Wizards and Armor

[Ridley's Cohort]

Not a hybrid. In the days of only blunt weapons for clerics, the curved blades were simply a substitution/equivalent. I believe the rationalization was that a blade in the shape of the moon could be properly blessed, and therefore not a hindrance to druidic magic in spite of being made of metal.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's based on pretty solid realism.

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Again, grounded in solid realism.

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But I agree in fact with my own examples When talking about magic it's near-impossible to make realism a valid argument, but I wanted to point out that the image of the character is also important, and you very rarely see or read about a wizard in armor: whether this is because they hate it, they can't wear it, or they don't want to wear it, is up to an array of interpretations.

I think the original reasons why wizard weren't allowed to wear armor is (a) traditional fantasy image and (b) balance since they were supposed to be weak at defense or to compensate with spells.

Overall I think balance shouldn't be a big issue as it might have been in very early editions... the wizard anyway in 3ed has spells granting AC and can get protective magic items. Maybe in a low-magic items campaign it would make more sense to allow the wizard to also wear armor. But I'd still want to preserve the image...

I'm not saying every single wizard should always be forbidden to cast in armor (in fact the first thing I wrote was that I wished there was a mean to reduce ASF in 3ed), but it should not be the default... it should be rare and it should be balanced by having an appropriate cost. If it has no cost then all rules-savvy players of wizards will use armor and I wouldn't like it, just like I didn't like when (for a while) too many PbP players wanted to play a fighter with spiked chain

Again, skill penalties would likely apply, but, if the ranger is going into a battle, and he knows that he isn't going to need that mobility so much, then why not?

I mean, is this really a bad image for a high level ranger:

If he's not tracking (not in the mere sense of checking the ground for tracks once or twice, in the sense of a continuous activity i.e. following tracks in the wild and chasing the target at good speed) then he can wear all the armor he wants.

In fact, a wizard going to battle also can wear all the armor she wants. In 3ed you didn't even need the proficiency to get the AC benefit, because nothing could stop you from putting an armor on... she is just going to have troubles as soon as she casts spells tho.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure where the scimitar came from, unless someone thought, "Hey, a sickle is curved. Let's give him a bigger version of that."

I'm reasonably confident that this is the case.

In UA the druid gets the khopesh because it is an odd and archaic weapon that therefore seems a perfect fit for the druid.

 

[Hautamaki]

It's very hard to say.

Armour SHOULD be a powerful and important option. It should be one of the things that separates melee characters from casters. If mages can wear the same armour as fighters and it doesn't throw off the game balance, that tells me that armour is too weak in the system and needs to be buffed up (imo of course). So if mages are allowed to wear armour, it should make a big difference and thus have big attendant drawbacks to keep the balance.

However, I didn't like arcane spell failure because it added a bit of mechanical fiddlyness where before there was none, which influenced your choice. Mages would not wear armour less because of its gameworld pros and cons than because the player didn't want to be bothered with more fiddlyness. When you're making critical in-game decisions based on non-gameworld factors it takes me out of the game a bit and bothers me.

For my own houserules I require mages to take a level of fighter before they can wear armour at all, and armour makes spells harder to cast. But there is a casting check regardless of whether you wear armour in my system--there is always a chance that spells will fail though of course the chances of that happening are largely under a player's control. The decision of whether or not to wear armour is of course part of that.

But I suspect that D&D will not have a chance at spell failure as part of its core. Therefore armour needs some other way to be a drawback--but what? Again, introducing spell failure for armour-wearing mages only is an inelegant solution. I have no idea what I want WoTC to do about mages who wear armour. My own solution relies on an assumption that does not exist in the wider D&D market.

 

[jadrax]

TBH, I could easily live with 'you may only cast spells when wearing armour in which you are proficient', especially if getting armour proficiency essentially meant either Multi-classing or playing a Swordmage or Bard.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I don't see a problem with Wizards who choose to become proficient with particular armour casting spells in said armour, especially if there are three tiers and it is therefore a significant investment to wear platemail. Obviously if you multiclass into Fighter you probably shouldn't get instant proficiency with all armour either (SWSE handled this well).

The trouble is when you can spend just 1 feat to get light armour, which can give you as much as 5 or 6 AC with ease - it becomes a no-brainer and goes against the spirit of wizards in robes. There needs to be some reason to wear simple cloth, and so far this has been done by heavy restriction (you can't cast in armour), minor penalties (spell failure) and poor trade-off (1 feat giving you just leather, which isn't a large AC increase).

Instead, let's offer wizards a tangible benefit for not wearing armour - perhaps robes could become the new implements, a class feature could offer magical cloth that holds one enchantment (which could increase AC, or resistance to the elements, or provide a saving throw bonus, or a bonus to a skill or initiative etc.) and reflect the wizard uniquely. Then the feat cost of obtaining armour proficiency would be offset by the loss of some neat little bonus.

(Edit: with spell schools back in I could see awesome specialist robes being available - a bit like the early robes in Baldur's Gate - evokers resist a bit of fire and increase the DC of their evocations by 1, abjurers improve their AC and defences last longer, enchanters look so stylish that they get a +1 on charisma checks etc.)

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

More seriously, I have very little sympathy for those who are looking to make a Fighter-Mage (or "gish") class viable, as it always strikes me as an "I want the best of both worlds" kind of thing.

I guess I have a problem with, "You want to mix-and-match a physical combatant, with armor and a weapon, with magic? That's overpowered / munchkin / badwrongfun," when the cleric is, like, totally sitting right there.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The trouble is when you can spend just 1 feat to get light armour, which can give you as much as 5 or 6 AC with ease - it becomes a no-brainer and goes against the spirit of wizards in robes. There needs to be some reason to wear simple cloth, and so far this has been done by heavy restriction (you can't cast in armour), minor penalties (spell failure) and poor trade-off (1 feat giving you just leather, which isn't a large AC increase).

That is a big part of the problem right there. Light armor is much too good, and then we "must" put this squeeze on the heavy fighter because there is no room left to excel. That was already an issue before even bringing the Wizard into the discussion.

The problem will be approximately 1000X greater in a world of flat math. If the elven wizard can toss on some light armor and a buff, and reach AC 21, then we either sabotage the heavy armor or hit the gish with the Nerfbat of the Titans.

An easy AC boost better than +3 should be a major magic item. Chain shirt is a joke. Mithral as a little add-on is a joke.

 

[Doug McCrae]

My preference is for wizards who can't wear armour, mostly for balance and partly for flavour.

From the point of view of the game-world's inhabitants I think wizards probably can wear armour, it's just that they don't, for whatever reason. Does there even have to be one?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

From the point of view of the game-world's inhabitants I think wizards probably can wear armour, it's just that they don't, for whatever reason. Does there even have to be one?

I can promise there will always be an elven fighter/wizard who will have good enough reason to try. That is practically bovine.

Then what do you say to the minmaxed human fighter/wizard who wants some of that action? Or the elven wizard? Or the gnome illusionist?