back to Main Page → 3.5e Homebrew → Equipment → Mundane Armor