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[Erom]

Yeah, armor weight counts against carrying weight, which slows dwarves down. The strength stat decreases how much you get slowed by weight, though. Very strong dwarves move about the same in leather and metal.

[Rysith]

Weight is also reduced by the armor user skill, reducing to zero at legendary.

[Jurph]

You can get several bins of leather from the first caravan that visits you, if you're experienced.  You can also have reliable leather production from a livestock industry by the second year (sooner if you bring cows).  You may get lucky and have a strange mood result in a legendary leatherworker, in which case you'll have suits of masterwork leather armor sitting around.  It's available early and has a lot of little benefits:

1) Good lightweight armor is great for training dumb recruits, because it doesn't slow them down or tire them out, which means they get more training before they get exhausted.
2) Masterwork leather armor can approach artifact value in trades, depending on what kind of leather it's made from.
3) As leather approaches masterwork quality, the material/quality multipliers bump right up against zero-quality iron armor.  I know the block value isn't as good, but it's still nice to get the full value.
4) Did I mention that the materials are much more widely available and cheaper?  It takes 4 pieces of leather or 6 bars of metal to make a full suit of leather or chain, respectively.  You can buy 2 bins of leather for a few hundred dwarfbucks (5 dwarves' of armor)... how many caravans will it take to get 30 bars of iron?  ...steel?

None of this should take away from the fact that you eventually want your military dwarves in silk clothes, leather armor, steel chain mail, and steel plate (all of the highest quality).  But early on, leather is a great way to more-than-double your average dorf's embark armor, or train him up

[Cheshire Cat]

why do you want your military wearing silk?

[Footkerchief]

^^^ because it's fly as hell and prevents chafing.

[Jim Groovester]

Yeah, leather's available early, and it stacks with metal armor, and it's available in vast quantities.

But you can also dump the basic quality steel armor off the caravan guards and reclaim it when they're gone, too.

[Jurph]

Yeah, leather's available early, and it stacks with metal armor, and it's available in vast quantities.
But you can also dump the basic quality steel armor off the caravan guards and reclaim it when they're gone, too.

You can also disassemble the Trade Depot when a caravan shows up and get all of their stuff for free... but if you're not exploiting the game mechanics (IMHO, dump-stealing counts) then leather armor is a useful intermediate step.

why do you want your military wearing silk?

It's not critical, but silk is 13% lighter than cloth and offers the same armor benefits.  All things being equal, a dwarf wearing silk (under leather under chain under plate) will be less encumbered than a dwarf wearing plant fiber cloth (under leather under chain under plate).  Once your dwarves are excellent armor-users and start stacking their stats, the difference becomes vanishingly small (2 dwarf-pounds out of a 2000 max encumberance for no-strength dwarves!), but it's nice to keep in mind.

Also, it's fly as hell and prevents chafing.

[inaluct]

Personally, I prefer my dwarves to wear leather armor made from the skins of dangerous animals over metal armor, especially if the animals in question are fish. It's just cool. You can get so much whale shark leather if you have a world where you can trade with tropical humans.

[Footkerchief]

Personally, I prefer my dwarves to wear leather armor made from the skins of dangerous animals over metal armor, especially if the animals in question are fish. It's just cool. You can get so much whale shark leather if you have a world where you can trade with tropical humans.

Also the next version will allow you to make the leather of certain creatures much tougher, so that dragon leather armor or whatever could be tougher than steel.

[bamorrow]

Leather is a crucial component to having your dwarves walk around on fire.

[Hyndis]

Leather armor is the newbie armor. Its incredibly cheap, easy to produce tons of it, and its a good holdover until your metal working industry is up and running to produce the real armor.

Its not supposed to be top of the line stuff. You can't expect simple leather armor to be anywhere near as effective as full steel plate, considering the time, effort, and cost differences involved.

[LegacyCWAL]

You can also actually get your dwarves to wear the stuff.  With leather coats, you just have to make a bunch and pray that somebody picks them up.

[Mechanoid]

Don't forget that creatures that have a fixed temperature will impart those features onto whatever item is made from them. Fire imp leather armor can potentially keep your soldier alive if he's outside during winter, in a freezing climate.

Of course, the same armor will likely cause him to burst into flames...

[inaluct]

Don't forget that creatures that have a fixed temperature will impart those features onto whatever item is made from them.

Does anything have an unusually cool fixed temp? Leather armor made from it could allow dwarves to survive in lethally hot temperatures.

[LegacyCWAL]

Don't forget that creatures that have a fixed temperature will impart those features onto whatever item is made from them. Fire imp leather armor can potentially keep your soldier alive if he's outside during winter, in a freezing climate.

Of course, the same armor will likely cause him to burst into flames...

So...a convoluted and not particularly practical solution to a rare, relatively minor problem, and it tends to end in flaming dwarves?

Dwarfiest.  Armor.  EVER