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

[Maxperson]

An ideal for me is, each Druid circle can grant additional proficiencies, while replacing or modifying the Wild Shape.

I like all three concepts, there could be a circle for each one.
• For a more Norse shamanic berserkar, shifting into full and partial beast forms: Unarmored Defense: AC 10 + Dex + Wis

That concept seems like more of a barbarian subclass that turns into a bear or something and has some spirit abilities.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes. That exists in RAW as dragonscale.


By RAW applying 'strange material' quirk from DMG's table on magical armour produces such.

The existence of those things sets the precedent for odd material armor to exist. This is backed up by the Sage Advice that mentions it.

 

[Yaarel]

It's not that hard to write it up.

"Druids are proficient in light armor, medium armor and shields. Druids have a taboo about wearing metal armor and shields, but have no difficulty wearing non-metal versions." and if you want a penalty you add in, "Too much metal worn about the body interferes with their magical abilities(including spells), preventing them from working." That makes it clearer that druids can opt to wear metal armor as an exception if they need to.

This "metal interferes" with magic feels conflictive with the Druid earth flavor.

If narrativizing the nonmetal armor proficiency, I find a positive approach more consistent. Something like:

"The community of animals and plants protects this circle from harm. The Druids of this circle gain proficiency with any medium armors that are made from the materials from animals or plants. For example, this Druid can wear scale mail that is made from a shed dragonskin."

The dragon here in the sense of a kind of snake awkwardly counts as an animal, but something like this.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The existence of those things sets the precedent for odd material armor to exist.

In the same way that existence of Sunblade sets precedent for your normal longsword being made out of light instead of metal.

 

[Yaarel]

That concept seems like more of a barbarian subclass that turns into a bear or something and has some spirit abilities.

The Norse concept of berserkar is fully magical. The Barbarian is too nonmagical.

The berserkar includes shapeshifting, outofbody remote presence, and so on.

It is easier for a berserkar concept to use Druid spells and modify the Druid Wildshape, than for a Barbarian to gain Wildshape and spells.

 

[Maxperson]

This "metal interferes" with magic feels conflictive with the Druid earth flavor.

Not really. The earth is composed of many things, not just metal. In this case too much metal conflicts with the earth.

If narrativizing the nonmetal armor proficiency, I find a positive approach more consistent. Something like:

"The community of animals and plants protects this circle from harm. The Druids of this circle gain proficiency with any medium armors that are made from the materials from animals or plants. For example, this Druid can wear scale mail that is made from a shed dragonskin."

If it were written like that, they would indeed not be proficient with metal armor, which is nonsensical as one kind of armor functions the same as the other.

All of the abilities that give partial proficiency are very explicit. Elves get proficiency with all longswords(regardless of material). Dwarves get proficiency with all battleaxes, light hammers and warhammers. Pact warlocks don't get proficiency, but use their pact weapon with proficiency.

Not one instance of partial proficiency fails to spell it out, which is why druids don't have partial proficiency. It does not spell it out.

 

[Maxperson]

The Norse concept of berserkar is fully magical. The Barbarian is too nonmagical.

The berserkar includes shapeshifting, outofbody remote presence, and so on.

Have you looked at some of the barbarian subclasses out there. There's even a thread going right now about non-magical barbarians being a thing of the past.

 

[Maxperson]

In the same way that existence of Sunblade sets precedent for your normal longsword being made out of light instead of metal.

Not the same thing. Light isn't a material. But then you knew that.

 

[Oofta]

There is two super easy way to fix it:

1- Give them only proficiency in Light Armour and Hide Armour. That means that, if a Player wants to play a tin plated Druid, they totally can, they just need to find the proficiencies elsewhere and there's no question that needs to be asked about materials or multi classing or whatever. It just works like every other damn armor proficiencies, even if a little weird.

2- Make it so they can't use Wildshape while wearing metal armor (while having a sidebar in the armor section about alternate materials) or even while wearing anything with a higher AC than Hide. That way, non-Moon Druid could have a decent choice.

You could also make it a purely narrative detail and not care that every Druid end up in half-plates but that's not a popular answer.

You could also give the Druid a kind of 'unarmored defence' that stop working if they get someone better than Hide armor.

It's really not that difficult.

What are the options? As spelled out in a reasonably concise rule? Assuming for a moment the intent is that without the DM changing the rule a druid never wears metal armor.

1. Druids will not wear metal armor
   1. This works fine for me. There's nothing physically stopping the druid from wearing metal armor, but it's part of the identity of what a druid is. The exact reasons can vary from campaign to campaign along with how strict it is.
2. Druids cannot wear metal armor
   1. What does that even mean? With #1, it's obvious - assuming you take it as a hard restriction they will never willingly put on metal armor. But cannot? Do they explode? Does the armor disintegrate? Do druids exude rust monster sweat? What happens if someone tries to put them in metal armor because they passed out after the spring equinox celebration? This raises more questions for me than answers.
3. Druids are not proficient in metal armor and cannot ever become proficient in metal armor.
   1. This probably achieves the same thing as rule #1 99% of the time, but would still get the same pushback because it would still be an exception to how other rules work. On the other hand I could see this being the practical implementation at a lot of tables, it's just never come up in all my years of DMing and can't imagine why it would.

 

[Yaarel]

If the GM decides to homebrew such an option, sure.

The existence of nonmagical nonmetal medium armor officially exists.

In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is "spiked armor".

"
Spiked Armor
Spiked armor is a rare type of medium armor made by dwarves. It consists of a leather coat and leggings covered with spikes that are usually made of metal.

Cost: 75 gp
AC: 14 + Dexterity modifier (max 2)
Stealth: Disadvantage
Weight: 45 lb.

"

This armor appears to be a variant of scale armor, where the scales protrude outward into spikes. These scales are usually made of metal, but not always. It is rare, but is nonmagical.