***Dear Moderators!***
Please move this to the BG2 board. Thanks in advance.

Apparently the Dragon Scale armors were supposed to be "magical" and thus not wearable with any ring/cloak of protections.
You know this makes sense. :)

Will you have the strength of character to impose this restiction voluntarily now that you know? Or will you pretend that it's raining and go on as before?

This is information I got from the ToB board.
Read here if you like: http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/Forum10/HTML/000128.html

[This message has been edited by Earl Grey (edited July 05, 2001).]

Well I guess you could take it as a spoiler if it was moved there, because it's never been fixed in the original BG2, so the topic stays right here. There are enough ToB spoilers floating around there as it is.

Why do you think it can be a spoiler on ToB? It looks like a silent admission from the designers that this was an oversight/bug. Nothing else. That's why I wanted this in the BG2 forum.

Because the people who are playing BG2 without ToB obviously have no need to know. When they get the expansion, they'll find out, as did you. And anyway, there was a post about this very subject on the BIS message boards that I posted in the news some time ago.

Black Isle Studios Board Update
Posted Thursday, June 21, 2001 - 14:53 CET by Darien

Dave Gaider:

Dragon Scale and rings of protection:The rule, right from the beginning and right out of AD&D, is that the bonuses from rings of protection can't be combined with the bonuses from magical armor.

We don't allow people to put on the rings in that case because they would be confused as to why the AC bonuses weren't cumulative. The game tells you clearly why it can't be worn.

It's powerful armor because of its powerful magic. Period. The armor's been changed with lots of other things...and the change is retroactive to the beginning of BG2, just as any other patch would be.

Lots of items are fixed in ToB. The red dragon scale IS magical, after all. What's so cheap about that?

Actually, if you play BG2 again the dragon armor will be magical right from the get-go. All BG2 item changes affect BG2.

Oh, puh-lease. This is an old mistake that has nothing to to with balancing. Dragon scales are inherently magical...hence the bonuses when you make armor out of them. Generally any kind of powerful armor is powerful because it's magical, duh.

Not all of us hinged our entire existence on the exploit that one could combine a ring of protection with the red dragon armor, so we missed it. And besides, the patch was reserved primarily for stuff that was broken...not just implemented other than how we would have liked. Lots of other items that we wanted to change (like the ioun stones, the cloak of mirroring, darts, etc.) weren't changed for the patch, but are now.

Some make the items stronger, some make them weaker, as required. Issue a power-gamerish wail if you like, but that's the way it is.

I was always under the impression that the AC bonus from dragon armor was BASE just because of the sheer fact it IS dragon armor and not magical, thus making rings/whatever of protection usable.

On the other hand I can live with the AC penaly of 1 swapping my +2 ring for a ring of earth control so dont flame me for whinning/bug exploiting.

And about his question...
Apparently the Dragon Scale armors were supposed to be "magical" and thus not wearable with any ring/cloak of protections.
You know this makes sense.

Will you have the strength of character to impose this restiction voluntarily now that you know? Or will you pretend that it's raining and go on as before?

Ofcourse I will. I have never used rings of prot on this armour. The first few times that I played the game I never even tried doing it since I was certain it was impossible. After I learnt it wasn't I still didn't use it since I never remembered that it is usable. So I never (ab)used this bug :D.