Clothing Makes the Man

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 1:10 pm

Regardless of precise mechanical effects/benefits, having accessories with awesome flavour is a priori awesome.

Cloak from the hide of the invulnerable Nemean lion
Naglfar, the ship crafted from the fingernails of the dead
Coat made of the hide of a pyrohydra
Signal horn or cornucopia made from the horn of a dragon
Cloak of phase spider silk
Watch made from the vitals of an inevitable/modron

Xur · Post by **Xur** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:05 pm

This reminds me of the session when I used stuff from Requiem for a God in a FR game. The party realized they were walking on the corpse of a dead god (don't remember which one) and went crazy. They bathed in godsblood and harvested some godflesh and godblood to take it away.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:23 pm

One magic item I like to pop up is a normal old necklace of Natural Armor.

It's five dragon scales threaded onto a knotted string.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 7:46 pm

I enjoy that kind of flair. I played a barbarian way, way back in the beginning of 3.0, and managed to land the killing blow on a rather old white dragon. I took the membrane of his wing as a cloak (non magical), and then cut the dragon open in front of the rest of the horrified party, and ate the dragon's heart raw right there, and declared that his soul and his power lived on inside me.

I got absolutely no in-game benefit from these actions, save for way down the road when I mentioned my deeds to other barbarians and got like a +2 to a diplomacy check because they were impressed. I didn't care, just being able to say my barbarian ate a dragon heart and wore the wing as a trophy was enough.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:47 pm

I think this is definitely the domain of barbarians, I had one get run through by a minotaur, who then decapitated it and turned it's hide into a trenchcoat and it's skull into a goblet. I actually did get a slight mechanical benefit with a bit of mundane armour, since I was wearing a minotaur's hide over my chain, but the game was pretty lenient anyway (said barbarian also wielded a double-keen adamantine huge greatsword)

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:53 pm

Forgot about this one; one of my players was playing a chaos mage, and in the arena they fought a hill giant who carried a proportional mug for its ale. After they defeated the giant, the mage cut out a hole so his face could be seen while he wore it like a helmet. As they killed stuff, he would add pieces to adorn the mug-helm. His helmet eventually got...

cranium rat teeth
slaad talon
mephit wings
fuzzy dice from one of his wild surges
pieces of a nightmare's vertebrae

K · Post by K » Thu Sep 02, 2010 7:54 am

I always thought that the least ghoulish method of magic item creation would be to just assume that each culture has their own materials to make magic items with.

So dwarves use various metals and gems and jewelry, but a barbarian tribe uses animal products.

I mean, I'm more comfortable with elves using woods and magical growing things for their magic than just assuming everyone butchers possibly sentient creatures for their magic.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:21 am

K wrote:I always thought that the least ghoulish method of magic item creation would be to just assume that each culture has their own materials to make magic items with.

So dwarves use various metals and gems and jewelry, but a barbarian tribe uses animal products.

I mean, I'm more comfortable with elves using woods and magical growing things for their magic than just assuming everyone butchers possibly sentient creatures for their magic.

This is related to an old 3.0 argument we had about an elven mage who wanted to make an elven, mithril chainmail shirt.

He had the money for the crafting, but at that time the party was in the middle of Bramblefuck Nowhere with time to kill. The mage announced that he was going to create a magic item. The DM asked him where he got the mithril, since there was none in the party, and none for a hundred miles in any direction.

"Well... I'm an elf... I just... you know... find it."

I asked just how far he'd have to reach to pull the mithril out of his ass, when the rogue, quite in character, said:

"Oh I can see it now. You wake up, walk out into the forest 20 feet outside of town. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and suddenly, you look down... Hey! Mithril! It's a good thing I'm an elf, otherwise it'd never have been picked up!"

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:34 am

Leather and fur is a common material to make clothing, especially during this time period, so it's not unexpected to use fantastical creatures for parts rather than the usual cow/sheep.

There would be exotic forging techniques: only using the heat of the sun (think giant magnifying glass), only through friction by a stronger material w/higher melting point, by the extraction and weaving of an earth elemental's advanced earth glide ability. These aren't as visibly cool though unless you give the wearer time to tell you its history.

For obviously cool materials that are not fauna-derived: rune-covered origami, threaded grains of sand, giant flowers, surviving strands of the web spell, chains, hollowed out gems (last two much closer to armor than clothes)

For the painfully supernatural: compressed ice, solidified fire, beams of light, frozen lightning, tethered shadows, magic force fields

This does remind me of a possible trick. Make a wooden shack that's in the shape of a breastplate, cast shrink item and set it for the cloth option so you can wear it as a brown wife-beater over your outfit. The next time someone tries to hit you, it will expand outward and place you inside a large box to protect you from further attacks for at least a round as you prep up. Just avoid back-slappers...

K · Post by K » Thu Sep 02, 2010 10:21 am

Mithril could always be something like solidified moonlight. Then elves in forests could have a reason for why they have this special metal.

Red Archon · Post by **Red Archon** » Thu Sep 02, 2010 1:31 pm

Virgil: The Antimagic Hat works like that. You know, big, wooden ricehat-shaped object shrunk to fit on the head. When you get into an AMF, which is an emanation, it enlarges, leaving you outside the effect. Then teleport out. Don't blame me if that's old news.