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

[Crimson Longinus]

Then, as I've said, it's one of the most badly-written rules in the game, as evidenced by the fact that we're in page 80 of this thread and this isn't the first thread that's been written on the topic.


IMO, any prohibitive rule that has no in-game purpose ("tradition" isn't a purpose) and doesn't explain what happens if you break it isn't a rule worth keeping.

Both of those are perfectly sensible reasons for wanting to change the rule. As I've said many times, I would.

 

[mrpopstar]

Alignment and personality characteristics are 100% under player control. Unless you have found reason to tell people that they aren't allowed to play a gruff character.

The outline of alignment and personality characteristics are prescriptive as to a character's expected behavior. Like every other prescription in the game, they carry as much weight as you give it at your own table.

Not true. I actually know a rogue character (well, Tabaxi rogue, wizard, fighter, something else) who was a slave to drow. And he specifically wanted to wear down a drow enemy with multiple strikes rather than a single blow that would end the fight quickly.

In fact, this text refers to a Rogue's sneak attack... and a rogue can choose not to sneak attack. If I am stabbing a creature with a rapier and I have an ally within 5 ft I am not forced to use Sneak Attack, I can choose not to do so.


Therefore, this text is not like the Druid text which explicitly forbids me from making a choice.

Mm, I think you'll find that if a rogue never sneak attacks then someone might say something like "your class suggests that your character would prioritize cunning over strength," just like they might say to a druid something like "your class suggests that your character wouldn't wear metal armor."

Saying either of those things doesn't make you a monster who violates anyone's agency.

There is no difference based on material. A wooden shield functions identically to a metal one. Chain wrought from the hide of a Bullete is going to require exactly the same proficiency as chain wrought from steel.

Druids have proficiency in all medium metal armors and metal shields simply by virtue of having proficiency in medium armor and shields. There's nothing in the Sage Advice and only the erroneous page 45 to say otherwise. The full proficiency rules state very clearly that they have proficiency with medium armors and shields with no set restrictions. The only restriction they have is one set by druids in the fiction that says that druids choose not to wear metal armor.

I'm half-and-half on the distinction as to whether or not they have proficiency in metal armors. Do they have proficiency with medium armors generally? Clearly. But do they have proficiency with medium armors made of metal specifically? I'm inclined to say no based on the presumption that they won't wear thus have no experience with them to gain proficiency.

You know, sometimes I wish I could see who you guys are talking to and other times I don't. Because trying to tell someone "You aren't a true vegan if you do X" is just the "True Scotsman" fallacy and is just petty.

I'd love to be able to see each other live for some cool convos!

And I'd like to think people would behave much differently as I see some terrible examples of interpersonal communication in written form on this forum. Yikes.

You can if you view the forum on the Tapatalk app instead of the browser.

What do you mean, like a video chat!?

 

[Maxperson]

Where does it say that page 45 is wrong? It got errata'ed out?

1. There's no such thing as partial proficiency. Strike one for the erroneous page 45.
2. The more in depth rules for Druids in not one, but TWO other areas say nothing like what page 45 says. Strike two for the erroneous page 45.
3. The Sage Advice literally says, "Druids don’t lack the ability to wear metal armor.", because their proficiency gives them that ability. Strike three for the erroneous Page 45.

The erroneous page 45 is out!

 

[Charlaquin]

Depends on the game. For example in many games phobias can be mechanical flaws you take to gain more points in chracter creation to use for something else. So you can't just decide to not have it any more. You choose to have it in chracter creation just like you choose to be druid in D&D. And I don't think this violated player agency.

It doesn’t violate player agency because it doesn’t say the character won’t do something they have the ability to do.

Sure. But it could be a thing. Who knows, perhaps the druid ban on metal armour is dies a supernatural curse or geas that is placed on every initiate that joins the order!

Neat idea. Not what the rules say.

But in D&D there are no rules for changing character class, and the concept is intrinsically tied to the class. So this is not an issue with just this one thing.

It is an issue with this one thing because this is the one case where a rule dictates thar the player isn’t able to decide their character will do a thing they have the ability to do.

It doesn't happen whilst the character remains a druid. Can character stop being a druid? In fiction that certainly sounds possible. How to handle it in the game? The same way than you handle the wizard that becomes a farmer I suppose. There are no rules for it.

Except according to you there is a rule for it, and that rule is “they won’t.” If you allow the character to equip metal armor and stop being a druid, you are creating a house rule to preserve agency that the rule as written would otherwise remove.

Batman is written by real people who agreed to write a superhero comic and D&D characters are played by real people who agreed to play a game about characters based on D&D archetypes adventuring together.

This has nothing to do with player agency in D&D and I’m not going to engage with it any further.

You can choose to stop playing a druid, just like you can choose to stop playing a wizard.

But you won’t choose to equip metal armor as a druid. Not can’t, won’t. The rule, if you interpret it as such, defines what the player is allowed to decide the character does.

 

[Charlaquin]

What do you mean, like a video chat!?

No, it’s a mobile app for various forums and such, including ENWorld.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm half-and-half on the distinction as to whether or not they have proficiency in metal armors. Do they have proficiency with medium armors generally? Clearly. But do they have proficiency with medium armors made of metal specifically? I'm inclined to say no based on the presumption that they won't wear thus have no experience with them to gain proficiency.

Why would metal chain function any differently than non-metal chain? It's chain. You wear it and it moves around your body like chain does, regardless of material. If it did behave differently based on material, you'd need proficiency for steel chain, separate proficiency for adamantine chain, and a third one for mithril chain, and so on. Materials don't alter how the proficiency works. If you have it for one material, you have it for all of them regardless of experience.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why are you comparing a full caster to fighter or paladin? And of course they can improve their AC via magic armour or bumping dex.

Maybe it is that line I said about Druids having a lot of incentives to be frontliners. Then I went and talked about two frontliners. I get skimming posts to get through this faster, but could you at least slow down wehn responding to someone directly?

And a fighter, or cleric, or heck a wizard can improve their AC via magic armor. Elven Chain doesn't need proficiency to wear. And they can all bumpy Dex too. That still doesn't make an 16 AC decent for a mid to high level character. And considering magical AC bumps are very closely monitored because of bladesingers and Forge clerics and Paladins, it seems pertinent to recognize that at least letting a druid match non-magical armors without magical AC shoudn't be that hard.

It's not homebrewing, it is directly in the DMG rules.

In a section all about homebrewing magical items.

Perhaps we should nerf clerics instead? I never understood why they need to have the amount the armour they have. Paladin already fulfils the role of a plate-wearing holy warrior.

Or you could let people have different tastes than you without forcing them to argue about it and take virtue tests to prove they aren't a nasty nasty powergamer, instead of nerfing a character class that in no way deserves a nerf.

Th logic is fine. The rule is not comprehensive tratise of entire druid belief system, it merely deals with a common and pertinent aspect of it.

No, it is not.

1) Metal is natural, calling it unnatural makes no sense.
2) Worked Metal is no more a sign of civilization than chemically treated leathers or lacquered wood or paper or glass. Heck, one of the earliest signs of civilization are things like writing, fire and language. Druids are fine with those.
3) The druid has no restriction on any form of metal except the one has a mechanical defensive impact. Using metal weapons is 100% fine.
4) The "encased in metal" argument doesn't make sense, because shields aren't encasing you.

And on and on and on.

Right. So those classes have harder time getting good AC, as they need to spend resources such as feats to achieve it. Just like druids need to spend resources such as magic items to achieve it. Seems fair to me.

Rogues get the ability to hide or dash as a bonus action (avoiding the fight), disengage to avoid taking hits and get a reaction to take half damage when hit anyways. Also, as a Dex primary class, they are very likely to get a 17 AC before magical gear.

Monks have unarmored defense, a bonus action dodge, increased speed to get out of fights and the ability to cancel ranged attacks.

Warlocks, Sorcerers and Wizards all have magical spells to increase their AC, a few have specific subclasses that either increase their HP or their AC, teleportation spells to get out of fights, and especially in the case of Warlocks, taking the feat to get medium armor is incredibly valuable to them. An option you would deny druids.

Only two druids get any sort of mitigation to their low AC. Which is quite low. If a druid doesn't make Dex at least their 3rd highest ability, they are looking at a maximum AC of 14... something that a wizard, sorcerer and warlock can all beat trivially. And this doesn't get into any other issues, such as the druid having a strong incentive to be in melee, since most of their ranged options are limited after they cast a single concentration spell.

Not just mine. The majority here seemed to agree with some form of metal restriction on druids, even though they don't like how the rule is implemented. And I would guess that is the prevailing opinion of the playerbase.

And I'd say you are likely wrong in that assessment, because it comes up all the time across all social media, with people trying to figure out why they have to deal with this.

I really don't think you can extrapolate armour materials from monster stats like that. The monsters are designed to work as CR appropriate foes, not as reagents of crafting simulation.

And yet, they still follow the same AC rules. Any creature that doesn't have "natural armor" listed is either wearing armor (which is listed) or just uses their Dex modifier +10, just like every PC.

Certainly the cow is there. Wizards generally do not get healing spells. There might be some minor exceptions,but overall theme is there. Wizard is not the party healer. And yes, it is an arbitrary thing based on D&D history, and a reason why a lot of people like it.

"minor exceptions" like the healing spells they can get? I'd call that more than a minor exception. You can't say "wizards don't get healing spells" if I can then point to healing spells that wizards get.

I don't agree that those subclasses particularly require waiving the armour restriction.

"Require"? Maybe, maybe not, but all four of them make perfect sense to be wearing metal armor from various sources just based on their subclass lore.

No, becuae the class is actually built so that not wearing armour is still a valid choice and wearing some armour doesn't violate the themes of the class in the first place.

Wearing armor doesn't violate the theme of the class who goes into battle without armor? Huh... a strange assertion. I wonder if it is just because you want to power game with Barbarians by letting them wear armor so you can focus on strength and con instead of dex.

Ok. I like that theme and so do many others.

Great, then make it a choice, and then all of you who like it can keep doing as you do and those people who don't like it aren't forced to deal with it.

Win-win.

This is how good game design works, especially in a class based game. Classes are thematic archetypes and the rules need to support and encourage playing that archetype. If you're not gonna do that, then it is just better to get rid of the classes altogether.

And yet the class should be flexible enough to cover multiple archetypes.

The Barbarian is flexible enough that I have twice made a Barbarian Knight, and it worked perfectly. No issues with mechanics or themes. It was a great fusion. And that is a far bigger dissonance than I see in letting a nature worshipper use the gifts of nature to protect themselves.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

1. There's no such thing as partial proficiency. Strike one for the erroneous page 45.
2. The more in depth rules for Druids in not one, but TWO other areas say nothing like what page 45 says. Strike two for the erroneous page 45.
3. The Sage Advice literally says, "Druids don’t lack the ability to wear metal armor.", because their proficiency gives them that ability. Strike three for the erroneous Page 45.

The erroneous page 45 is out!

Whilst I agree that Sage Advice kinda support page 45 being in error, I don't think anything prevents existence of partial proficiencies. There are martial and simple weapon proficiencies, sometimes separated to ranged and melee but there are also proficiencies for individual weapons. Also blade pact warlocks are proficient with their pact weapon, but not automatically with an exactly identical weapon that's not their pact weapon. And if rules said that you're proficient with all non-metal armours or even proficient with all weapons that have pink ribbons on them* then that would technically work just fine. The issue just is that pages 45 and 65 say different things.

(* They should provide a price for purchasing pink ribbons though.)

 

[Faolyn]

1. There's no such thing as partial proficiency. Strike one for the erroneous page 45.

Plus, there's no other class (or background, or race) that both allows the class proficiency in X and also disallows proficiency in X at the same time.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The outline of alignment and personality characteristics are prescriptive as to a character's expected behavior. Like every other prescription in the game, they carry as much weight as you give it at your own table.

Right, but no one can tell me what my character's personality characteristics are, correct? They are what I say they are. And yet, the Druid doesn't get the capability to make their own choices in their own beliefs... why? Because people like the rule and think it would look weird if a druid did something different?

Mm, I think you'll find that if a rogue never sneak attacks then someone might say something like "your class suggests that your character would prioritize cunning over strength," just like they might say to a druid something like "your class suggests that your character wouldn't wear metal armor."

Saying either of those things doesn't make you a monster who violates anyone's agency.

Sure. And if the other person left it at just saying that, then they would be fine. If they tried to mechanically force the rogue to sneak attack at every opportunity, no matter the circumstances, because Rogue's using sneak attack is their vision for how the class should function... then we would have a problem with player agency, correct?