So the players in my group killed their first dragon the other day and then wanted to skin it and make dragon hide armor or boots. I spent like 10 minutes looking through the DMG but could not find anything on the subject. I then went online and just ended up using a home-brewed rule.
I think this is a rather glaring hole in the rules and I can't be the first person to ask this. Has there ever been an official response on social media from one of the devs at WotC about this?
I've always used survival checks to harvest body parts, usually poison glands ECT but skinning would fall under the same heading for me. That said I couldn't find a reference to that with a quick compendium search so I could just be remembering something from 3.5 and not 5e.
Edit: even if the type of check is defined somewhere I wouldn't expect to find a sample DC
These are the rules for proficiency with the Leatherworker's Tools excerpted from XGtE. I would use this proficiency if one of the players at my table wished to skin an animal of its hide. I would combine it with the (Survival) skill.
Leatherworker’s Tools
Knowledge of leatherworking extends to lore concerning animal hides and their properties. It also confers knowledge of leather armor and similar goods.
Components. Leatherworker’s tools include a knife, a small mallet, an edger, a hole punch, thread, and leather scraps.
Arcana. Your expertise in working with leather grants you added insight when you inspect magic items crafted from leather, such as boots and some cloaks.
Investigation. You gain added insight when studying leather items or clues related to them, as you draw on your knowledge of leather to pick out details that others would overlook.
Identify Hides. When looking at a hide or a leather item, you can determine the source of the leather and any special techniques used to treat it. For example, you can spot the difference between leather crafted using dwarven methods and leather crafted using halfling methods.
I think this is a rather glaring hole in the rules and I can't be the first person to ask this. Has there ever been an official response on social media from one of the devs at WotC about this?
It's a slippery slope. If there's rules and armor for dragonhide, then you need trollhide, owlbearhide, tarrasquehide, etc., etc., and associated items. You need rules for turning scavenged items into armor. As long as you're doing that, you might as well make rules on binding a fire elemental to your sword to make a flametongue weapon.
What you're ultimately asking is how to craft items from monster drops. This is a huge undertaking and has a lot of implications and complications for connected mechanics like expected treasure and the prices of everything.
Staying within the rules (and ensuring you're still playing D&D for most of the session rather than "watch one player roll craft checks and look up stuff"), you can let them skin the hide and sell it. Or maybe they give it to a craftsman who turns it into +2 armor or something. But yeah, the devs didn't want to go there and I understand why.
There's the crafting a magic item rules from Xanathar's. It doesn't specify dragon, but it covers what you're trying to do, it just does it in the opposite direction. The rules are more for if the players wanted a cloak of fire resistance, here's simple guidelines for how to make one, largely left up to the DM for what ingredients they should gather. In your case, you're starting with the ingredients and deciding what they can make, but the same rules would generally apply.
I'd suggest saying what they could make is dependent on the dragon type, and character level. For example, if it was a white dragon, they can make something that grants cold resistance from the scales. Or use the teeth and/or horns to make a frost brand sword. Maybe depending on the age/size of the dragon, and a roll for skinning it (maybe nature?). You can decide how many items they can make. So they don't go game-breaking crazy with stuff, you give them a menu, basically the illusion of choice. Like: Well, with that roll, you have enough items that you could make one pair of boots or one cloak. Which do you want?
It can also be fun to say there are a few scales or what have you left over that they can use to make some (non-magical, flavor only) jewelry, cause everyone feels badass walking around with a dragon's tooth necklace, or a sword hilt made from dragonbone.
I play a homebrewed woodsman character who is constantly trying to pull resources from dead beasts. My GM usually has me roll survival. Sometimes it’s straightforward and sometimes it’s complicated.
if I wanted to skin a dragon for its hide, he would likely just ask me to estimate how much I want (enough to use as components for boots) and based on the size of the dragon would determine the roll to get (not telling me until after the roll). A large dragon where I just need a little bit of hide for boots would be easier than trying to make 2 full sets of armor from a young dragon. Similarly, the higher CR the beast, the harder it will be to skin.
Some of the more fun things we do include the time we fought off a horde of like 8 basilisks. He started by asking me what I was trying to harvest. I said eyes in case they can cause petrification, blood to cure petrification (this was already established by the story and was the reason we were hunting basilisk in the first place) and I said I would try to grab some teeth while I was in there. He then asked me rank which order to prioritize and roll 3 survival checks. The higher priorities, the lower the roll needed for success. Also, the level of survival checks showed if I harvested and how good he would make the harvested items (if I got a 12 maybe I got the eye but it didn’t do anything, a 19 meant I got the eye and could use it once to cause petrification. Then for some of them, a final set of rolls would let me know how many I harvested, so for example 8 basilisks had 16 eyes, assume 6 damaged in combat and roll a d10 to see how many I actually recovered.
then I get to do fun stuff like include basilisk teeth as shrapnel in traps or to weave them into a net. I do this a lot because my homebrewed character is built around traps.
I opted for a survival check to get the body parts (and the amount of material if it's a large creature) and a tools (leatherworker's in this case) check to preserve them if the party can't go immediately back to an appropriate place and treat them (or ask someone else).
This assuming that the characters have reason to know anything about the creature and what's valuable. For example, skinning is pretty straight forward, but for less obvious things I may ask an appropriate check to know or understand their value/use.
I am also considering body parts as "valuable ingredients" for creating certain objects (in other words, ingredients that reduce the cost, and time, to craft items), and considering their value as part of the creature's treasure. The more valuable, the harder the checks.
There are a couple resources available on DM Guild that have great guides for this for every creature in the MM. They tell you what ability checks to make, what you can harvest, and what you can do with the harvested parts.
So far I have used Survival checks to determine if the character can skin the animal. I modify the DC based upon the damage done to the creature (since one of the players uses a Greatsword Flame Tongue).
So far preservation has not been an issue, since the cleric of the group has used Gentle Repose until the party can reach a location to sell the item.
we are doing icewind dale and kept getting caught in snowstorms and such so I skinned a few yetti and we lined out tent with them but I am a leatherworker and a druid. my dm had me roll survival checks and depending on what I rolled determined if I got the hide and if I got teeth etc. it worked well because once we had the furs we could stay a lot warmer at night and didn't keep getting lvl's of exhaustion.
I don't think there is anything official. The rule of thumb my DM and I have is that the AC bonus from the armor (if it's a full set) is half of the monster's AC. The monster's immuninities become resistance, and resistance becomes advanatage (for saving throws on certain spells and damage types).
Edit: I checked with my dm, immunities are still immunities when in armor form, same with weakness and resistance.
So the players in my group killed their first dragon the other day and then wanted to skin it and make dragon hide armor or boots. I spent like 10 minutes looking through the DMG but could not find anything on the subject. I then went online and just ended up using a home-brewed rule.
I think this is a rather glaring hole in the rules and I can't be the first person to ask this. Has there ever been an official response on social media from one of the devs at WotC about this?
I've always used survival checks to harvest body parts, usually poison glands ECT but skinning would fall under the same heading for me. That said I couldn't find a reference to that with a quick compendium search so I could just be remembering something from 3.5 and not 5e.
Edit: even if the type of check is defined somewhere I wouldn't expect to find a sample DC
These are the rules for proficiency with the Leatherworker's Tools excerpted from XGtE. I would use this proficiency if one of the players at my table wished to skin an animal of its hide. I would combine it with the (Survival) skill.
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How small was the dragon in order to make boots? Unless they are baby killers, most dragon's scales are going to be breastplate size...
It's a slippery slope. If there's rules and armor for dragonhide, then you need trollhide, owlbearhide, tarrasquehide, etc., etc., and associated items. You need rules for turning scavenged items into armor. As long as you're doing that, you might as well make rules on binding a fire elemental to your sword to make a flametongue weapon.
What you're ultimately asking is how to craft items from monster drops. This is a huge undertaking and has a lot of implications and complications for connected mechanics like expected treasure and the prices of everything.
Staying within the rules (and ensuring you're still playing D&D for most of the session rather than "watch one player roll craft checks and look up stuff"), you can let them skin the hide and sell it. Or maybe they give it to a craftsman who turns it into +2 armor or something. But yeah, the devs didn't want to go there and I understand why.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
There's the crafting a magic item rules from Xanathar's. It doesn't specify dragon, but it covers what you're trying to do, it just does it in the opposite direction. The rules are more for if the players wanted a cloak of fire resistance, here's simple guidelines for how to make one, largely left up to the DM for what ingredients they should gather. In your case, you're starting with the ingredients and deciding what they can make, but the same rules would generally apply.
I'd suggest saying what they could make is dependent on the dragon type, and character level. For example, if it was a white dragon, they can make something that grants cold resistance from the scales. Or use the teeth and/or horns to make a frost brand sword. Maybe depending on the age/size of the dragon, and a roll for skinning it (maybe nature?). You can decide how many items they can make. So they don't go game-breaking crazy with stuff, you give them a menu, basically the illusion of choice. Like: Well, with that roll, you have enough items that you could make one pair of boots or one cloak. Which do you want?
It can also be fun to say there are a few scales or what have you left over that they can use to make some (non-magical, flavor only) jewelry, cause everyone feels badass walking around with a dragon's tooth necklace, or a sword hilt made from dragonbone.
I play a homebrewed woodsman character who is constantly trying to pull resources from dead beasts. My GM usually has me roll survival. Sometimes it’s straightforward and sometimes it’s complicated.
if I wanted to skin a dragon for its hide, he would likely just ask me to estimate how much I want (enough to use as components for boots) and based on the size of the dragon would determine the roll to get (not telling me until after the roll). A large dragon where I just need a little bit of hide for boots would be easier than trying to make 2 full sets of armor from a young dragon. Similarly, the higher CR the beast, the harder it will be to skin.
Some of the more fun things we do include the time we fought off a horde of like 8 basilisks. He started by asking me what I was trying to harvest. I said eyes in case they can cause petrification, blood to cure petrification (this was already established by the story and was the reason we were hunting basilisk in the first place) and I said I would try to grab some teeth while I was in there. He then asked me rank which order to prioritize and roll 3 survival checks. The higher priorities, the lower the roll needed for success. Also, the level of survival checks showed if I harvested and how good he would make the harvested items (if I got a 12 maybe I got the eye but it didn’t do anything, a 19 meant I got the eye and could use it once to cause petrification. Then for some of them, a final set of rolls would let me know how many I harvested, so for example 8 basilisks had 16 eyes, assume 6 damaged in combat and roll a d10 to see how many I actually recovered.
then I get to do fun stuff like include basilisk teeth as shrapnel in traps or to weave them into a net. I do this a lot because my homebrewed character is built around traps.
I opted for a survival check to get the body parts (and the amount of material if it's a large creature) and a tools (leatherworker's in this case) check to preserve them if the party can't go immediately back to an appropriate place and treat them (or ask someone else).
This assuming that the characters have reason to know anything about the creature and what's valuable. For example, skinning is pretty straight forward, but for less obvious things I may ask an appropriate check to know or understand their value/use.
I am also considering body parts as "valuable ingredients" for creating certain objects (in other words, ingredients that reduce the cost, and time, to craft items), and considering their value as part of the creature's treasure. The more valuable, the harder the checks.
There are a couple resources available on DM Guild that have great guides for this for every creature in the MM. They tell you what ability checks to make, what you can harvest, and what you can do with the harvested parts.
So far I have used Survival checks to determine if the character can skin the animal. I modify the DC based upon the damage done to the creature (since one of the players uses a Greatsword Flame Tongue).
So far preservation has not been an issue, since the cleric of the group has used Gentle Repose until the party can reach a location to sell the item.
AothRa
we are doing icewind dale and kept getting caught in snowstorms and such so I skinned a few yetti and we lined out tent with them but I am a leatherworker and a druid. my dm had me roll survival checks and depending on what I rolled determined if I got the hide and if I got teeth etc. it worked well because once we had the furs we could stay a lot warmer at night and didn't keep getting lvl's of exhaustion.
I don't think there is anything official. The rule of thumb my DM and I have is that the AC bonus from the armor (if it's a full set) is half of the monster's AC. The monster's immuninities become resistance, and resistance becomes advanatage (for saving throws on certain spells and damage types).
Edit: I checked with my dm, immunities are still immunities when in armor form, same with weakness and resistance.