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

[CleverNickName]

Here's an interesting thought exercise:
What happens if someone in your game world picks up a magic lamp, rubs it, and Wishes that druids could wear metal armor?

Did they fundamentally change the rules of the game?
Did they significantly impact the culture and history of Druids in your world?
Did they waste a wish?
Did they _________?

 

[CleverNickName]

So, let’s say the warrior hireling of the party is dead, their shield abandoned by their side. Easy reason it can’t just be retconned to a wooden shield.

Yep, that's true. Like I said, if retcon wasn't possible, I'd go the Thorin Oakenshield route.

 

[ad_hoc]

This is why the distinction between player and (NPC) character agency is important.

When I have supported extreme examples it has been to attempt to figure out how someone's world works; not how their game works. So, as I said, it's fine if the player isn't allowed to choose to wear metal armor under any foreseeable condition (or needs to discuss it with the DM if a rare situation comes up) as part of the social contract of the game. What I need to understand is what is going on in the world, with characters (again, stick to NPCs if it helps bring the distinction front and center as I intend it to be).

Have any NPC druid characters in the theoretical history of the world ever put on metal armor? If not, that seems...really, really, mind-bafflingly odd. I want to understand if anyone is actually saying that in their game world no hypothetical NPC druid has ever, under any condition, encased themselves in metal, or fallen from their druidic faith (with whatever consequences that entailed). Is anyone really saying that an NPC character when they become a druid become incapable of ever after violating this taboo?

Some people might be discussing something else, but from what I can tell, the crux of the argument comes down to a failure (which I was also guilty of) to correctly separate the issues of player agency in the game from character agency in the world.

(As an aside, I think the horrible phrasing in the PHB is responsible for this confusion, as druid armor is the only place where this confusion comes up.)

I have no problem with how it is handled in the PHB. I'm assuming it was just space constraints.

Would have been nice to have it expounded upon in some other text. The SCAG would have been a good spot for that.

Why they won't wear metal armour is up to the table. I don't personally care to come up with anything specific more than I need to know why vegetarians won't eat meat.

All Druids know Druidic too which people seem to be okay with. I guess because not knowing Druidic doesn't give them a +2 somewhere on their sheet.

 

[Oofta]

To be clear, I'm saying NOT challenging convictions is bad DM practice. The best games are generally the ones where you put the PCs through the wringer.

There's a big difference between "choose between a devil and a demon" and "a devil offers you aid which would benefit you greatly, you just have to do this one little thing for him".

The former, to me, tells me that the DM/mod author thinks religious convictions are stupid, the latter is a legitimate temptation.

 

[ad_hoc]

I can't speak for @Chaosmancer, but I think that just because something is a taboo for some druids, it doesn't make any sense for it to be taboo for all druids (and by all druids, I mean the base druid class).

That's just not true. It's a rule in the book and central to their identity. Anyone who wants to houserule it is free to do so. But don't also tell people who follow the rules that they're playing wrong.

It's pretty taboo for Warlocks that want good DPR to do anything besides spamming Eldritch Blast . . . expect for Hexblades (and a few other decent options for Pact of the Blade, like the new Undead Patron Warlock).

This is also not true. Personally, I think Eldritch Blast is overrated at best and a trap at worst. It's a cantrip and without investment it is no better than many other cantrips.

Wasting level 3+ spells on Hex is definitely a trap. Spending invocations on buffing a cantrip is okay, but not great.

Their true power lies in their huge amount of high level spells and their invocations can be quite powerful too.

(Also taboo isn't what you think it means)

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, it is. What a strange claim.

Someone can tell me all kinds of convictions that they have, but until they uphold them they are just words. Hell, someone can believe that they have a conviction and discover that they were wrong at the first test.

 

[Maxperson]

There wasn't any option. Druid PC puts on metal armor or the world (okay, nature) ends

There was in the original. I said best way. I later just shortened it like page 45 does.

 

[Faolyn]

I mean, if you actually said that exactly that, or subverted my basic character concept after agreeing to it, completely without any buy in from me, we would pause the game and have a pretty serious problem on a personal level.

Patrons aren't pets or allies you the player control. They're NPCs, 100% under DM control. And part of playing a warlock is having a patron. You may not realize you have a patron, but that's nothing new. How many warlocks picked up a copy of the D&D equivalent of the Necronomicon and started casting the spells in it without realizing that they've inadvertently made contact with a Great Old One?

That's very different than a druid wearing metal armor because, well, the druid's body, the druid's choice. There may (or may not) be consequences for that choice, but it's still a choice.

Of course, how your patron actually acts depends on what pact you made. Despite my comment of "when you hack into the Abyss..." I wouldn't assume that your patron was evil if you decided to represent your hacking by taking the Celestial or Archfey patron.

But my best friend and main other GM in my group, who sticks as much as possible to RAW but has no issue with reflavoring that doesn’t change mechanics, is about as “letter of the rules text” a GM as I can stand to sit at a table with. The rules don’t matter. They’re just guideposts to facilitate play.

That's fine for your friend's game. And I'm all for reskinning and reflavoring. But if you went into my current homebrew setting and said "I'm playing a warlock but there's no pact and no patron; I just hacked magic," I would have to say, "yeah, that's not going to work. Magic isn't like math or computer code in my setting."

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Here's an interesting thought exercise:
What happens if someone in your game world picks up a magic lamp, rubs it, and Wishes that druids could wear metal armor?

Did they fundamentally change the rules of the game?
Did they significantly impact the culture and history of Druids in your world?
Did they waste a wish?
Did they _________?

I feel like this one has been gone over many, many times. Sheesh.

Clearly, the wish maker would explode.

 

[J.Quondam]

I'd probably describe the discarded shield as being made of wood, especially if I had placed it there specifically for the druid to use as an item of last resort. The player wouldn't bat an eye.

If that wasn't possible for some really weird hypothetical reason, I would go the Thorin Oakenshield route: I'd let the druid pick up a nearby chunk of wood or whatever, to use as a rudimentary shield.

And if that wasn't possible for an even weirder, more hypothetical reason: I would call a break, discuss this with the player, and devise an after-the-fact ramification that both of us can live with, then return to the game. It would probably involve loss of powers and atonement, and would become the premise for another adventure.

And if even that wasn't possible, somehow, for no reason I can even imagine: I would conclude the player is being stubborn and actively trying to break the rule for no other reason than to see it broken, I would call a break to discuss that issue privately with the player. The player would likely be removed from the group.

Thank you for the serious reply! (I hope you understand I'm trying to resolve in my head the "player agency" concern here.)

I'm envisioning a back-and-forth with the player, starting something like "That shield-- your fallen fighter friend's-- is made of metal. But you spot a hefty wooden stool nearby that would make a decent makeshift shield. Will you use that instead?" If the player persists, it's deemed a serious issue, and the game stops to deal with it, first as a rules issue, then as a fiction possibility, and finally as a table problem. (Presumably, if the player just asks point-blank: "What does my spiritual instruction tell me about using metal armor?" that goes to a table discussion, too.)

More abstractly, as I'm understanding it, an aim of the GM on this is to avoid the rule conflict, if at all possible. But if the player insists* on pursuing it (as a player misunderstanding, a PC's moral choice, or whatever), the table stops to hash it out first outside the game, then jumps back into the game to continue the story itself.

Is that a fair take?

If so, then seeing it laid out like that, I think I finally grok the what and the how of it. (Still a little fuzzy on the why, but that's a probably just a personal taste thing. )

* In hypotheticals, I personally think it's easiest to always assume the GM and player are sincere, or at worst "not a good fit for this game." I mean, booting a problem player who's just being a donkeybutt is always a legit answer.