And if this is just cosmetic, they wouldn't put it in the rules! If it was just 'rangers wear green clothes' or 'wizards wear pointy hats or shoes' but green clothes, pointy hats or pointy shoes wouldn't actually be defined or referenced in the rules it would be insane to write such a rule. This is rule reading 101: consider why the rule was written, if your interpretation leads to rule doing nothing, it almost certainly is wrong. Writers put rules in the game for a reason.
And now you are starting to see why many of us consider this a bad rule, why Undrave was saying that it seemed like it was written by a newbie game designer. Because they
intentionally wrote a rule about cosmetics.
Personally, I thought you understood that, because earlier in this thread you kept going on and on about how druids in metal armor would "look weird" and how that wasn't "the look you wanted". I didn't realize you misunderstood this so badly.
They will wear some medium armours. Ones without metal. And helpfully the rules tell you which armour are made of metal.
The description is part of the rules, especially when it contains information other rules interact with.
If the designers would have wanted material to be purely cosmetic the rule wouldn't exist in the first place. And making them proficient only in hide would prevent them wearing dragonscale and any potential later added non-metal medium armour. So that would be a nerf compared to the current situation.
I really appreciate how you read my posts and utterly ignore what I say. It would have prevented the rule designers from adding "Druids are proficient in this armor" to dragonscale? Or to any other future armor they decided to add?
Also, what would be the point of adding "Chitin Half-Plate: See Player's Handbook for stats, Chitin half-plate has all the stats of half-plate but Druids are proficient in it" That is an entirely pointless thing to do, the stats are identical, so why make a big production out of it?
I of course do not except that you could just take ACs from chart intended for completely different purpose and apply them to armours. That would be absurd, like taking AC of monsters and directly apply it to armours made of them. But it proves that the rules certainly recognise that materials matter. This of course is already apparent in the armour descriptions themselves. Leather armour is unsurprisingly made of leather and provides lower AC than one made of metal plates. I wonder why this is? Furthermore, adamantine armour certainly makes your character more resilient, it merely is represented in another way.
And how does mithral armor make you more resilient? Is it because it is lighter and removes stealth penalties? Because according to your chart there it is +2 higher than steel and iron (weird since steel is certainly stronger than iron) and yet wearing mithral plate confers no bonuses to "resilience" in any way.
I mean, sure, they recognized it is easier to destroy paper walls than adamantium walls. But they've also shown that armor made out of steel and armor made out of adamantium and armor made out of mithral all have the same AC value conferred on the wearer. And since that is the thing we are talking about...
You again build a strawman out of trivialities that will not actually matter in the game. Yes, material of those items might technically be rules but their material also is not going to matter 99.9% of time so no one cares. Armour material however matters 100% of time eight at the character creation when someone decided to make druid.
Trivialities that won't matter, wow. So some rules are vitally important, put in with precise purpose and intent by the game designers. Others are trivialities that might technically be rules, but probably no one cares.
And in both cases we are talking about the material an item is made out of.
You know, funny thing, armor and shield material almost never matter. Shields specifically, you never have to specify which it is. Clerics start with "a shield", Fighters start with "a shield", Paladins "a shield". Then, despite the "rules" saying that shields can be made out of metal or wood, the Druid gets "a wooden shield"
So, clearly the material matters right? Especially considering the interactions with heat metal and the fact that the DMG specifies different materials and all that. So... why don't they say whether the Fighter is supposed to start with a metal shield or a wooden shield? It matters right? I mean, it needs to be specified, because it matters on whether or not that fighter can give their shield to the Druid. At character creation do you have them write down if they took a metal shield or a wooden shield? This is vitally important information right?
Or... is it not? If the fighter three levels down the road says "I give the druid my shield" do you even stop to think about whether or not the fighter ever said their shield was metal? It was specified in the rules, the designers cared deeply about it according to you, and yet... I bet that no one has ever cared. I bet no one has ever stopped and taken note that the fighter had a metal shield, so the druid can't use that specific shield. Because actually, it doesn't matter. A wooden shield and a metal shield are identical. It is... purely cosmetic
They could have. And they would have had to do so for every additional non-metal item. Now at this point is seems clear that that is what they should have done, as this seems to be so bizarrely hard for some people to get!
No, we get their intent. You seem to refuse to accept it.
It is common misconception (for some reason) that samurai armour isn't metal. I don't know why. They predominantly used armour made of metal plates, just like Europeans. And sure, sometimes they used leather, but metal was preferred, as it obviously was better. Also, there are rules in the game for leather and hide armours, and those are different than ones for metal armours.
I thought I remembered the armor mostly being made out of other materials, with the occasional metal plate. But I admit I was mostly relying on earlier posters in this thread who said as such and were never challenged on it. Or maybe I'm picturing armor for the Ashigaru and not the samurai.
Yes, they did. And the rules tell you what they are. Literally written in the book. I don't know why it so hard for you to accept and follow the rules.
Because you seem to have no conception that the rule was
intended to be purely cosmetic. They said druids can wear medium armor. They said it wasn't a balance issue. They have multiple examples of items like shields and armors being made of different materials yet conferring the same AC bonus.
Why doesn't leather armor have the same stats as Studded Leather armor? Both are made primarily of leather. Why doesn't Scale Mail have the same stats as chain mail? Both are made out of small, shaped pieces of metal (unless they aren't, scale mail being made out of many different things in history). It would seem that the answer is because these aren't the same things. Even if they are made out of the same material. The mechanics are not based on what the material is, they are based on the armor itself.
