Are mages wearing armor, now that it is not verboten

[diaglo]

magical mithril chain shirts
or elven chain mail

plus mw bucklers.


but only after they take a level in some other class to gain prof.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I think part of it has to do with the encumberance involved with wearing armor. I honestly think my group has never been forced to deal with it and I am happy to say that the DM for my group that I play in uses it too. One of my players was 30 pounds over his Heavy Encumberance and didn't realise it. In my other group the Cleric had to buy a mule to carry everything that wasn't her armor, shield, and weapon. Typically for a Arcane caster Strength is the lowest priority for their stats. Int or Cha are number one, followed by Dex or Con for decent saving throws as well as the ability to keep from getting hit or being able to take the hit and to make accurate ranged touch attacks. Wisdom makes for a Caster who is himself hard to effect with mind controlling spells. That leaves Str which really does nothing for the Mage since they usually try to stay out of melee combat and they can always hire a porter to haul their loot. I know this isn't every situation but in my experience it seems to be the most common situation.

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

My sorcerer does not wear armor or use a sheild. She's half elf, and also quite good with bow, so in the event that she runs out of spells during a combat, can stay back and fire shots. I also tend to cast mage armor on myself if the need arises.

 

[WayneLigon]

Has anyone seen wizards or sorcerers using armor or shields?

Once in a while we'll have a low level wizard use some leather armor, or very rarely a higher level one use a mithril shirt. They usually consider a 10% to 15% arcane spell failure chance way too high.

 

[drnuncheon]

Only multiclassed ones in my experience (and it looks like most other people's as well), and frequently even then only when the ASF can be circumvented by other means (like levels in Spellsword). That chance of spell failure scares people, probably because it represents a chance of losing a limited resource (as opposed to a miss chance - you can swing a sword all day and sometimes multiple times in one round, so it's not as big of a deal if a single swing misses).

J

 

[Mercule]

I had a dwarven/half-dragon sorcerer/paladin in my game who wore a chain shirt. He rarely failed his spell check. Honestly, it was kinda creepy.

 

[thundershot]

One good idea is to use the Combat Robe in the Ultimate Equipment Guide (not sure which book it came from originally). It provides no AC bonus, has a max Dex of +10, no spell failure, and no armor check.

Why would someone want this? Well... it can accept all of the enchantments that regular armor can, and is fully usable by arcane spellcasters.


Chris

 

[Altalazar]

I seem to have some vague recollection of mithril chain shirts, but I could be mistaken. I house rule that out, anyway. It is one of those things that is in there for flavor, not balance, and makes so sense, to boot.

 

[KB9JMQ]

So far only one wizard has worn some plain leather. Otherwise they are too scared of that penalty to do so.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I've seen a Half-Orc Barbarian Sorcerer wear leather armor I think. The player even devised a little magical mishap chart, that the DM rolled on instead of having the spell flat-out fail. Was kind of a "Wild Magic" effect.

AR