Should'nt dragon stuff be absurdly common?

[Psyren]

In most settings, dragons aren't just tough to take down, they're pretty rare. The living ones mostly avoid mortal races, and coming across the dead ones wouldn't be that far off from coming across intact dinosaur fossils/skeletons. So getting enough remains to craft more than a handful of armor and weapon pieces would be a lot less likely than you'd think.

[Kaptin Keen]

I think that if that was what happened, society would collapse. If wandering monsters were actually kingdom scale threats, society would collapse. You wouldn't be able to have cities if random sky-lizards torched your crops every tuesday, or trade if every third caravan got eaten by roving monsters. A walled city should have the defensive capability to protect it and its domain from the majority of monster threats [canonically apocalyptic once-in-several-era threats like a Tarrasque notwithstanding]. I don't feel like dragons are presented as apocalyptic threats in D&D; they're more like town-level threats. More threatening than a Skyrim dragon [which is more of a momentary inconvenience], but much less threatening than Smaug [which is a regional catastrophe with effects for multiple generations].

Anyway, back around, Dragons aren't something you could conceivably farm and breed. For one, they're intelligent enough to seek their own mates. For two, it would require a hell of a containment mechanism. For three, they're reproductive cycle is far too long to breed them and actually have a return-on-investment. Also, they're antisocial, so you can't keep a bunch of them in a big pen without them killing each other.

So getting dragonscale armor is a matter of tracking them down [which is difficult, since they're intelligent and don't leave tracks], invading their lairs, and then successfully engaging them [which a small team might not be able to do without the aid of emplaced weapons]. The pay off would be the ability to make a few sets of armor out of them. That is to say, the reward is definitely not worth the investment for a kingdom-sized state, which can achieve its ends by working serfs to death in mines to quarry iron and coal. It takes much less skill to break rocks than it does to slay dragons, and serfs are cheaper than soldiers.

Also, Kingdoms would definitely not want to encourage their men to engage in activities like adventuring. If every soldier and peasant decided to try their hand at being a fighter or wizard or rouge, ideas such as independence and rights and fair treatment and equality might start to develop if institutionalized control over wealth and land could be broken by a squad or platoon getting lucky in a dragon lair.

All of that is at best tangentially related to what I said, so I have no idea why you chose to quote me. But I'll just leave it at - yes, Smaug is what a dragon should be. Nigh-invincible, living at the heart of a distant region sane people don't chose to live in, because every once in a long while, he wakes and burns anything he considers insulting - or edible.

[noob]

All of that is at best tangentially related to what I said, so I have no idea why you chose to quote me. But I'll just leave it at - yes, Smaug is what a dragon should be. Nigh-invincible, living at the heart of a distant region sane people don't chose to live in, because every once in a long while, he wakes and burns anything he considers insulting - or edible.

Dragons as well as everything else all die to sarruks if we are in full dnd logic.

[Kaptin Keen]

Dragons as well as everything else all die to sarruks if we are in full dnd logic.

Well - that depends, I'd say. I have no idea what a sarruk is, meaning it's from a source I don't own, and sources I don't own, don't exist. So in a fairly specific light, that's definitely not true.

But I guess the point you're making is that 'there are bigger fish out there'. And ... that's potentially true. Dragons are sort of assumed (those, and dungeons), but even dragons and dungeons are up to the GM and group in question. For instance, I haven't used a dragon in a game for ... oh, 20 years I guess, it's propably back in the mid-90's.

But it doesn't feel like that's the point we're arguing. If the GM so desires, then there are bigger fish in the sea - but what we're arguing is how common dragon scales are, and by extension how common dragons are, and my point is that just because we've killed dragons before, we assume dragons generally die when visited by adventureres. This is a clear case of confirmation bias, and should be quite obviously wrong with even the slightest bit of work: Dragons tend to grow very old indeed, which in itself is an indication that the vast majority of Adventurer Vs Dragon fights end with the dragon still alive.

Many more arguments could be added, but I'm not going to. I'll just say that ... unless you deliberately make monsters rare, and unique, and exciting - they automatically become common, and repetitive, and dull. This is the primary reason why Dragonlance is such an utterly crappy setting =)

[Resileaf]

My headcanon is that most dragon deaths come from each other. Chromatic and metallics are in a constant warring state, so they tend to fight each other whenever they cross paths. Those that adventurers kill are those that beat all their rivals in a given region, allowing them to become a threat.

[OmSwaOperations]

Yeah, very confused by this thread...

Yet another reason why Dragon stuff shouldn't be absurdly common is that its probably absurdly valuable as well. In the lore of most fantasy worlds, dragon hide and scales are amongst the most impenetrable materials out there; and Dragon-bits are also often very potent magical ingredients. So even if there was a *decent* amount of Dragon-offcuts around, there would be a *lot* of people after them, which would make them very expensive (and very rare) on the open market.

[Pleh]

My headcanon is that most dragon deaths come from each other. Chromatic and metallics are in a constant warring state, so they tend to fight each other whenever they cross paths. Those that adventurers kill are those that beat all their rivals in a given region, allowing them to become a threat.

Also, dragons hoard wealth. When a dragon slays a fellow dragon, they're not abandoning a fortune in dead dragon bits for peasant humanoids to profit by. They probably breathe on the remains to get them into a preserved state and hoard it in their lair with the rest of their treasure.

[LordCdrMilitant]

All of that is at best tangentially related to what I said, so I have no idea why you chose to quote me. But I'll just leave it at - yes, Smaug is what a dragon should be. Nigh-invincible, living at the heart of a distant region sane people don't chose to live in, because every once in a long while, he wakes and burns anything he considers insulting - or edible.

D&D dragons aren't Smaug, though. They're considerably less threatening, and more common. I personally prefer to have dragons acting overtly become target practice for air defense batteries, and dragons generally achieve their ends by using their shapeshifting powers and natural spellcasting to blend in with humanity and become mayors and things [after all, why would you live in a cave on a mountainside and steal gold from prickly things when you can literally have all the little people just give you gold?].


However, how we personally use Dragons isn't particularly relevant, so much as how they're generically presented. An adult red dragon is CR 14 as per the PFSRD, which is threatening, but not that threatening. Modelled with the half-and-half-again model that seems somewhat popular [though simplistic and probably overestimating], that's still in the range where a large city could muster up a group of people with levels and classes of adequate level to drive it off, and a kingdom could easily protect itself.

An adult red dragon in 5e is CR 17, which is both scarier and not, because in 5e almost anything can be overwhelmed by enough archers. If it helps, it would take about 550 peasant archers to pincushion a dragon in a round. If the city in question can muster up a small army, it can definitely down a dragon [250HP, average 4.5 damage, hit on a 19 or 20].


That said, while a kingdom or city may be able to defend itself from a dragon, smoking them out of their lair is another matter entirely, and they're rare, antisocial, and slow-breeding enough that you probably couldn't farm them.

[Quertus]

Anyway, back around, Dragons aren't something you could conceivably farm and breed. For one, they're intelligent enough to seek their own mates. For two, it would require a hell of a containment mechanism. For three, they're reproductive cycle is far too long to breed them and actually have a return-on-investment. Also, they're antisocial, so you can't keep a bunch of them in a big pen without them killing each other.

So getting dragonscale armor is a matter of tracking them down [which is difficult, since they're intelligent and don't leave tracks], invading their lairs, and then successfully engaging them [which a small team might not be able to do without the aid of emplaced weapons]. The pay off would be the ability to make a few sets of armor out of them. That is to say, the reward is definitely not worth the investment for a kingdom-sized state, which can achieve its ends by working serfs to death in mines to quarry iron and coal. It takes much less skill to break rocks than it does to slay dragons, and serfs are cheaper than soldiers.

Mindrape. Feeble-mind.

You're assuming dragon scale armor lasts forever. The reenactors I know constantly damage and dent their armor. This is fine when it's steel armor and the repair work can be done by the local smith with steel or by replacing a few rings of chainmail. With dragon scale, how do you repair it? Maybe a lot of the scales from each dragon are being used to repair older suits of armor or maybe older dragon based armor just gets thrown out or cannibalized for parts often enough due to being damaged that humans can't amass a giant stockpile.

Regeneration.

Well maybe I can think of a number of assumptions needed for that to be true:

• Dragons are plentiful enough to be hunted.
• People who can hunt dragons exist in the world.
• Those people are interested in hunting dragons to make goods out of them.
• There is no additional moral issues with hunting dragons.
• Dragon stuff has significant additional value above more available options.
• Killing a dragon produces enough goods for it to be hunt for that reason. (Alt. There are plenty of other reasons to kill dragons.)

For example I would consider wearing dragon hide in any setting where dragons have human level intelligence roughly equivalent to wearing human skin. In the Iron Kingdom the known dragons all created there own factions, so great is their power. Others they could be a kind of element, or dragon hide could be roughly equitant to the hide of any lizard.

So in some settings yes, others not so much.

1 Dragon, Regeneration, done.

Now see, none of this is thinking of how to get dragonscale armor and such very well. hunting? Pffh! what are you, hunter-scavengers? go out, TAME and DOMESTICATE the dragons so that they are your slaves, make them breed, slaughter the mother and father when you have no more use for them, raise the kids to be docile slave/animals to your needs, and repeat the cycle over and over again to get more sustainable source of scales for everyone.

Yes this is evil. nothing in DnD's cosmic morality prevents this from happening, all that changes the consequences of making it happen. But thats not the point. hunting things for their hide and pelts is the amateurs way of making pelts from slaughtering other life forms. the masters raise them to the point where they can get the best scales at the best times, calculating just right when to slaughter them and skin their corpse while making that life love them just for giving them food. thats the real way you get common dragon scale armor- like y'know, sheep.

the fact that Dragons are not in farms being exploited like this, tells you all you need to know. bear pelt rugs and trophies of dead animal heads and taxidermied stuff are things big game hunters bring back to prove that they actually went out of their way to get this stuff themselves, not something you turn into industry. because bears and whatnot are not domesticate-able. nor are dragons, and dragons are basically bears x 10 or x20 or something, and you don't screw with bears. you go out and try and make bears into a farm animal, see what it gets you. now try the same with dragons. neither works? EXACTLY.

Feeble-mind, Mindrape.

I feel like humans attempting to make an industry out of taming+domesticating dragons would go remarkably poorly. Every species except Whites and Blacks are as smart as humans literally from birth, and grow more intelligent as they get older. The nature of who is the tamer and who is the pet might end up being subverted in very short order.

Feeble-mind. Also, Mindrape.

Humans actually do farm bears, in order to extract their bile. It's a horrific practice, but just because an animal can't be domesticated doesn't mean humans cannot or will not farm them as a resource, often unsustainably to the point of extinction.

But, in D&D neither domestication or destruction farming or sustained hunting is at all necessary.

You can create a functionally infinite supply of any corporeal monster parts by subduing one specimen, cutting off all the limbs and dicing them into nice 1-cubic-inch pieces, and then putting the helpless creature into Temporal Stasis. Then you just Clone away, producing all the specialized biomass you'll ever need from base precursors.

So, if dragon-based armor is the best armor, there should be someone out there running a highly efficient factory full of dragon-cloning tanks for the purpose in order to churn out the requisite scales. You only need a single 13th-level wizard to set it up, and it's not a full time gig.

Or Regeneration.

[King of Nowhere]

actually, looting dragons that die of natural causes should be a major source of dragon hide. it makes sense.
however, if we consider degradation and damage, some of those armors should be lost over time. they could be less rare, but still not common.

regarding dragons, i don't see why they should care that much about the use of their dead, if they died of natural causes and have huge magical power. human leather was sometimes used in the past. in fact, if dragons want treasure, many of them would be willing to sell some scales. you could have a whole economy based on it.

evil dragons may also not care about their kin. But if someone was exterminating dragons wholesale, they would be smart enough to unite against the threat. so yoou woulnd't have to deal with one single angry dragon, but with dozens of angry dragons.

[The Jack]

Since dragon scale is better than steel and is, well, armour composed of lots of little pieces it's far more likely that you'll knock a scale off and have to reattach it than actually break a scale.


Acid dragon scales, if not all dragon scales, would last forever too, as they wouldn't corrode.

[Lord Raziere]

Feeble-mind, Mindrape.

Burn books. 10char.

[Cikomyr]

The way I see it, even if dragons are "good", they won't be any less greedy or proud.

If the uplifted monkeys that like to call themselves "civilized" start cutting up pieces of Dragons to make armor in anything remotely resembling a large/industrial size, there will be hell to pay. Same reason someone should be wary to declare as moniker of "Dragonslayer". Advertising you killed as supergenius arrogant magical lizard is a good way for you to draw another one's ire.

[MoiMagnus]

Regeneration.

If you are in a setting where lv15 (edit: I mean Lv13) casters are common enough, then I don't think any ressource scarity exist (unless artificially maintained by some guilds, and with the exception of some magical ressources), including dragon scales.

I mean, if you take 5e, a lv 14 transmutation mage can transform a 5x5x5 cube of any nonmagic stuff into any other nonmagic stuff once per day.
(And, by the way on similar stupid consequences, a lv14 mage of transmutation magic can maintain a community of 6026 = 3d10 x 365.25 persons eternally young, if that's the only use of its stone he makes.)

[Kaptin Keen]

D&D dragons aren't Smaug, though. They're considerably less threatening, and more common.

That's only true if you make it so. Pump up levels and fight fledgeling dragons, then yes, this happens:

I personally prefer to have dragons acting overtly become target practice for air defense batteries

And as should be clear, that's what I'm arguing against.

But it's symptomatic, I agree with you on that: I play a lot of E6, and I play dragons as being significantly more intelligent than the average human. The vast majority of them advance to ripe old age, and are easily a match for any mid-sized nation.

Of course, when I say I play them, what I mean is I really don't. I hate dragons, and they're not useful for games as anything but legends and myths. But for all intents and purposes, if there were any dragons in my games (outside whispered stories at the Foaming Mug tavern), that's how they'd be.

[noob]

If you are in a setting where lv15 casters are common enough, then I don't think any ressource scarity exist (unless artificially maintained by some guilds, and with the exception of some magical ressources), including dragon scales.

I mean, if you take 5e, a lv 14 transmutation mage can transform a 5x5x5 cube of any nonmagic stuff into any other nonmagic stuff once per day.
(And, by the way on similar stupid consequences, a lv14 mage of transmutation magic can maintain a community of 6026 = 3d10 x 365.25 persons eternally young, if that's the only use of its stone he makes.)

Then afterwards if all those people go to transmutation wizard school or cleric school it might slowly start turning the whole population in immortal transmutation wizards or clerics(over a very long time and only if there is also some people able to resurrect those who gets assassinated).
The people with no ability to become a cleric or wizard or simply of high level will progressively get killed and not resurrected because they are poorer and of no strong benefit to the immortal society

[Quertus]

Burn books. 10char.

Eh?

One Dragon, chained up with a feeding tube Ring of Sustenance, unconscious through multiple means (including Feeble-mind + Greater Bestow Curse), Mindraped just in case, can, via Regeneration, provide a NI supply. Get a few like that, artificial insemination, keep a breeding population, and you're Golden. Or Chromatic.

Make it very common knowledge exactly what the Dragon(s)'s crime(s) were, to discourage further lawbreaking.

Sure, some band of plucky young heroes may come for you some day, but, let's be honest, if you wanted to outfit your army in dead sentient being, it was probably going to happen anyway.

[noob]

Eh?

One Dragon, chained up with a feeding tube, unconscious through multiple means (including Feeble-mind + Greater Bestow Curse), Mindraped just in case, can, via Regeneration, provide a NI supply. Get a few like that, artificial insemination, keep a breeding population, and you're Golden. Or Chromatic.

Make it very common knowledge exactly what the Dragon(s)'s crime(s) were, to discourage further lawbreaking.

Sure, some band of plucky young heroes may come for you some day, but, let's be honest, if you wanted to outfit your army in dead sentient being, it was probably going to happen anyway.

I am quite sure that there is some sort of "conjure opposing band of hero" spell that is in the list of all the evil spellcasters.

[Recherché]

Since dragon scale is better than steel and is, well, armour composed of lots of little pieces it's far more likely that you'll knock a scale off and have to reattach it than actually break a scale.


Acid dragon scales, if not all dragon scales, would last forever too, as they wouldn't corrode.

Have you tried searching a practice rink for chainmail rings? I can only imagine that searching an active battlefield for your scales would be worse. Also given that that dragons do not have infinite DR I'm going to assume that the scales are not indestructible and can split, get chipped or otherwise become damaged. While they're on the dragon this won't matter too much because the dragon will shed them and regrow them. Humans can't exactly do that though.

[Quertus]

Have you tried searching a practice rink for chainmail rings? I can only imagine that searching an active battlefield for your scales would be worse. Also given that that dragons do not have infinite DR I'm going to assume that the scales are not indestructible and can split, get chipped or otherwise become damaged. While they're on the dragon this won't matter too much because the dragon will shed them and regrow them. Humans can't exactly do that though.

Detect Dragon Scales (or Locate Object). Mending / Make Whole.

[Bacon Elemental]

Detect Dragon Scales (or Locate Object). Mending / Make Whole.

Considering that the whole point of this thought experiment is about the large-scale equipping of armed forces with dragonscale armour, it seems highly impractical to have a cohort of wizards to follow them around using magic to pick up all the missing scales after every scrap.

[King of Nowhere]

Acid dragon scales, if not all dragon scales, would last forever too, as they wouldn't corrode.

glass is immune to acid, but it scratches and slowly grinds to dust.
plastic is immune to acid, but it gradually crumbles in sunlight.

immunity to corrosion does not make something everlasting

[The Glyphstone]

Decomposition and corrosion are two completely different processes anyways. Chitin/keratin is highly resistant to decomposition, but not invincible to it with sufficient heat and moisture, and I could see dragonscales behaving in a similar fashion.

[Spore]

Right. Good and evil dragons would probably be a bit miffed at the thought of being turned into suits.

On this note: Id love to see a dragon wearing a studded gnomeskin armor, or a dwarf hair breastplate.

"Your new beard looks very good, Dagurashibanipal!"
"Thank you, it is a beard toupé made from REAL dwarven hair, Slathborg."

[Quertus]

Considering that the whole point of this thought experiment is about the large-scale equipping of armed forces with dragonscale armour, it seems highly impractical to have a cohort of wizards to follow them around using magic to pick up all the missing scales after every scrap.

Agreed. I had come back fix that, and saw that you've already called me on it. Far better, given the efficiency of creating it, to just send them into battle with a few spare suits each.

[Bacon Elemental]

Agreed. I had come back fix that, and saw that you've already called me on it. Far better, given the efficiency of creating it, to just send them into battle with a few spare suits each.

Forgive me if I've missed something but where are you getting the tens of thousands of dead dragons to equip your entire army with multiple suits of full-body dragonscale armour again? This thread is quite hard to follow so I might have missed your suggestion if it was one of the weirder ones.

Edit: A single suit of dragonscale plate armour + shield in 3.5e requires the entire corpse of a Gargantuan dragon (if you're willing to settle for lighter armours smaller dragons may be substituted), and costs more than twice as much gold to make as said plate, and I dont think that having the dragonscales reduces the cost by more than half any way more than showing up at the smithy with a biunch of steel sheets reduces the cost of making plate.

Edit Edit: Also magical means of dragon duplication run into the issue that spells are expensive, especially from high-level casters! The stasis + clone method from last page would cost 1,000 gp in consumed components + a minimum of 1200gp per casting from hiring the 15th-level spellcaster to do it (and said spellcaster can only do it once per day. Even a 20th-level wizard can only provide the raw materials for 8 suits of armour a day (at the slightly pricier 2520 a pop), which is a lot for an elite force but not a lot for an army. And just like that, your dragonscale armour is now MORE expensive than full plate (not even counting labour), and only the richest kingdoms would be able to afford an army fully clad in plate anyway

[noob]

Forgive me if I've missed something but where are you getting the tens of thousands of dead dragons to equip your entire army with multiple suits of full-body dragonscale armour again? This thread is quite hard to follow so I might have missed your suggestion if it was one of the weirder ones.

Edit: A single suit of dragonscale plate armour + shield in 3.5e requires the entire corpse of a Gargantuan dragon (if you're willing to settle for lighter armours smaller dragons may be substituted), and costs more than twice as much gold to make as said plate, and I dont think that having the dragonscales reduces the cost by more than half any way more than showing up at the smithy with a biunch of steel sheets reduces the cost of making plate.

His suggestion was to skin an unconscious mind raped feeble minded trapped dragon repetitively by using regenerate between two skinning.

[Bacon Elemental]

Ah, thats noticably cheaper. Still not cheap unless for some reason this 17th-level+ wizard has nothing better to do than pump out armour pro bono, at a minimum of 1190 per casting plus labour. (Although I'm not convinced that Regenerate would cover being literally flayed alive by the spell description, it seems like a reasonable extension of the rules )

Still, this leaves the cost of obtaining one dragonhide at the bargain cost of 1200 gold plus the labour of skinning the dragon nonfatally each time plus the labour of making the dragonscale armour. Which is probbably now yes, cheaper than plate. But not a LOT cheaper, and probbably still not cheap enough to equip everyone in your army with it, or make it more common than 200gp chainmail.

Edit: This method is more economical due to using a lower-level spellslot too. If the 17th level wizard spends all his slots of 7 or higher every day for a year, he can produce the quite respectable number of 2190 dragonhides, enough to equip a small, elite army, at the minimum cost to his ambitious employers of ~2.6 million gp

[The Jack]

Medieval armies were kinda small.
I'm not saying every man and his dog should have dragon-scale
But warrior elites such as knights and many full-time warriors should be rocking dragon scale.



RE;DR
Looking at Red dragons in 5e, their natural armour is +7, +8, +9 and +12 (as they grow older) and at +7 they're medium sized creatures. They have no dex bonus, green dragons are +1 and black dragons are +2 dex. Black, Green and white dragons have weaker scales. at ancient levels natural armour bonuses are as follows: Black +10, Green +10 and white +10. At wyrmling the black is +5, green is +6 and white is +6. They all seem to follow +1 for every age bracket except for ancient, so we can probably conclude that the scales, while they do get thicker over the years, don't get thick enough to be a problem. It seems more the case that the dragon gets longer or more scales as it ages, the change is too small for the exponential increase in size.

Red/Blue
Green/White
Black.

Only Green/Black have dexterity bonuses. Does black have the most dexterity because it's got the lightest armour, maybe. Do Red/Blue have more armour because they're stronger and less dexterous? White dragons are an outlier, but the others have a pattern.

Green/White wyrmling scales are as good as a full suit of mail without any of the heavy armour drawbacks. I'm only not comparing them to half-plate because they cover the entirity of the body whilst half plate does not. So the scales, against physical trauma, are at least as good as steel and are constructed more flexibly besides. The armour in the MM is superior to half plate. Everything about the physicality suggests that in green/white dragon armour, you really don't need to worry about the armour being damaged, your threat is something getting around the armour, or like a scale falls off completely intact and you need to tie it back in...

I wouldn't worry expensive repairs. Maybe for black or whatever metalic shares the weakness..
plus Mending is a cantrip and can be used as often as you like. one caster can serve hundreds in a day.


Now, for non-traumatic damage...
Alright, points made. We don't know. But I'd think there'd be spells and methods for whatever problem comes up.

[Keltest]

Medieval armies were kinda small.
I'm not saying every man and his dog should have dragon-scale
But warrior elites such as knights and many full-time warriors should be rocking dragon scale.



RE;DR
Looking at Red dragons in 5e, their natural armour is +7, +8, +9 and +12 (as they grow older) and at +7 they're medium sized creatures. They have no dex bonus, green dragons are +1 and black dragons are +2 dex. Black, Green and white dragons have weaker scales. at ancient levels natural armour bonuses are as follows: Black +10, Green +10 and white +10. At wyrmling the black is +5, green is +6 and white is +6. They all seem to follow +1 for every age bracket except for ancient, so we can probably conclude that the scales, while they do get thicker over the years, don't get thick enough to be a problem. It seems more the case that the dragon gets longer or more scales as it ages, the change is too small for the exponential increase in size.

Red/Blue
Green/White
Black.

Only Green/Black have dexterity bonuses. Does black have the most dexterity because it's got the lightest armour, maybe. Do Red/Blue have more armour because they're stronger and less dexterous? White dragons are an outlier, but the others have a pattern.

Green/White wyrmling scales are as good as a full suit of mail without any of the heavy armour drawbacks. I'm only not comparing them to half-plate because they cover the entirity of the body whilst half plate does not. So the scales, against physical trauma, are at least as good as steel and are constructed more flexibly besides. The armour in the MM is superior to half plate. Everything about the physicality suggests that in green/white dragon armour, you really don't need to worry about the armour being damaged, your threat is something getting around the armour, or like a scale falls off completely intact and you need to tie it back in...

I wouldn't worry expensive repairs. Maybe for black or whatever metalic shares the weakness..
plus Mending is a cantrip and can be used as often as you like. one caster can serve hundreds in a day.


Now, for non-traumatic damage...
Alright, points made. We don't know. But I'd think there'd be spells and methods for whatever problem comes up.

Youre still looking at hundreds of suits of armor per country, and if theyre elite knights then you probably want barding for their horses too. If you have enough wizards to facilitate that sort of production, you aren't fighting wars with soldiers, youre dropping wizard nukes on your enemy's capital.