Dragonewt Skin Armor

From: Arkat_at_aol.com
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 15:39:14 -0400


David Henderson writes:

>Re 'Newtskin armour: is it special in any way, or just the same AP as it
>originally had etc? Just the previous mentions on the digest made it
>sound in some way out of the ordinary, and I don't remember seeing
>anything in sources about it.

Actually there were two versions written about what Dargonewt Skin Armor (DSA for short) does.

The first description appeared in the RQ2 supplement called "Plunder". DSA could be worn like leather armor and depending on what stage dragonewt it was taken from, it provided a certain number of armor points of protection as well as a certain number of points of contiuous Spirit Screen and Countermagic. For Example: a crested (scout) dragonewts skin provided 2 armor points of protection and 1 point of spirit screen and countermagic. A beaked (warrior) dragonewt's skin provided 5 armor points of protection and 2 points of spirit screen and countermagic. A tailed priest's skin provided 3 armor points and 3 points of spirit screen and countermagic. A full priest's skin provided 8 armor points and 4 points of spirit screen and countermagic. And finally the Inhuman King's skin would provide 25 points of armor and 5 points of spirit screen and countermagic!!! The catch is that you had to kill a Dragonewt that was 50% larger than you in order to make a suit large enough to fit you and you had to sacrifice a point of POW to enchant it. You also had to worry about the Dragonewt who the skin belonged to coming back to take his skin back after he kicked your ass. If the Dragonewt was a rogue and out of the cycle, you really didn't have much to worry about.

The second version of DSA was written up in Wyrm's Footnotes #14. Greg said he thought the version in Plunder was "too gross". He changed the spell rules so that no spells were "on" continuously. In fact there was no guarantee that any suit of DSA gave protection from spirits or magic. Instead Greg said that DSA had a d8+2 Tatoo Matrices on a particular skin. Any spirit magic spell could have been tatooed on the skin by the dragonewt as a matrix. Greg suggested that these be rolled up randomly. The cool part about this rule change was that if you had two normally incompatible spells like Fireblade and Bladesharp tatooed on the skin, you could cast them at the same time anyway and they would be compatible!!! If you had the right spells on DSA, this could be more gross than the original write-up.

Anyway, Greg went on to say that in order to make a suit of DSA, you had to have the skin in one piece and that the whole chest and abdomen area had to be intact. If they weren't, the matrices would lose their power and the extra points of armor protection would also be lost.

Greg also said that you couldn't use the skin from a Dragonewt's head for helmets and in conclusion, there was not a single suit of Inhuman King armor in all of Glorantha.

Oh, one more thing...there is no way for anyone to add to the tatoo matices on the skin. The original owner of the skin was the only one who could tatoo himself properly and only when he was still in his skin.

John Brown
Arkat_at_aol.com


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