Dragonhide

Dragonhide, also written dragon hide, was the skin of a dragon.

Properties
Dragonhide could be used to fashion masterful, meaning good enough to be enchanted, armors and/or shields from it. The resulting products were in no way different from ordinary ones, but with one exception: dragonhide could not be destroyed by the kind of energy that the dragon whose skin it was breathed. So it was entirely possible that the wearer of a dragonhide armor could die in a blast of a dragon's breath, while the armor remained intact, if the breath weapon used the same energy as the dragonhide's dragon's breath weapon.

Applications
As mentioned above, dragonhide could be used for crafting armors and shields, and was highly valued by the armorers of Faerûn. People used dragonhide armor for mostly ornamental reasons for it conferred no beneficial properties to them. There was no difference in time nor cost compared to the creation of ordinary armor and shield of masterful quality when creating a dragonhide armor or shield.

In order for a piece of dragon hide to used to craft armor, it had to be at least 3' (0.9 m) long on any side and free from puncture marks, slashes, burns or any other imperfections that weakened its integrity. As the renowned dragon-slayer Smerdiuk Dragonbane wrote in his manual, The Compleat Dragon-Hunter: "damage grevious enough to slay a dragon will often make its entire hide unusable".

A specifically trained person could create a dragoncraft item from dragonhide, which did indeed confer beneficial benefits in the form of a minor resistance against the donor-dragon's breath weapon's energy type.

Production
Dragonhide was produced by skinning a dragon. While crafting simple hide armor was fairly straightforward, with a full grown dragon providing enough to fashion such armor for a giant with enough material left to make a shield as well, sturdier or more complex armor required the careful selection of the right sections and scales. As a general rule, the same full grown dragon hide could only yield one suit of human-sized high-quality plate armor.

Notable Dragonhide Items

 * Chaathuulandroth's bulwark: This was +3 improved acid resistance dragonhide heavy shield that was claimed by Tchazzar as part of his hoard.
 * A suit of +1 fire resistance red dragonhide full plate that was worn by a helmed horror constructed by the court mages of the Shoon Imperium and acquired by Artor Morlin, the vampire lord of Waterdeep.

Notable Users

 * The avatar of the giant deity Grolantor always appeared wearing dragonhides.