D&D 5E Can your Druids wear metal armor?

[Yaarel]

Which is what I'm saying. A druid will not wear metal armor even if they gain proficiency in all armors from some other source.

I understood, that is your view.

The nonproficiency with metal armor is a big deal. Wearing nonproficient armor prevents spellcasting.



But I see it as only true for the Druid class training, per se. Special situations like a feat can modify this training to learn to cast Druid spells while wearing metal armor proficiently.

 

[Oofta]

I understood, that is your view.

The nonproficiency with metal armor is a big deal. Wearing nonproficient armor prevents spellcasting.



But I see it as only true for the Druid class training, per se. Special situations like a feat can modify this training to learn to cast Druid spells while wearing metal armor proficiently.

It's clear in the rules. It's clear in the sage advice. Druids are proficient in medium armor but they will not wear metal armor. No exceptions.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, they can do those things, but they probably won't. They're not incentivised to do so. They gain no particular benefit from hundreds of iron chains or from a iron staff. They however gain significant benefit from metal armour. Please understand, that a world where druids can wear metal armour is a world where all druids will wear metal armour.

So, you're only issue with it is that druids would gain a benefit for using metal armor?

And yet... people are constantly bending over backwards to make quests to allow druids to struggle and get that same benefit... and that's okay?

Yeah, sure, in a world where druids can wear armor to save their lives, many of them would. Because, you know, people don't want to die. That's the same reason they use metal swords. An iron staff has no benefit? It has all the same benefits of a oaken staff. Just like Chitin Half-Plate has all the benefits of metal half-plate. But it is perfectly acceptable to use an iron staff but it isn't to wear metal half-plate? Because they would gain a benefit from using half-plate?

That makes it about mechanical balance, a thing we know this rule has literally nothing to do with. Word of the Designers, there is no mechanical reason for this restriction. Zero and none. So the fact that they gain a benefit from metal armor is pointless

 

[Vaalingrade]

Take this for an example. A metal shield weighs 6 lbs. A Druid WILL NOT use a metal shield, despite having proficiency. A druid with access to pike's has no issue using 18 lbs of metal as a weapon. What is the practical difference here?

A transparent appeal to nostalgia, forlornly pining for the day where classes dictated the character's personality and behavior, but a lack of heart or ambition to actually enforce it so much that the language itself is used to undermine its status as a mechanical certainty?

 

[Yaarel]

All magic items exist outside of "game balance".

Items can let characters do and have anything.

It is perfectly within the rules for example for the whole party to find mithral full plate +3 that can be used without proficiency.

In a previous edition of D&D, I made the mistake of awarding too many powerful magic items. It broke the gaming balance, but the players were emotionally attached to these items. So removing them would also break the game in a different way. I would never make this mistake again, especially in 5e.

While a DM can award whatever magic items one wants, I am more cautious.

In the case of a Druid wearing normal scale but made out of dragonskin rather than metal, I have no worry at all. If there is some inworld reason to have it at level 1, that is fine. It seems like a flavorful cool kind of armor, and I would rather it be a special reward or a quest. But mechanically, it is nonissue.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I read the rule to mean, the Druid is proficient with scalemail made from dragon scales, but not with scalemail made from metal.

But there is no flavor here. Just a mechanical list of armor proficiencies. There is also no restriction against metal armor − merely a statement that the Druid base class doesnt supply it.

You can read it that way, but the designers have said you are wrong.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

One is armor that you're encasing your body with that you will not use if you're a druid and the other is a weapon which you have no problem using.

And WHY do you not have a problem with that? They're both metal.

 

[Oofta]

And WHY do you not have a problem with that? They're both metal.

Because I accept the rules of the game and accept that if I don't like a rule I can always change it.

 

[Yaarel]

Regenerate is not a wizard spell. Clone has nothing to do with healing and if you want to claim that a 9th level spell that can mimic an 8th level spell or lower makes them powerful healers ... okay. We'll just have to disagree on that.

You are right about Regenerate. Heh. That one snuck in from previous editions or house rules (related to making a Ring of Regeneration)!

But Clone is something like self-resurrect.

Wish has special rules for healing: "You allow up to twenty creatures that you can see to regain all hit points, and you end all effects on them
described in the Greater Restoration spell." Wish is an incredibly powerful healing spell.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Because I accept the rules of the game and accept that if I don't like a rule I can always change it.

Just because the rules are the rules in the book but also can be changed at the table, doesn't mean that we are forbidden from pointing out that the rules in the book don't make sense or are bad.

Yes, I acknowledge the rules in the book are what they are, and I am aware that if I were to DM a game, I am well within my rights to remove the metal armour restriction (or go the other direction and strip Druids of their medium armour proficiency); but I am also well within my rights to question what the designers were smoking when designing that rule, as well as question how do Druids in-universe reconcile their utter refusal to wear metal armour and use metal shields but are perfectly fine with metal weapons, metal jewelry, metal coinage, metal construction materials, and metal everything else.