SOURCE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Rating the Benefits of Dragon Hide

Benefit #1 – 

Increase Strength, Constitution or Charisma by 1, to a maximum of 20 

Half an ASI is a benefit shared by many feats. This is one of the best variants we’ve seen, offering a choice of three stats, one more than many feats do, in a great spread of stats that every single class in 5e can use. 

Benefit #2 – 

When not wearing armor, the character’s Armor Class is 13 + Dex modifier. The character can also use a shield 

Always having armor is a useful little buff, especially when it’s as strong as this. While it takes a little building into, a character with max Dex and a shield has equivalent AC to someone wearing full plate, which is incredibly strong. 

Benefit #3 – 

The character grows claws, which can be extended or retracted at will. The claws are weapons that can be used to make unarmed strikes, dealing 1d4 + Str slashing damage 

Inbuilt weapons are a benefit that many racial archetypes offer. Always having a weapon on hand is nice, though not likely to impact gameplay in meaningful ways. 

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How It Functions

Half an ASI in Strength, Constitution, or Charisma

Many feats offer half an ASI as part of their features list, allowing a character to increase one of a choice of stats by 1. 

The variant offered by Dragon Hide is one of the best we’ve seen, offering a choice of three great stats, Strength, Constitution, or Charisma. 

This is excellent. Three choices of stat is one more option than many feats offer, and they’re three of the most used stats in the game

Strength is the primary stat for a good portion of the 5e melee roster, and covers some essential skills. Charisma covers several major casting classes, as well as Paladins, and every essential social skill. 

Finally, Constitution is a stat that every class can use more of. Because not being dead is the best way to keep adventuring. 

Overall, this is a great addition to the feat and increases the value of the rest of what’s on offer here significantly. 

Scaly Natural Armor

The first major feature of the Dragon Hide feat is that the character grows a hide … like a dragon. 

Mechanically, this means the character’s base AC is counted as 13 + Dex when not wearing armor, and the character can still use a shield if they have proficiency. 

Taken in a vacuum, this feature is incredibly powerful. If a character takes the feat at level 4, 13 AC plus Dex is roughly equivalent to medium armor. As the Dex bonus gets higher, the defensive profile becomes much more impressive. A character with 20 Dex and this feat has equivalent AC to someone in full plate, which is literally the best nonmagical armor in D&D 5e. 

Stack a shield onto that and a Dragonborn with the Dragon Hide feat has an AC equal to the strongest tank in the party. 

The issue is utility. Which characters will typically want this feat, and can they use it to its full potential? 

Unfortunately, for most characters, the answer is no:

• Martial characters typically come with every proficiency they need, for both weapons and armor
• High Dex, skirmisher characters like Rogues, Monks, and Rangers again have the proficiencies they need, and in some cases can’t even wear armor
• Spellcasters generally have few or no proficiencies but don’t rely on AC as their main defensive tool. Arcane casters even have access to Mage Armor, which is explicitly identical in stats to the armor section of this feat, without a shield. 

So who might want this? Three main character archetypes might look at Dragon Hide as an upgrade to their existing defenses. 

Dex characters such as the Rogue who’ve picked up shield proficiency from somewhere, either another feat, but more realistically a multiclass, and are looking to build a front-line fighter type and need more AC. 

Casters like the Warlock or Bard who don’t gain easy access to Mage Armor, and want to spike their defenses. This build doesn’t require a shield, finishing up on 18 AC without magic items or other boosts, which is a solid boost to many builds. 

Dragonborn who don’t care about efficiency, and want to run around in just their natural scales as the gods intended, because it’s awesome. 

Claws Like Spears

The last section of the Dragon Hide feat is the ability for a character to grow natural weapons at will, which deal 1d4 + Str slashing damage. 

Natural weaponry like this is a common sight in 5e. Typically, these weapons share some common traits; low damage and single stat dependency. 

While the ability to grow claws at will is incredibly awesome, as is the fact that you can make them disappear when necessary, y’know, just in case the giant scaly armored dragon man was too intimidating with his claws out, is this ability good?

Again, no. Some serious problems prevent these Draconic claws from ever being more than an emergency weapon. 

Firstly, the claws have no weapon traits and are typed as an unarmed strike. That means they do not qualify for many fighting styles and feats, for example, the Dueling style, which would make the damage of these claws much more meaningful. 

Second, and more importantly, the weapons do not have the Finesse trait, which would allow a character to use their Dex bonus instead of Strength for attack and damage rolls. 

It’s hard to overstate how much of a miss this is. Most of the characters who might consider this feat will have higher Dex than Str, so when the time comes, their claws will be unlikely to hit, and do very low damage. 

Most importantly, the fact that the weapons don’t have Finesse means no Sneak Attack, which makes the combat side of this feat useless for Rogues.  

Finally, it’s worth pointing out how strange it feels to have one part of the feat – the armor side, scale with Dexterity, but natural weapons that scale with Strength. Fixing this would go a long way to making the feat usable. Just a thought, if you’re dead set on taking it and have a permissive GM. 

Key Stats

The Dragon Hide feat offers a character +1 in either Strength, Constitution, or Charisma. 

As mentioned above, the feat also requires stats to function. The armor portion of Dragon Hide builds from Dex, which the feat doesn’t offer. The claws instead require Strength to stay relevant. 

Ideal Characters for Dragon Hide

Top Classes

Paladin – A Dex-based Dragonborn Paladin is exceptionally strong with the Dragon Hide feat. He doesn’t need a weapon, as he can attack with his claws, even Smiting through them if necessary (though realistically, still carry a weapon. You hit far harder.) He doesn’t need armor, as his base AC plus a shield is equivalent to the best Heavy Armor available. He can combine brutal melee strikes with AOE energy blasts, basically at will. 

Combine all of this with an aggressive Oath, like Vengeance, to bring the fight to your enemies, or a defensive Oath like Watchers if you want to anchor the heart of the party. 

Bard – Non-combat subclass Bards only ever gain light armor proficiency, and have very little in the way of defensive spellcasting, including no Mage Armor. 

Dragon Hide is a step up from the class’s innate defense, plus offers nice utility benefits and a boost to stats. It’s not an essential pick up, but if you have an odd Charisma point, there’s definite play here. 

Sorcerer – Sorcerers are one of the squishiest classes in the whole of 5e. A tiny HP pool, no armor, and a narrow spell selection with limited space for defenses do not a tough character make. 

The natural armor of this feat is already strong with Sorcerers. Boosting relevant stats is nice, and the class might even see some use from the claws if they happen to have melee cantrips on hand when enemies get too close…

Ironically, the worst subclass with this feat is Draconic, because it already offers the armor benefits of this feat as its level 1 boost. Instead, look for Lunar, Aberrant Mind, or Clockwork Soul for the bonus spells and bonus power.  

Multiclassing Considerations

It sounds strange, but one of the strongest benefits of the Dragon Hide feat is the ability to use shields with its natural armor. But many classes only have light armor, so those who might want this feat, can’t use shields. 

For the spellcasters looking at Dragon Hide, grabbing a level of something that offers shield proficiency is a serious boost to protection. +2 AC is a lot when extended across an entire adventuring career. 

Race or Subrace Choices

The only race that can take the Dragon Hide feat is Dragonborn. 

Of the three variants, all offer a breath weapon and some sort of elemental resistance. Chromatic Dragons double down on defense, able to become immune to their chosen elemental heritage once per day, which is fantastic when it comes up, and useless otherwise. 

Metallic Dragons are the most aggressive, gaining a second breath weapon with its own disabling effects; great for martial characters. Finally, Gem Dragonborn gain innate telepathy, and the ability post level 5 to sprout wings and fly once per day. 

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Dragon Fear – The other, better, Dragonborn unique feat. Dragon Fear lets the character give up a breath weapon use for a massive AOE fear, which is better used when surrounded by enemies. And the toughness granted by Dragon Hide keeps you alive in the rounds afterward. 

War Caster – Many characters who want this feat are going to be casters and might want to get closer to the battle now that they don’t have the resilience of a piece of wet tissue paper. 

The War Caster feat gives advantage on Concentration checks, plus casting while carrying weapons, and attacking with cantrips as a reaction. For combat casters, there’s probably no better feat. 

Tavern Brawler – As written, the claw attacks granted by this feat are unarmed strikes, so qualify for the bonus action grapple of Tavern Brawler. The spellcasting classes who might want Dragon Hide also normally have spells that make them surprisingly good at grappling, like Enhance Ability. 

Spells that Synergize

Booming Blade – The single most effective melee cantrip in 5e. Attack and deal bonus damage, with a second burst, if the enemy tries to move away. 

Be aware that technically, a Dragonborn’s claws do not meet the material component requirements of the spell, but the common consensus is that anyone telling you you can’t dragon punch someone with your energy fist doesn’t like fun and should be ignored. Still, talk to your GM first before using this combo. 

Shield – An emergency +5 to AC spikes defense to incredible levels for a turn. 

Absorb Elements – All Dragonborn already have one built-in elemental resistance. Extend that defense to all elements as a reaction, then gain a damage bonus on your next melee attack. Or claw strike…

Strategies for Maximizing Dragon Hide Effectiveness

Boosting Claw Strikes

The natural weapons granted by the Dragon Hide feat look underwhelming at first glance. But just how strong can we make them?

Pretty damn strong, as it turns out. Here’s a short list of things that can affect their damage:

• Increasing Strength – Sounds obvious, but higher Strength increases the hit bonus and damage of your claws. A Belt of Giant Strength can also push a character’s Strength past normal limits, for even more damage
• Damage buff spells like Hunter’s Mark, Crusader’s Mantle, or Hex can add up to 1d6 damage per attack made
• Individual attack spells like Zephyr Strike or any Smite spell can boost the damage of one attack
• Subclass abilities like the Battle Master’s maneuvers
• The Paladin’s Smite. This one, in particular, feels impactful, especially in the times when the party has no weapons, for example, if the party is meeting a rebellious lord who turns hostile, only for the Paladin to holy punch someone’s head off. 
• The Unarmed Fighting style, boosts the damage of your unarmed strikes to 1d6, or 1d8 if you have nothing at all in your hands. Hilariously, this is outright better than the claws granted by the feat. 
• The Insignia of Claws and Eldritch Claw magic items, both of which turn your claw hand attacks magical, and give them +1 to hit and damage. 

Is all of this worth leaning into and making a build out of? Probably not, no. A sword is going to be easier to build into and gets stronger faster. But it’s worth knowing that, if you so choose, you can make the claws not completely useless. 

Dragon Hide Stat Efficiency

One of the biggest issues with the Dragon Hide feat is how stat-reliant it is; requiring two stats that most characters aren’t going to want to, or be able to, boost simultaneously. 

See, the armor portion of Dragon Hide is incredibly strong, matching, as we’ve already said, the AC expected from a character wearing full plate with a shield. This is honestly kind of crazy, especially for a build that doesn’t require any sort of gear, with natural, built-in scaling as long as a character is increasing their Dex.

But the claws instead scale with Strength. No character looking to max their Dex first is going to have sufficient Strength to make these weapons viable in any way that’s not last ditch emergency weapon. That’s an absolutely fine thing to have, but is it worth spending a chunk of a feat on? No, it isn’t. 

Final Thoughts on Dragon Hide

Dragon Hide isn’t a good feat. 

And that’s a massive shame, because the theme, of a character leaning hard into their draconic heritage and growing natural armor and weapons before tearing into their enemies like the great drakes of old is so awesome. 

But actually making the feat work is the problem. Any class that can make great use of this probably already has better options, and the two major benefits of natural armor and natural weapons, just don’t work together. 

Building towards one part of the feat doesn’t make the other stronger and that’s a problem, especially when almost everything this feat offers can be replaced with mundane equipment. 

What Dragon Hide does is incredibly cool. It’s just not very good. If you wanna take it and fulfill your draconic fantasy, you absolutely should. Just know that you’re not building optimally when you do.