D&D5e Rare Materials

Hides & Leathers

• Dragon Leather: Armor (leather, studded leather, scale mail, hide): The powerful virtues of dragon's hide can be invested into suits of armor made of the material by cunning craftsmen. When you're wearing armor made from it, you reduce the damage taken from slashing and piercing injuries by 1. You additionally reduce damage taken from a single damage type that corresponds with the original dragon's breath weapon by 1 (fire for red dragons, lightning for blue, etc). Wearers are warned, however, that dragons do take ill to those they encounter wearing this.

Metals

• Adamantine: An alloy of adamant, silver, and electrum, or of steel and mithral, it is black in color, with a green sheen in candlelight or a purple-white light in magical radiance.
  • Armor (Chain shirt, scale mail, breastplate, half plate; ring mail, chain mail, splint, plate): Adamant makes armor of exquisite diamond-hard substance. While you're wearing it, any critical hit against you becomes a normal hit.
  • Weapons: Though adamantine weapons have no additional properties, adamantine takes and holds magic quite well. Many magical weapons are wrought of adamantine because of this.
• Adamant: A gleaming, glossy black refinement of adamantine, a natural jet-black ferromagnetic ore found in obsidian beds. It is gleaming, glossy black, with a rainbow sheen in bright light. It is too brittle to make keen weapons from, but is a favorite of dwarf-folk for hammers.
  • Armor (Chain shirt, scale mail, ring mail, chain mail, splint): Though this jet black metal is too fragile to form actual armor, strips of it can be used to reinforce flexible armors. It strengthens the armor minutely, but its main property is to partially absorb fire. You reduce all slashing damage by 1, and all fire damage by 1d6. In any combat in which you take bludgeoning damage, however, roll a d20 at the end of the combat. If you roll a 9 or lower, the strips of adamant have been shattered and will need to be repaired (which costs 20% of the cost to install the reinforcements) by a smith skilled in the working of adamant. Until repairs are done, you lose all benefits of this material.
  • Weapons (bludgeoning): When you have advantage on an attack roll, if the lower of the two dice would also hit your target's AC, you inflict an additional d4 damage.
• Arandur: Once the exclusive secret of the gnome-kind, arandur is a gleaming silver-blue metal, with a green reflective sheen in sunlight. It also naturally absorbs the magical injuries used to inflict raw kinetic injuries.
  • Armor (scale mail, breastplate, half plate; splint, plate; shield): When used to make non-flexible metal armors, arandur grants its wearer the ability to reduce force damage by 2.
  • Weapons (slashing or piercing): Arandur can be honed to wicked edges that are not easily dulled. When you inflict a critical with a slashing or piercing weapons wrought of arandur, add your Proficiency bonus to the final damage total.
• Darksteel: A silvery metal with a shadowed cast that gleams purple-ish in firelight, darksteel's making is lost today, an ancient secret of teh Ironstar clan of dwarves. Smiths throughout the Realms offer great amounts of gold for the recovery of any lost ingots of the metal.
  • Armor (Chain shirt, scale mail, breastplate, half plate; ring mail, chain mail, splint, plate): Armor wrought of darksteel reduces all bludgeoning and lightning damage inflicted to the wearer by 1.
• Dlarun: A little known halfling metal dug up from clumps of river clay and then kilned at high temperatures, dlarun is a bone-white metal that can take a high polish, and gains a distinctive greenish sheen under magical lighting. It has the strange benefit of steadying the minds of those that wear it.
  • Armor (Studded leather; breastplate, half plate; splint, plate; shield): Armor wrought of dlarun reduces all bludgeoning and psychic damage by 1, and grants a +1 to saves against all Enchantment spells.
• Gold: Though quite precious, gold is still considered one of the "common metals." Gold is aligned with solar and celestial magics, purifying undeath. Gold continually flakes and chips away, however, necessitating constant (although simple) repairs.
  • Armor (any): Though gold is too soft to make armor from, while wearing gold-filigreed armor, reduce all necrotic damage taken by 1. For each item of armor possessed and used, add the following costs to your Lifestyle expenditures per month: 1sp for light armor or shield, 5sp for medium armor, 1gp for heavy armor.
  • Weapon (any): Gold-filigreed weapons used to strike the undead inflict 1 additional point of radiant damage. For each such weapon, add 2sp to your Lifestyle cost expenditures per month.
• Mithral: Called the "truemetal" by dwarf-folk, mithral is derived from soft, glittering, silvery-black ore found in rare veins and pockets from the depths of the Underdark to surface rocks.
  • Armor (chain shirt, scale mail, breastplate, half plate; ring mail, chain mail, splint, plate; shield): Mithral lends subtlety and grace to the wearer. If the armor normally inflicts disadvantage on Stealth rolls, that property is negated. If it does not, then the armor can be worn normally under clothes without giving away the fact that the wearer is wearing armor.
  • Weapons (slashing or piercing): The fine edge of mithral is sung about in elven ballads, and with good reason. When you have advantage on an attack roll, if the lower of the two dice would also hit your target's AC, you inflict an additional d4 damage.
• Silver: Another common metal, silver is aligned with the powers and mysteries of Selûne.
  • Weapon (any): Many creatures take grievous wounds from silvered weapons. Though the metal is too soft and costly to make weapons from directly, weapons can easily be silvered with the stuff, granting the property of the metal without taking away from its utility.
• Telstang: Originally a gnomish secret, this alloy of copper, mithral, platinum, and silver is a dull pewter-silver in hue, and gives off a clear bell-like tone when struck with another metal (leading to its other name of "singing metal"). It also collects and reverberates sudden sonic assaults outward away from itself.
  • Armor (Scale mail, breastplate, half plate; splint, plate): Though telstang's construction make it largely unsuitable for armors, some craft them anyway for its two tremendous benefits. The first is that any sonic damage taken by the wearer is reduced by 1d6 points. The second is that the wearer automatically succeeds at any saving throws that paralyze or change his shape. Any critical hit with bludgeoning or force damage shatters your armor, however (though this critical hit only inflicts normal damage instead of doubling it).

Metal Treatments

These are alchemical and metallurgical treatments used to treat specific kinds of metals.

• Blueshine: Metal weapons and armor. A treatment that gives a bluish sheen to any items wrought of iron, steel, adamantine, arandur, darksteel, mithral, silver, or telstang, blueshine helps negate caustic substances. The metal part of weapons coated in the stuff become immune to acid damage, and armors coated in it grant resistance to acid damage: reduce all acid damage taken by 1 for medium armors or 2 for heavy armors.
• Everbright: Metal weapons and armor. A dwarven process now known to smiths of many folk, everbright-treated items gleam with a mirror finish (like a chromium finish). Metal objects (which can only be made of steel, adamantine, or mithral) treated with everbright are immune to rust and the passage of time, and those wearing armor or bearing shields treated with it reduce radiant damage taken by 1 for medium armors and shields or 2 for heavy armors. Remaining unseen while wearing such armor is quite difficult, however; those searching visually for everbright-clad characters gain advantage on their checks to spot them.
• Halabar's Stealth: Metal weapons and armor. An expensive but increasingly common metal treatment that renders metallic weapons and armor nonferromagnetic, nonreflective, and wholly silent, not even clanging when struck against other metals or stone. Drawing or wielding such weapons will not reveal a hidden character, and metal armor wrought of it does not inflict disadvantage on Stealth checks.