  We discuss how various properties of dilaton black holes depend on the
dilaton coupling constant $a$. In particular we investigate the $a$-dependence
of certain mass parameters both outside and in the extremal limit and discuss
their relation to thermodynamical quantities. To further illuminate the role of
the coupling constant $a$ we look at a massless point particle in a dilaton
black hole geometry as well as the scattering of (neutral) fermions. In this
latter case we find that the scattering potential vanishes for the zero angular
momentum mode which seems to indicate a catastrophic deradiation when $a>1$.
