The Tavern

...when enemy draconians wear fancy robes and cool armors?

For balance reason, I think, but then I can't understand why enemy draconians are still allowed to wear them.

Enemy draconians wear armour?

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/List_of_draconians

Draconian zealot is surely wearing a robe there.

You can change your character's tile to be that draconian zealot. Problem solved.

Would you rather we made all the enemy draconian tiles naked?

No, but I was wondering if there was any reason behind it.

1) Player draconians used to be able to wear dragon armour. And maybe robes, the same as Ogres? Maybe the tiles date from that time. I don't know; I don't play tiles.

2) Enemy draconians don't drop armour when you defeat them, so they aren't wearing armour.

So you can tell them apart. Lots of monsters are drawn with clothes on when they aren't wearing armor. If it helps, pretend they're cosplaying as humans; their "armor" is actually cardboard and packing foam spray-painted to look vaguely like plate.

How come draconians with their little wings can't wear armor, but Gargoyles and their big wings can wear armor?

It ain't about the wings.

Wiki says: "Draconians' wings and oddly-shaped heads prevent them from wearing helmets and any form of body armour."

If it's not about the wings, is it some kind of cultural nudist conduct? Then why are they allowed to wear cloaks?

to flash people

Like other dragon subspecies, draconians are primarily quadrupedal for locomotion purposes. Their foreclaws are much more delicate than other dragon subspecies to allow them to delicately manipulate tools at the expense of the firm grip the larger dragons use to seize prey, but their skeletal structure is still not suited for the stresses of remaining on their hind legs for lengthy periods of time. Their wings, too, are more of a lengthy sail structure than a single discrete limb, and in most environments a typical draconian will need to keep their wings exposed as a heat dump during heavy physical exertion, lest they overheat. It may be possible to fit barding to draconians, but as a species they have only recently adopted metalworking and no other cultures have ever felt the need to create dragon barding suitable for such small and relatively weak dragon specimens.

Comparatively, gargoyles and formicids are primarily bipedal in locomotion. While their extra limbs do require substantial refitting in a typical suit of armor, once the appropriate extra holes are added to the captured armor their physiology is perfectly capable of handling the distribution of weight.

Draconians are severely allergic to any kind of cloth, leather/scale or metal on their bodies and will break out in serious hives and spontaneously combust/explode/freeze/dissolve if exposed to these terrible substances for any period of time.

Cloaks are ok because they can hold it away from their bodies with their wings.

This also explains why draconians never take showers, because if the shower curtain sticks to their body, they will spontaneously explode.

draconians are too fat

Draconians in books can wear armor.

The concept of a race getting a huge chunk of AC to make up for the body armor they aren't wearing is silly. Just like a race being given a nearly unlimited source of reusable healing to make up for the fact they don't regenerate HP from resting.

They can't wear armor for balance reasons, the most important reasons. A white draconian in FDA would be stupidly OP.

You mean that as a race, they sacrificed armor to Ru, in return for awesome resilience. Yes, that is a good backstory.

Balance? OP Race? What game have you been playing? There's no pretense of balance in crawl.

They used to be able to wear armour, I can't remember which version but at one point they had the same armour restrictions as ogres and trolls, so dragon armour was wearable but no gloves or boots.

and then somebody figured out that there is a bunch of races which can have body armour and cloaks but not boots or gloves and not a single race that can wear boots and gloves and cloaks but no body armour

That's a dumb reason.

FR: Give dracs deformed body, remove their AC bonus, allow body armor and Armour skill.

no it's not

What kind of balance reason says that gargoyles are rock-hard, wear any armor, immune to all kinds of stuff and get to fly perpetually in their armor, but draconians don't get any of that? As far as I can tell gargoyles are just meant to be easier. The thing about the armor though is that it's a pretty big source of variety in the game, yet it seems like it's off-limits to most of the characters - and even after being placed off-limits, you still wade around in a sea of the stuff with all kinds of cool steaming and glowing icons just to taunt you that never, ever, can you use it.

well Gr have negative HP apt and Dr have a positive one

but of course this doesn't matter because the scariest things in the game are torment and chain lightning

ding ding ding

Wait, are you saying mummy's torment immunity and lack of hunger don't make them as good as minotaurs? Nonsense, the races are all perfectly balanced!

I suspect mummies are better than minotaurs at the stage where torment is common but YMMV. Mummies have better aptitudes in magic too so yes, they are much better casters! I hardly imagine enjoying MiSu of Sif Muna, for example (talking about real summoner here, not about character with exec. axe and summon mammals).

Good in the context of winnable, not in the context of extended performance(Or even fun, for that matter).