D&D 5E (2014) Can your Druids wear metal armor?

[Oofta]

In my campaign? No. It's no more dumb than any other number of rules in the game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Them not being able to wear metal armour is an actual rule, and it effectively prevents them from wearing medium armour. So if this is intended to be balanced, just allowing them to ignore this restriction would be basically the same than giving any other class a free tier of amour proficiency. My current game has altered armour rules anyway, but I scaled the druids with the assumption that they're effectively meant to be light armour wearers.

 

[Guest 7030100]

Them not being able to wear metal armour is an actual rule, and it effectively prevents them from wearing medium armour. So if this is intended to be balanced, just allowing them to ignore this restriction would be basically the same than giving any other class a free tier of amour proficiency. My current game has altered armour rules anyway, but I scaled the druids with the assumption that they're effectively meant to be light armour wearers.

But they do have medium armor proficiency, don't they? That suggests to me that designers expect them to wear such armor.
The "no metal" requirement sounds to my ears more like fluff than mechanics.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But they do have medium armor proficiency, don't they? That suggests to me that designers expect them to wear such armor.
The "no metal" requirement sounds to my ears more like fluff than mechanics.

But all medium armours except hide which is rubbish are made of metal. And the restriction is part of the rule so probably it is meant to mean something?

 

[Radaceus]

No reason for them to use metal armor.

At least they can wear more than just leather (light) armor now!

I've allowed my Druids to wear wooden, chitin and scale, suffering any armor restrictions that apply . Heavy armor only if they are proficient (via feats or MCing).

It's also great side quest material, getting the ingredients for non-metallic armors ( Dragon Scale, Umber Hulk chitin, Bullette Hide, etc).

 

[was]

No, but we usually have alternative options (i.e. bone, chitin, scale, wood)

 

[Radaceus]

But all medium armours except hide which is rubbish are made of metal. And the restriction is part of the rule so probably it is meant to mean something?

Scale Mail is not always metal, and a breastplate can be made of Chitin.

 

[tommybahama]

Our DM's go to debuff is heat metal so the druid is better off without metal armor.

In addition to the chitin and bone armor someone mentioned, there is dragon scale armor. I think one adventure had a legendary giant goat you could kill for its skin.

 

[Kobold Stew]

For me as a DM, druids can wear any light armour or hide, no problem. If they have armour proficiency (e.g. from being a Dwarf) then they can use that armour -- it doesn't prevent casting or getting spells, for instance. If it came up (it hasn't) I would allow it with multiclassing too. Unless manufacvtured in-game (i.e. not bought in a market), I wouldn't allow/worry about chitin. bark, whatever alternatives.

As a player, I despise the limitation which feels artificial and under-rationalized, a legacy holdover. So I work around it, either with a human taking magic initiate so they can cast Mage Armor, or a Lizard Folk, or whatever.

 

[Panfilo]

Absolutely they can (assuming proficiency). I don't think that the original fluff reason for it is well thought out at all. Cured and boiled leather carved into fitted armor isn't any more "natural" than ore from a vein smelted and forged into armor. If anything, the one that requires killing or scavenging an animal is more likely to run up against some druids' social morays.

The more absolutist distinctions between classes were envisioned neither for philosophical coherence nor for balance (not that the latter reason would be expected to hold up after all this time either). They were a very specific pop cultural summation of half-understood mythology, and it's pretty easy to come up with better thematic delineations for our own worlds.