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

[Charlaquin]

I won't allow multiclassing to begin with. (It's an optional rule and source of most of the edition's balance issues.) Now I might make an exception if there was a super strong story reason but 'I want better armour' doesn't sound like that.

How about a mountain dwarf druid? Or one who takes an armor proficiency feat?

 

[Plaguescarred]

If it was a rule Sage Advice answer would have been a lot simpler. Instead, it discuss story elements and taboo. Conclusions? It's not a rule where proficiency is involved but a story element based on taboo. In other words, its fluff.

What happens if a druid wears metal armor? Since a druid lack proficiency with metal armor, he would have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and can’t cast spells.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How about a mountain dwarf druid? Or one who takes an armor proficiency feat?

I don't necessarily think that being able to circumvent the restriction with a feat or other similar trait is necessarily a huge issue, as it still wouldn't lead metal armours becoming the de facto standard for druids, which is the situation I'd definitely want to avoid. If we take the page 65 literally this still wouldn't work, if we believe page 45 it would. I really don't have strong opinion here, it's starting to get into world building territory.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If it was a rule Sage Advice answer would have been a lot simpler. Instead, it discuss story elements and taboo. Conclusions? It's not a rule where proficiency is involved but a story element based on taboo. In other words, its fluff.

No. It is not a rule based on proficiency. It still is a rule. Absolutely nothing indicates that it is not a rule. That there are lore and legacy reasons for the rule existing does not in any way or form make it not a rule. If that was the case, at least 90% of the rules in the game wouldn't be rules.

What happens if a druid wears metal armor? Since a druid lack proficiency with metal armor, he would have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and can’t cast spells.

I mean if the answer would have been in line with the later Sage Advice answers, it would have simply been: "Druids will not wear metal armour."

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't necessarily think that being able to circumvent the restriction with a feat or other similar trait is necessarily a huge issue, as it still wouldn't lead metal armours becoming the de facto standard for druids, which is the situation I'd definitely want to avoid. If we take the page 65 literally this still wouldn't work, if we believe page 45 it would. I really don't have strong opinion here, it's starting to get into world building territory.

I don’t think it’s a problem either, just wondering how you would rule it. Since I give page 65 priority, I personally wouldn’t allow a mountain dwarf druid to get around the restriction - they already have proficiency, the issue is one of taboo, and other druids are not going to look any more kindly on a dwarf druid in half plate than an elf druid in half plate. If you give page 45 priority, I would imagine a mountain dwarf druid should be able to wear half plate with no problems.

 

[Charlaquin]

No. It is not a rule based on proficiency. It still is a rule. Absolutely nothing indicates that it is not a rule. That there are lore and legacy reasons for the rule existing does not in any way or form make it not a rule. If that was the case, at least 90% of the rules in the game wouldn't be rules.


I mean if the answer would have been in line with the later Sage Advice answers, it would have simply been: "Druids will not wear metal armour."

Personally I think

Each class has story elements mixed with its game features; the two types of design go hand in hand in D&D, and the story parts are stronger in some classes than in others. Druids and paladins have an especially strong dose of story in their design. If you want to depart from your class’s story, your DM has the final say on how far you can go and still be considered a member of the class.

makes it pretty clear it’s not a rule. It’s a story element that is part of the class design (as opposed to a game feature that is part of the class design), and the DM determines if and how to enforce that story element.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

If it was a rule Sage Advice answer would have been a lot simpler. Instead, it discuss story elements and taboo. Conclusions? It's not a rule where proficiency is involved but a story element based on taboo. In other words, its fluff.

What happens if a druid wears metal armor? Since a druid lack proficiency with metal armor, he would have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and can’t cast spells.

As it is, the Sage Advice on this topic is longer than necessary and includes the following sentence:

If you feel strongly about your druid breaking the taboo and donning metal, talk to your DM

and this one:

If you want to depart from your class’s story, your DM has the final say on how far you can go and still be considered a member of the class.

Which implies you need DM permission to forego the "druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal" rule/guideline/recommendation/fluff/whatchawanttocallit in the class description. And, needing DM permission signals... that it's a rule (EDIT: or at least something that the Player is expected to abide by... what's a good name for that?)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is going nowhere. My answer is the same. Druids will not wear metal armor. No matter how much you repeat your assertion the rule stays the same unless the DM decides to make a house rule.

Except you're the one adding a houserule. The rules set up a taboo, without any consequence or force. You're adding a houserule that druids physically cannot break that taboo.

If we're going to use "ends justify the means" then we're open up a whole new can of worms. I mean, you can argue that a druid is justified burning a logging camp to the ground if they are despoiling a forest or that the best way to keep a village from growing too large is a good-old-fashioned famine. But you tried arguing there are definitive Good and Evil the other day, so I imagine you can't be trying to justify breaking your moral or ethical codes just for the sake of expediency...

You gotta be aware that differences of scale and intensity exist, right?

Like...You know that pushing someone out of your way isn't the same action as shooting someone, right? This is why the slippery slope is nearly always a fallacy.

The entire premise of the warlock is making a pact with a patron. Huge amounts of text are written on this. Every archetype is based around a different type of patron.

And yet, if a player told me that their warlock has no patron, and instead, in keeping wit the Fey lore I've established in the world and adding to it, has bound fey magic to their will by enacting ancient pacts in ancient places, drawing directly upon the power of The Glade of Twilight's Yearning, and the Bridge of Whispers, and the Halls of Obsidian Night, and is slowing becoming Fey as they use this power and grow in it, I would have clarifying questions and ideas to build on it, but I wouldn't consider it a normal thing to tell them they can't decide what their class mechanics mean in the fiction.

The thing with the druids and metal armor is one little badly-written sentence off to the side.

Absolutely. It's a minor taboo, written as an aside after establishing that Druids are proficient with medium armor.

I think a new player reading the druid description and interpreting it like it's a rule in a board game would come to that conclusion.

I think a new player that was coming to the game thinking about it as a story-telling game where they create a fantasy character, do their best to inhabit that character, and tell a story with other players in a fantasy world, would see that rule and might wonder "why no metal?", or "what the heck happens if they do use a metal shield?", or if there are medium armors not mentioned in the PHB that they could use that might be better than hide... etc etc.

And I mean this seriously. For a lot of people who have been introduced to the game by listening to a podcast or reading popular media or whatever, they might genuinely be more interested in the creative and improvisational and collaborative aspects of the game than they are in a strict adherence to rules that haven't been explained well.

IME a lot of new players come to dnd expecting that the rules won't be treated as particularly binding or important, because they've consumed a lot of dnd media that treats the rules that way. The expect to be able to play a druid that is psychically linked to nature and that is wholly irreligious, or a gnomish druid that is a genius naturalist and apothecary, or a warforged moon druid that is a spirit of nature themself, made manifest in the world in a changeable body of living wood, or a changeling moon druid that has mastered the art of changing form fully into increasingly alien forms, and whose spells are just spells that they have learned, not the gifts of some external force.

And IMO, they are right to expect that sort of freedom.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And, needing DM permission signals... that it's a rule.

What!? lol no, it doesn't, at all.

The DM has final say on what the world looks like, how closely tied mechanics are to story elements, etc. That doesn't make the lore of a given published world into a rule.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And, needing DM permission signals... that it's a rule (EDIT: or at least something that the Player is expected to abide by... what's a good name for that?)

A lot of DMs lord over flavor even more than they do the rules.

That's why so many players are forced to bow and scrape to get to play tielfings and dragonborn and they're literally core races instead of afterthought sentences.