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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 2444904" data-attributes="member: 5435">The wizard class description is ambiguous--it says that the study of magic is so demanding that the use of armor is alien to the magic-user--flavorful, but not clear.  Nowhere in the 1e PH have I ever been able to find a statement that armor prevents arcane spellcasting outside of the multiclassing/dual classing rules, already quoted above--and those are inconsistent, claiming that nonhumans can cast in armor because they can multiclass, but humans can't because they dual-class.  The intention of dual-classing seems to have been that a human could function as one class or the other as required, but not cherry-pick the advantages.  For single-class characters, the question is moot in 1st edition because there was no mechanic for characters to gain any abilities outside of their class--so the distinction between 'proficiency' and 'class feature' blurs.I suppose I should have said "negate the penalty", not lessen the penalty.  My bad.These come down to the same point--it is certainly possible to design and wear armor that leaves the arms and shoulders completely unhindered.  But in the RAW, these would still impose an ASF even though the somatic component requires only 'one arm able to gesture freely.'  The same goes for shields--the rules for ASF are inconsistent with the language used to justify it.Only the spellsword, and prestige classes are under the DMs purview, not the player's.  The point is that taking ranks in the Concentration skill is sufficient to overcome all sorts of difficulties related to restricted movement (grappling, getting wounded, getting shaken up by the terrain, etc...) but no such option exists for armor.   If skill ranks are sufficient to cast spells correctly while getting crushed by a giant squid underwater, then something equally available to players from first level should be sufficient to cast spells in armor.This is a flavor explanation only.  In terms of the rules, all three classes need 'one arm able to gesture freely' to cast spells with somatic components--so all three should suffer the same restrictions to spellcasting.  And they do... for everything but armor.If the somatic component for Bards and clerics is really different than that of Wizards and Sorcerers, this should be reflected in the rules--they should, in fact, be two different components altogether.  Call them G (for trivial gesture used only to direct the spell) and C (for the horrible Contortion of the arm and hand that is so unnatural, armor--and only armor--will prevent the correct range of motion altogether.)Honestly, any physical activity that can be learned, can be learned reliably with enough practice.  And practice is all it takes.  If you must have ASF in your games, then the failure chance should be something that can be reduced by a player investment at first level... if the failure chance is not 100% then it implies that the required gestures *are* possible in that suit of armor, and than by practicing your spells, you can gradually reduce that chance.  Exactly--the flat d% chance is horribly inconsistent with the rationale for ASF and the rest of the rules, but the designers were afraid that they'd see armored wizards running around everywhere in violation of the genre, so they didn't implement any workaround into the rules.  I hope I've shown, however, that a suit of armor is not unbalancing as long as the character must make a significant investment to use it.I quite like RangerWickett's idea of allowing either the proficiency feats or 1/2/3 levels in proficient classes to negate light/medium/heavy ASF.Ben</blockquote>

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