Until such time as a player in your campaign actually makes a nature cleric, and that nature cleric puts on a suit of heavy armour, the thing you are worrying about does not exist. In all probability, if that happens, it is because the player has a concept for a nature cleric who wears heavy armour.
First of all, if there's a rule I don't like in a game, I prefer to come up with a solution *before* it comes up in play rather than try to improvise a fix on the spot. Secondly, any players I'm likely to be GMing for in the foreseeable future are people who are new to D&D in any form, and therefore there's no reason for them to have preconceived notions that wearing heavy armor is something a cleric would do.
Now, if all you're going to do is criticize me for wanting to change the rules, instead of making constructive suggestions for how I could change them, kindly drop the subject.
But why force your tastes on a player that may not share your them? This is a lot of hand wringing over your basic desire to say "no capes" when someone might want one. D&D clerics have always worn armor (or been allowed to).
*Every* rule regarding class features puts limits on what the class can look like. Why don't wizards use longswords? Because the rules say so. Why don't fighters have as many hit points as barbarians? Because the rules say so. Why can't a rogue be proficient in the Survival skill? Because the rules say so. Of course, all of these limitations can be circumvented with the right choice of feat or background -- and so can a lack of heavy armor.
And again, the fact that "that's the way it's always been done" is irrelevant, because a) a new player wouldn't know that, and b) I don't particularly *like* the way it's always been done, and I want to do it differently. Essentially, you're questioning my right to make house rules. If you like the rules the way they are and don't see any need to change them, fine. You have my permission to play the game exactly according to the RAW if you so choose. Now go away and leave me alone.
P.S. I'm not the one wringing my hands here. I asked a simple question about how I could make a minor tweak to a few of the domains so that they're more to my liking. If my desire to do that upsets you, too bad.
I find that the domains play massively different in,my games, much of that from role play and story elements. A nature ckeric, a storm ckeric, a life cleric and a war cleric walking into a town should get massively different experiences.
The armor difference between them are trival compared to all the rest.
Fair enough. *But*....
On the one hand, I'm being told that heavy armor isn't really essential to clerics, that a Dex build is a perfectly viable alternative, that giving the character a new feature in exchange for one they weren't using anyway is unbalancing.
On the other hand, I'm being told that proficiency with heavy armor is central to the cleric's identity and that taking that away hobbles the player's freedom to play the class the way it was meant to be played.
You do realize that these two statements are contradictory, right?
Wyvern
