[PnP] Dragon skinning blues...

[Scott Adams]

>
>Silly players, they decide to taunt it in order to get it down to  
>where they can attack it.   I have the main warrior character make  
>his case and make an influence chance ... 01!  Holy crap -- you just  
>flippled off the dragon and now he's coming in.

Mistake #1 :) Must be brave or stupid.  :)

Surprised the Dragon didn't target the Elf vs the Tank.

Meat - Where's the beef! Well I'd have done it just FP and stick with that rather than the details you give.  The problem is eating dragon meat might be dangerous.  Especially poison or fire breathers since their meat might be tainted.  Think of it like some snakes and frogs.  They exude poison and if you eat them you can get poison from their system.  

hide - Well looks like you have a good grasp there.  There are always limits to hide/armor from dragons like itch and bugs and such especially in the summer.  I did up a tannning document a year or two ago on prep and fixing of leather items.  I think I posted it here long ago.  But your on a good start.  Two adventures my pbem group went up against a Storm dragon and got his hide for armor (now enhanced AV7 I think?).
So dragon armor is nice but wouldn't want to wear it in 100 degree weather :)

Teeth/Bones - Who would want bones? :) Teeth can be sold into necklaces for barbarians as honor trophies or such.  But keep in mind going into a mouth where stray poison sacs or sulfur (fire) sacs could go off could be dnagerous :) 

As to Kototh himself is enough.  But I'm surprised this beacon of death didn't pull other kotoh folks to the party?  I mean a dragon goes down and Kototh forces don't come running?  That in itself would make more nice interesting encounters as they loot the body.  

You could sell the meat to Kotohi shamans they might enjoy it :)

----

In the PBEM game we are on Adventure #3.  In the Pavassa forest.  I rolled this week (well 3 weeks ago) a random encounter.  Totally random not planned.  Turned out to be goblins with a special.  So used my home brew chart and the special was a controller.  Turned out to be a Kotothi Shaman.  My very first!  Since v2 came out.  When I did him up special was pet - random came up with a Desert lion.  Tonah was random and was frogs/toads.  Looking at the neat v2 tonah rules for Shamans th epoison and jump effects was very nice.  I rolled up again randomly his 5 spells.  Turns out to be Camouflage, Poison Powers, Telepathic powers, Withering hand (good for a evil shaman) and enrgy web.  The Poison was great cause the frogs tonah.  So this guy was jumping around the camp with a 80 foot jumping ability and shooting arrows while the goblins attack.  he calls in frogs and toads to hammer the party (about 60 of them).  Then calls in lion.  But in the end he does a poison mist and takes down 60% of the party (1 with arrows) paralyzed.  Then jumps in camp and attacks one who survived.  Came so close to 70% of the party down by one shaman.   I was happy :)  That doesn't happen all the time for this group.  But it was a very fun combat for me cause never had a K.Shaman and the attack was entertaining to me.  To finally see a enemy do some good tricks.  Course theres always the folks with high MDV :<

By the end of this adventure I suspect I'll have another v2 NEW class in the game ...good to practice :)



 

 






>Over the course of the battle the dragon pretty much flew at 100' or  
>so, huffing up a flame on the main tank.  Now this character has a  
>very high MDV to begin with (character), plus he is immune to 5  
>levels of magic as a special (yea, it's gross, but these are our old  
>80's characters and we decided that if we reupped this once-a-month  
>game they would be doing big things).
>
>As the battle went on, the tank was getting slowly burnt up.  The elf  
>was doing his best with the bow and was getting the draggon nibbled  
>down (side note: this was the first time the new SIZE rules were  
>really felt and there was quite the heated discussion on it.  see  
>below).  The dragon was getting weaker, but since it refused to  
>grapple with an obvious combat monster the tank would be done before  
>it was.  They gambled on another taunting to get the dragon close  
>whough for the law wizard to cast a spell -- killing light.
>
>And they did it.  That kototh dragon had the biggest look of suprise  
>on it's 3 heads.
>
>-----------------
>Ok, now they have the dragon and they want to "loot the body".  And  
>of course, with no rules in the books on this it comes to rule makeup  
>time.  Comments are very welcome, especially since the next game is  
>this sunday (the 1st).
>
>Okay, first off we figured this elder dragon was 30' or so.  A lot of  
>that, obviously, is tail and neck.  Nothing to go on for weight, so I  
>had to play with numbers.
>
>An eagle scaled to 30' would weigh 12,000#.
>A Komodo dragon scaled to 30' would weigh 10,000#
>A nile crocodile scaled to 30' would be 3,300#
>A salt water croc scled to 30' would be 5,500#.
>
>Ok, splitting the difference from reptialian and large wingspan bird,  
>I come up with 7,500# or so.  Looking at it again, and rounding  
>numbers for taste, we come to 8,800#.  This means that dragons weigh  
>in at 100#/AHP.
>
>
>MEAT:
>This all assumes that dragon meat is even edible, much less Kotothi  
>dragons.  Assuming it is, the obvious plan is to preserve what they  
>can of the "best" meat and sell it as a novelty.  I presume they will  
>be using the wizard's preservation spell to keep it okay for now  
>(have to investigate spell limits).
>
>presumably we are talking top-grade cooks for this.  it looks like  
>EL20 is about fair for your normal trained cook, with EL40 for a "x2"  
>cook.  Assuming the meat is nothing special I suppose that EL40 is  
>sufficuent to cook it given the instructions on preparation, but  
>presumably requires character-class cooks to actually figure out  
>those instructions of how to cook, season, or otherwise make it  
>edible.  I guess we can figure on losing at least some of the meat in  
>experimentation.
>
>Looking into it online, it looks like herbivores come in with a wide  
>range of "meat ratios" , but fumbling the numbers a bit and rounding  
>for ease of use it looks like wild herbivores come in at 25% weight  
>for meat and domestic herbivores at 50% weight.  The remainder is  
>waste and non-meat products (bone, blood, intestines. (Domestic is  
>higher since it is raised for meat).
>
> From Wik: "Beef is first divided into primal cuts. These are basic  
>sections from which steaks and other subdivisions are cut.When  
>looking at a diagrams such as the ones below, note that the closer to  
>the middle back, the more tender the meat is. Since the animal's legs  
>and neck muscles do the most work, they are the toughest; the meat  
>becomes progressively more tender as distance from "hoof and horn"  
>increases."
>
>One would assume that would normally apply to other animals, but  
>dragons have a big honking set of wings that impact the area where  
>the sirloin would be.  I guess by this rule of thumb, the tail meat  
>is what ends up being the tenderest, with the rest being relatively  
>tough.  Also, I figure that as a flying beast at least hal it's  
>weight will be in the huge wings, and there will be hardly anything  
>usable in that, so cut all yields in half.
>
>With beef, "the good cuts" (Sirloin) end up being 10% of the meat  
>weight.  About another 20% are "fair" cuts (roasts and chuck).  The  
>rest is stew meat or burger.
>
>So this 8800# dragon will render 1,100# of meat, of which 110# are  
>the tenderest cuts and another 220# are decent steaks and roasts.
>
>Preservation does not indicate a quantity limit -- Give the base time  
>I assume the original intent was a man-day of food (3FP, or 3#) that  
>could be preserved for travel. To keep it simple, I suppose we can  
>figure the effect is a combined value -- at EL4 we have an effect of  
>32 -- this is one man-day of food preserved untouched for 32 days, or  
>32 man-days of food left safe and unspoiled for 1 day (even if it's  
>full of mayo :) or any range in between. Presumably the caster can  
>refresh the spell each day, so if need be he can spend it all on  
>quantity, but the time is never less that a full day.
>
>
>HIDE:
>The tank character is an armorer, so he wants the hide to make  
>leather armor from.  An elder dragon's AV is 6, but this is on a 30'  
>beast (of which we can figure that about HALF that is body).  The  
>question becomes one of "how much of this AV is due to thickness, and  
>how much is due to properties?
>
>As a flying creature, weight does become a premium, so a good portion  
>of the AV is due to properties of the hide.  many of the larger  
>reptiles that are ground based seem to hit around AV2, so I can feal  
>comfortable with have a base of 2 for larger creature (increased for  
>size, decreased for flight).  If we consider dragon hide to be  
>scaled, an actual dragon's hide is a lot like scale mail or lamilar  
>-- AV2 in raw hide, with AV4 in overlapping plates.
>
>Your average modern cow can be peeled for about 50 square feet of  
>hide.  This is presumably fairly thin and needs to be doubled up when  
>making leather armor (to get AV1).  When a cow is layed out it's  
>pretty much a squarish rectangle, but a dragon would be more drawn  
>out.  Given a main body size of 15', we can probably look at about  
>25' (body plus some usable tail and necks) by 6', or about 150 square  
>feet of hide and scale (about triple that of a modern cow, or five  
>times that of a medieval cow).  It takes about a week to prepare raw  
>skin into leather, though a process of soaking, scraping, tanning  
>(often using the brains of the creature as a part of the tanning mix)  
>and smoking.  Presumably the dragon hide will need a bit more work.   
>I think a good guess is that it will take at least four times as long  
>(twice as long for the size and efort to soak and scrape, and twice  
>as long for the smoke time to cure it). In addition, one will be  
>going somewhat slower so as to not losen the scales before the hide  
>is fully cured, so ut the time by another 2 factor to SIX times as  
>long.  My cost estimates have it at 1SC to cure a cow hide into  
>leather.  A dragon hide will presumably require more expensive (and  
>probably caustic) materials, so I would have it be at least 1GC in  
>materials as a minimum for the hide alone.  Presumably the scale  
>would need even more treatment so that they would not loosen from the  
>hide, so I would up the material cost by 4GC more for the scales for  
>a minimum total of 5GC.
>
>Ok, so how much leather is needed?  About 4# of leather go into  
>leather armor (by the books) which is about 8 square feet of 8oz  
>leather (8oz per square foot).  Cow hide is easily thich enough for  
>this, but we obviously have to thicken it up by doubling over when  
>you make armor. Call it 15 square feet of cowhide for leather armor.   
>If we go by the same rule of thumb, the underlying hide of the dragon  
>is normally AV1 right off the bat and thick enough to not need  
>doubling (and in fact cannot be so, since we havethe scales on the  
>outside). The scales themselves only provide AV3 since they are  
>stiffer and don't provide the coverage they did on a live dragon.  
>Accounting for waste, call it 10 square feet of hide for AV4  
>dragonscale leather, with a weight of 10# for the hide alone.  Assume  
>the scales are tough and thin, but with an equal weight, so this  
>dragonscale armor would weigh 20#.
>
>Construction?
>Given all that wonderful dragon leather, how long will it take to  
>form?  The underlying hide will take at least twice as long to cut  
>and sew.  The armorer is not actually cutting the scales (hard as  
>plate and cannot be hammered or shaped like for metal armors) but  
>instead cutting out the leather underneath to form the peice, which  
>is then sewn together much like normal leather armor.
>
>In my armorer rules I tried to figure out appropriate times to make  
>armor based on the sale price and material cost.  If an armorer makes  
>2GC per month then obviously that is the sale price of all his armors  
>after taking into account materail cost.  By my figuring, leather  
>armor takes a tad less than a day to make (1SC, with a material cost  
>of 4CC.  Labor value is 6CC.  200CC/30 days is 6.667CC per day).  
>using the same concept and a few assumptions, we can generate the  
>numbers we need.
>
>Assuming a final price of 40GC, and materials value 200x that of  
>leather (for comparison, steel has a value of 10x that of leather), I  
>jiggered the material% until the numbers lined up. It works out to  
>240 days of work to account the armorer's labor costs in order to  
>justify the 40GC of sale price.  Now this is a special item, so I'm  
>tweaking the umbers a tad.  One, any armorer who can do this is  
>obviouly skilled enough to justify a greater rate.  If we figure a  
>rate of 5GC/month, that would assume labor is actually 100 days. But  
>that still seems awfully long just for cut and sew (essentially)  
>thick leather.  I'm willing to cut the time by a third (round to 30  
>days, or one month) to call it a "luxury" peice...any armorer who has  
>the chance to make it can make one and then relax the next 60 days.
>
>That's enough for this tome.  The other items of Question are TEETH  
>and BONES.  Any suggestions there?
>
>
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