How many pelts to make armor?

[NOMster]

But I can't find anything in any book telling me how much leather it takes to make a suit of armor? If Ive got 2 bear pelts, how much are they worth and how much leather or hide armor can I make?

[LudicSavant]

But I can't find anything in any book telling me how much leather it takes to make a suit of armor? If Ive got 2 bear pelts, how much are they worth and how much leather or hide armor can I make?

This is not something that the rulebooks cover, so you just have to ask your DM.

[DeTess]

DnD 5e lacks in-depth crafting rules, so this is a question for your DM.

Also, might I suggest changing the thread title, because right now it looks like spam. Maybe something like 'need crafting advice/help'?

[NOMster]

DnD 5e lacks in-depth crafting rules, so this is a question for your DM.

Also, might I suggest changing the thread title, because right now it looks like spam. Maybe something like 'need crafting advice/help'?

:Clap :clap done

[Slipperychicken]

But I can't find anything in any book telling me how much leather it takes to make a suit of armor? If Ive got 2 bear pelts, how much are they worth and how much leather or hide armor can I make?

Fair warning: D&D 5e does not do crafting well. I'd be amazed if you found anything official on the precise requirements for making a suit of armor.


You're basically in homebrew territory here. My recommendation is to do research on how this works IRL, try to translate that approximately into game rules, then show that to your GM and ask what he thinks. Have your sources available for him, so he can follow your line of thinking. I know that if I was GMing this, I wouldn't care too much about the specifics, might ask you to pay a nominal fee for other materials, and I'd just let you make however many armor-suits make sense for the amount of bear you have.

Another option is to see how it works in games with actual crafting systems, and port something similar in.

[VonKaiserstein]

As a rough guideline, I'd say it takes 2 hides of a similar sized creature to craft armor out of, or one of a larger creature. Check this out- http://spiffyguyadventures.blogspot.com/p/lamellar-armor_7.html That's a pretty effective scale mail, made of leather. It took half a cowhide to cover one person's torso, once it's converted to a type that can make armor. So one large sized creature (cow) could provide enough hide to armor one medium sized person.

Even boiling the leather causes some shrinkage, and not every bit of hide is thick enough to use for armor. Especially not after it's been magically blasted, sliced, stabbed and hacked.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Articles/Perfect_Armor_Improved.htm

[NOMster]

Cool. I'll run it by the DM as 1 bear to 1 medium size armor and 2 wolves to halfling armor or equivalent.

[Unoriginal]

5e crafting works well for what it wants to do, but what it wants to do is not simulationist at all.

If you work alone, crafting one leather or hide armor takes two days of downtime (cost in gp divided by 5). Since you use bear skin, I would say you can probably sell them at higher price.


As for the price of a bear pelt: it depends how much people are willing to pay for a non-essential item that's basically a luxury. If it's a trophy from a glorious hunt, or if you try to sell it in a place where bears are exotic, it could be worth quite a bit.

As a DM I would say one would be worth between 10 and 40 gps, in normal circumstances.

[LibraryOgre]

My rule of thumb is 1 hide will create armor for a creature 1 size lower than the creature itself... a Large hide will make armor for a Medium Creature, a Medium Hide will make armor for a Small creature. If you want wolf-hide armor for a medium creature, you're going to need enough wolves to make a large creature... so two or three wolves, assuming large is 400 pounds and your wolves are the monsters of legend who weigh 200#.

It's probably not accurate, but it works for me. I want to say there was a 2e source (the Draconomicon?) that had more complete rules for dragon hide being processed into armor, but it's not the MM, since I just checked that.

[Floogal]

For what it's worth, a small sized creature is enough to make a shield, javelin, club, or 4 darts/blowgun needles.

Source: Volo's Guide To Monsters, pg 113

Comparing a shield to leather armour, I would imagine 2-3 small creatures or a medium creature to be enough for medium-sized leather armour.