I'm making this post partly because I feel the need to vent about why the 5th Edition metal armor restriction is very poorly implemented, but also because I've seen discussions about this topic, but I feel like most of the arguments made in support of it, and in opposition of it, are typically too incomplete or otherwise lacking information. They're also far too spread out to really get the full point across. For that reason I wanted to compile a single post explaining why it's bad, largely to vent, but also for anyone that wants to point out to their DM why it's bad, but can't quite articulate it. If anyone has any crucial points that I've missed, or wants to make an argument against a point made, please let me know so I can add them to, or detract them from, my list of grievances to present to all of my future DMs.
To start things off, here's the line of text in question as it appears in the PHB: "(druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal)".
And here's the official Sage Advice that elaborates on that:
Now to explain my issues with this "rule":
1) Personally, my major gripe with the limitation is that it's the only rule I've seen in any edition of D&D that most DMs interpret as literally forcing a decision on a player's character. The game (for players) is about you as a player making all choices for your character, with the rules providing mechanical implications guiding your actions, but not forcing you to do anything. Monks don't wear armor as part of their monastic training, and as such they have no proficiency in armor or shields; however, a player as a Monk can still choose to have their character wear any armor they wish. Doing so will impose any penalties of not being proficient, and will cost them their Martial Arts, their Unarmored Defense, their Unarmored Movement, and maybe some other traits gained as they level, but they are free to make that decision if they so wish. Ultimately the player decides what the character is going to do in any situation, unless of course the DM takes over momentarily for the sake of their story, but the written rules should never remove their ability to make a choice.
In 3.5 Druids did not wear metal armor, but they could. Wearing prohibited armor cost them the ability to cast spells, or use any supernatural or spell-like Druid abilities for as long as they wore it, plus 24 hours after it was removed. There was no problem with this because the option to do so remained, even though players would view the mechanical restrictions of this and choose for their character to not to wear metal armor. Heck, there are situations where it could be beneficial for a Druid to do so despite the penalties. Perhaps they want to infiltrate an organization that opposes magic, and in order to avoid some kind of magical detection they don metal armor to remove their magical aura for 24 hours. The player would lose class features, but it's still a choice for the player to consider for their character, regardless of if it proved to be a good idea in the end.
2) It's not a universal limitation of the Druid's lore in 5th Edition, nor does it impose mechanical penalties. This is another big one as it runs contrary to the Sage Advice. First off, there is not a lot of real story given in 5E besides referencing to the Forgotten Realms and a little mix of Eberron, which is where the core 5E books reference their lore. This makes rules like this one quite ambiguous to people not familiar with the lore, because it doesn't offer any mechanical or story elements for enforcement.
What I mean by it not being a universal limitation of druidic lore in 5E is that it's not a universal limit in the Forgotten Realms lore. The PHB says that some Druids venerate the forces of nature themselves, but that most are of the Old Faith, devoted to one or more of the nature deities worshiped in your setting. It is also stated that different druidic sects hold different philosophies about the proper relationship of the spirits to each other and to the forces of civilization.
This is where Druids like the worshipers of Mielikki come in. Mielikki is known in Forgotten Realms as the Forest Queen, and is the neutral good goddess of autumn, Druids, dryads, forests, forest creatures and Rangers. As part of her lore, appearing as far back in 1E AD&D and still a patron deity in the Forgotten Realms pantheon for 5E, she permits her druids to wear all kinds of armor and to use all kinds of weapons that are permitted to Rangers, including those made of metal. As a tidbit for those of you that are looking for a reason to multiclass your Cleric (Life Cleric + Goodberry shenanigans ahoy), she's a goddess of Druids and Rangers, and as such her Clerics canonically almost always multiclass into one of those choices. Some of her more notable worshipers in lore were known to wear metal, such as prominent dwarven Druid Pikel Bouldershoulder, who was famous for wielding his "Sha-la-la" stick, and wearing his metal cooking pot as a helmet whenever he dived into battle.
Druids wearing metal in Forgotten Realms is not only canon to the lore, but they never lost anything if they did so. This shows that it does not interfere with their power and that it's simply an oath they might make, but it's not one they have to keep, nor is it one every Druid even chooses to make to begin with. In lore Druids have different philosophies, and will even prey on one another, so it makes no sense that every Druid spanning from the Elves in the grasslands, to the Dwarves in the caves/mountains, and even the Drow deep in the Underdark, will all arbitrarily agree "metal bad", especially when the cave and ground dwellers are surrounded by iron in the earth all around them.
3) Druids may use metal weapons, or even cover themselves in as much metal as their carrying capacity allows so long as it does not provide an armor bonus, and Nature Clerics, who worship the same deities that grant Druids of the Old Faith their powers, gain heavy armor proficiency for their devotion. This is all very inconsistent with the idea that Druids will not use metal. If a deity grants their Clerics divine inspiration that enables them to wear heavy armor, it makes no sense that part of the Druid's oath to that deity would forbid metal. Many people say that Druids will hold metal weapons because they do not have to cover themselves in metal to do so, but this holds true for shields. You don't "wear" a shield, which is why the rule specifies "wear armor or use shields". A Dwarven Druid can be proficient in Smith's Tools and thus perform their own blacksmithing, wield a 4 lb. Battleaxe in each hand, and haul as many 2 lb. throwing hammers as their weight limit allows, but they absolutely won't wield a single 6 lb. metal shield. That's dumb, and causes the limitation to completely break immersion for many characters that are not otherwise outside of their limitations.
4) Druids, if not being allowed to equip metal armor is enforced, are forced to ask their DM ahead of time if non-metal variants of medium armors exist in their world, the answer of which brings forth several potential complications that no other class has to consider, both for the character's story and for the game world. Even if we assume it's never a bad thing for a DM to flesh out more details in their world, there's still the fact that these are problems every Druid has to address. When something is going to be relevant 100% of the time a class is played, there should at least be some mechanical or narrative guidelines addressing it.
If the DM says there are not non-metal variants that the Druid can acquire, it raises the question as to how the Druid gained their proficiency in any medium armor that's not hide. This would mean that the Druid is trained in using something that literally does not exist for them.
If it's something that will be available, but the Druid will have to wait until later to acquire it, it seems odd that a Druid that has always only been able to wear hide and leather can suddenly wear a sufficient half plate of any material without complication. Also, if it's something that exists, why would a Druid that lived among other Druids have to wait so long to acquire it? Would the Druids, who are proficient in such armors, not have trained their proficiency by having the materials available to do so? Forcing a Druid that was raised in a druidic circle to have no access to materials or equipment relevant to the training of such a core class feature sounds like a silly limitation to have as a built in feature, and is something no other class is forced to accommodate in their rules.
5) Leather is not natural. Leather is just as unnatural as steel, and creating it is also a process of civilization; it's just that creating leather is an easier process to replicate. Making leather requires cleaning and degreasing of the hide, as well as removing the hair, which is usually done by soaking it in chemical solutions for 24-48 hours. Admittedly you can do this process more naturally without chemicals, it's just not as efficient. However, once this process is done, you have to tan the leather regardless of cleaning method used.
Tanning leather requires loading the hide into a tanning drum containing a tanning solution, then rolling the hide in a roller to remove moisture, all of which stabilizes its proteins to increase the thermal, chemical, and microbiological stability. This is what prevents it from decaying, and gives it its durability. Of course the process is far more complex than I've described, but the take of this is that once the process is complete it's simply nothing like the natural skin it was when the process began. If you attempted to wear hide that was not fully cured it would simply rot away.
Metal is made effectively the same way. Steel is simply iron ore that's heat blasted to remove impurities and to combine it with carbon, usually alloyed at less than 1%. This process can be achieved without a blast furnace, and can be done by burning natural combustible materials, which can be used to combine wrought iron sealed alongside a carbon source such as leather scraps, bone and/or horns. This is literally no different in concept than cleaning and salting a hide, soaking it in chemicals to remove impurities, and then tanning it to chemically alter the proteins.
There's nothing "natural" about either process. Neither process ever occurs in nature, and both processes are done by essentially the same concepts, just with different base materials. Steel requires running iron ore and a carbon source through heat via something combustible like coal, whereas leather requires preserving the material with salts, soaking it for some time in either vegetable agents or a chromium salt mix, then adding special fats.
To start things off, here's the line of text in question as it appears in the PHB: "(druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal)".
And here's the official Sage Advice that elaborates on that:
Now to explain my issues with this "rule":
1) Personally, my major gripe with the limitation is that it's the only rule I've seen in any edition of D&D that most DMs interpret as literally forcing a decision on a player's character. The game (for players) is about you as a player making all choices for your character, with the rules providing mechanical implications guiding your actions, but not forcing you to do anything. Monks don't wear armor as part of their monastic training, and as such they have no proficiency in armor or shields; however, a player as a Monk can still choose to have their character wear any armor they wish. Doing so will impose any penalties of not being proficient, and will cost them their Martial Arts, their Unarmored Defense, their Unarmored Movement, and maybe some other traits gained as they level, but they are free to make that decision if they so wish. Ultimately the player decides what the character is going to do in any situation, unless of course the DM takes over momentarily for the sake of their story, but the written rules should never remove their ability to make a choice.
In 3.5 Druids did not wear metal armor, but they could. Wearing prohibited armor cost them the ability to cast spells, or use any supernatural or spell-like Druid abilities for as long as they wore it, plus 24 hours after it was removed. There was no problem with this because the option to do so remained, even though players would view the mechanical restrictions of this and choose for their character to not to wear metal armor. Heck, there are situations where it could be beneficial for a Druid to do so despite the penalties. Perhaps they want to infiltrate an organization that opposes magic, and in order to avoid some kind of magical detection they don metal armor to remove their magical aura for 24 hours. The player would lose class features, but it's still a choice for the player to consider for their character, regardless of if it proved to be a good idea in the end.
2) It's not a universal limitation of the Druid's lore in 5th Edition, nor does it impose mechanical penalties. This is another big one as it runs contrary to the Sage Advice. First off, there is not a lot of real story given in 5E besides referencing to the Forgotten Realms and a little mix of Eberron, which is where the core 5E books reference their lore. This makes rules like this one quite ambiguous to people not familiar with the lore, because it doesn't offer any mechanical or story elements for enforcement.
What I mean by it not being a universal limitation of druidic lore in 5E is that it's not a universal limit in the Forgotten Realms lore. The PHB says that some Druids venerate the forces of nature themselves, but that most are of the Old Faith, devoted to one or more of the nature deities worshiped in your setting. It is also stated that different druidic sects hold different philosophies about the proper relationship of the spirits to each other and to the forces of civilization.
This is where Druids like the worshipers of Mielikki come in. Mielikki is known in Forgotten Realms as the Forest Queen, and is the neutral good goddess of autumn, Druids, dryads, forests, forest creatures and Rangers. As part of her lore, appearing as far back in 1E AD&D and still a patron deity in the Forgotten Realms pantheon for 5E, she permits her druids to wear all kinds of armor and to use all kinds of weapons that are permitted to Rangers, including those made of metal. As a tidbit for those of you that are looking for a reason to multiclass your Cleric (Life Cleric + Goodberry shenanigans ahoy), she's a goddess of Druids and Rangers, and as such her Clerics canonically almost always multiclass into one of those choices. Some of her more notable worshipers in lore were known to wear metal, such as prominent dwarven Druid Pikel Bouldershoulder, who was famous for wielding his "Sha-la-la" stick, and wearing his metal cooking pot as a helmet whenever he dived into battle.
Druids wearing metal in Forgotten Realms is not only canon to the lore, but they never lost anything if they did so. This shows that it does not interfere with their power and that it's simply an oath they might make, but it's not one they have to keep, nor is it one every Druid even chooses to make to begin with. In lore Druids have different philosophies, and will even prey on one another, so it makes no sense that every Druid spanning from the Elves in the grasslands, to the Dwarves in the caves/mountains, and even the Drow deep in the Underdark, will all arbitrarily agree "metal bad", especially when the cave and ground dwellers are surrounded by iron in the earth all around them.
3) Druids may use metal weapons, or even cover themselves in as much metal as their carrying capacity allows so long as it does not provide an armor bonus, and Nature Clerics, who worship the same deities that grant Druids of the Old Faith their powers, gain heavy armor proficiency for their devotion. This is all very inconsistent with the idea that Druids will not use metal. If a deity grants their Clerics divine inspiration that enables them to wear heavy armor, it makes no sense that part of the Druid's oath to that deity would forbid metal. Many people say that Druids will hold metal weapons because they do not have to cover themselves in metal to do so, but this holds true for shields. You don't "wear" a shield, which is why the rule specifies "wear armor or use shields". A Dwarven Druid can be proficient in Smith's Tools and thus perform their own blacksmithing, wield a 4 lb. Battleaxe in each hand, and haul as many 2 lb. throwing hammers as their weight limit allows, but they absolutely won't wield a single 6 lb. metal shield. That's dumb, and causes the limitation to completely break immersion for many characters that are not otherwise outside of their limitations.
4) Druids, if not being allowed to equip metal armor is enforced, are forced to ask their DM ahead of time if non-metal variants of medium armors exist in their world, the answer of which brings forth several potential complications that no other class has to consider, both for the character's story and for the game world. Even if we assume it's never a bad thing for a DM to flesh out more details in their world, there's still the fact that these are problems every Druid has to address. When something is going to be relevant 100% of the time a class is played, there should at least be some mechanical or narrative guidelines addressing it.
If the DM says there are not non-metal variants that the Druid can acquire, it raises the question as to how the Druid gained their proficiency in any medium armor that's not hide. This would mean that the Druid is trained in using something that literally does not exist for them.
If it's something that will be available, but the Druid will have to wait until later to acquire it, it seems odd that a Druid that has always only been able to wear hide and leather can suddenly wear a sufficient half plate of any material without complication. Also, if it's something that exists, why would a Druid that lived among other Druids have to wait so long to acquire it? Would the Druids, who are proficient in such armors, not have trained their proficiency by having the materials available to do so? Forcing a Druid that was raised in a druidic circle to have no access to materials or equipment relevant to the training of such a core class feature sounds like a silly limitation to have as a built in feature, and is something no other class is forced to accommodate in their rules.
5) Leather is not natural. Leather is just as unnatural as steel, and creating it is also a process of civilization; it's just that creating leather is an easier process to replicate. Making leather requires cleaning and degreasing of the hide, as well as removing the hair, which is usually done by soaking it in chemical solutions for 24-48 hours. Admittedly you can do this process more naturally without chemicals, it's just not as efficient. However, once this process is done, you have to tan the leather regardless of cleaning method used.
Tanning leather requires loading the hide into a tanning drum containing a tanning solution, then rolling the hide in a roller to remove moisture, all of which stabilizes its proteins to increase the thermal, chemical, and microbiological stability. This is what prevents it from decaying, and gives it its durability. Of course the process is far more complex than I've described, but the take of this is that once the process is complete it's simply nothing like the natural skin it was when the process began. If you attempted to wear hide that was not fully cured it would simply rot away.
Metal is made effectively the same way. Steel is simply iron ore that's heat blasted to remove impurities and to combine it with carbon, usually alloyed at less than 1%. This process can be achieved without a blast furnace, and can be done by burning natural combustible materials, which can be used to combine wrought iron sealed alongside a carbon source such as leather scraps, bone and/or horns. This is literally no different in concept than cleaning and salting a hide, soaking it in chemicals to remove impurities, and then tanning it to chemically alter the proteins.
There's nothing "natural" about either process. Neither process ever occurs in nature, and both processes are done by essentially the same concepts, just with different base materials. Steel requires running iron ore and a carbon source through heat via something combustible like coal, whereas leather requires preserving the material with salts, soaking it for some time in either vegetable agents or a chromium salt mix, then adding special fats.
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