There should be a way to combine different colors of dragon scales or scale mail into new colors, according to color theory; i.e. red dragon scales plus yellow dragon scales equals orange dragon scales.
Potion of dragon breath: when quaffed, it enables you to use the breath attacks of a specific type of dragon without being polymorphed into that dragon, either for a limited time or for a limited amount of uses or both.
The potion can be crafted by dipping any type of dragon scales in a potion of acid, which destroys the scales and turns the potion into dragon breath. It could be randomly generated, or never generate and rely on the player to make it.
Wearing white dragon scale armor prevents corpses in your inventory from rotting, which enables you to wield a cockatrice corpse indefinitely.
Since giants cannot wear chromatic dragon scales, it should be possible to combine 3 sets of each dragon’s colored scales into a giant-sized chromatic dragon scale cloak.
One of the dragon armors should confer energy regeneration as its primary or secondary extrinsic. The problem is there aren’t any obvious candidates which would be appropriately flavorful, other than gray dragon armor, and that is unsuitable because it would be overpowered.
Genociding a type of dragon destroys all dragon scales and dragon scale mail (or dragon-scaled armor in certain variants) that exist in the game, and makes them impossible to wish for in the future.
In the owned artifacts patch, wishing for dragon scales or scale mail may instead spawn a dragon of the requested color, who is still wearing the scales.
Adjust the AC values of dragon scale mail (or possibly, the maximum amount to which they can be enchanted) to even out their general utility to the player. Specifically:
Variants that give Croesus armor made of gold should also have a small chance that his body armor is replaced with gold dragon scale mail.
Consistent with the Owned Artifacts Patch, wishing for dragon armor in EvilHack should instead summon a dragon of the wished-for color that you must fight for the scales. (It will be guaranteed to drop them, unlike a regular dragon.)
Rather than having dragonhide items be generically “dragonhide”, let them each be a certain dragon color, which cannot be specified by wishing. This item does not confer the same extrinsic it would if it were body armor. Instead, when you are wearing dragon scales or mail and a dragonhide item of the same color in another slot, you gain a very powerful extrinsic which cannot be gained otherwise. E.g. cancellation immunity for gray dragon armor.
The idea is to discourage everyone continuing to wear gray or silver dragon scale mail: if you find or wish for dragonhide gear and get some other color, it may be attractive to wear dragon scale mail of that color instead in order to get the powerful extrinsic.
Shimmering dragon scales or scale mail should grant half physical damage in addition to displacement because anything that hits you is likely a glancing blow due to the displacement.
Assuming dtsund’s dragon scale mail proposal has been implemented: Confer extra dragon scale extrinsics (similar to those found in FIQHack: speed for blue scales, free action for orange scales, etc) if and only if the player is wearing dragon-scaled armor and a matching set of scales in their cloak slot.
Chromatic dragon scales or scale mail, rather than providing all resistances at once, can be invoked to choose which one resistance it will provide. This resistance remains active until the next time you invoke it.
A “never wore dragonhide” conduct, which includes “natural” dragon armor items like scales and scale mail.
The game should award an achievement for ascending with a full set of dragonhide armor (a dragonhide piece of gear in all six armor slots).
Player monsters do not generate with dragon scale mail until well after the difficulty where adult dragons spawn.
Wearing sea dragon scale mail grants extrinsic swimming.
Gold dragon armor’s light radius is increased by 1 if its enchantment is above some amount such as +5.
Low-level sapient creatures avoid you and will not attack if you are visibly equipped with top-tier gear such as dragon scale mail or artifact weapons, unless they decide they have some advantage with which to beat you.
Dragon scale mail changes the color your character renders as depending on the color of the mail.
Yellow dragon scale mail gives petrification resistance instead of (or possibly in addition to) acid resistance.
Shimmering dragon scale mail grants see invisible.
If wind dragons are added, their scales should grant speed or slow resistance in addition to flight.
Armor should make use of its corpsenm (monster index) for efficiency and to do interesting things that are not currently done. For example, this would allow dragon scales and scale mail to be merged into two items that use the various dragon monster indexes to figure out its special effects, and it would allow for fireproof low boots created from polypiling a crocodile corpse to be flavored differently. In variants where applying dragon properties to other pieces of armor is being considered or planned, this would provide an easy way to do so.
Also see dtsund’s dragon scale mail proposal.
Wind dragons, a cyan D whose breath is a wind beam: it doesn’t damage you, but blows you backward, and can’t be reflected. Their scales grant flight, which should confer resistance against knockback and Newton’s Third Law.
It should be possible to enchant dragon scales into dragonhide gear that is not scale mail.
