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

[Crimson Longinus]

Turtles don't have high enough AC.

Giant snapping turtle has natural armour AC of 17 so exactly on point lower than full plate like I suggested. Not that I think you should really try to derive things from monster stats that way; they're not designed to be material components for crafting.

Umber Hulks and Bulettes are unnatural, which makes them at a minimum as bad as metal armor.

How they are unnatural? Perhaps they're just naturally occurring denizens of a fantasy world, just like elves, tabaxi and what have you.

 

[mrpopstar]

Ankylosaurus!
And your sickle can be the claw of a raptor!

 

[Maxperson]

Giant snapping turtle has natural armour AC of 17 so exactly on point lower than full plate like I suggested. Not that I think you should really try to derive things from monster stats that way; they're not designed to be material components for crafting.


How they are unnatural? Perhaps they're just naturally occurring denizens of a fantasy world, just like elves, tabaxi and what have you.

"Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense frightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly
natural, and almost never benign."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"Monstrosities are monsters in the strictest sense frightening creatures that are not ordinary, not truly
natural, and almost never benign."

Ah, fair enough. I don't think it is distinction that makes much sense in a fantasy world though. Besides, if the owlbear is a monstrosity then certainly platypus is one as well!

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, fair enough. I don't think it is distinction that makes much sense in a fantasy world though. Besides, if the owlbear is a monstrosity then certainly platypus is one as well!

Well, no. Nobody went out and used magic or curses to create the Platypus. Their origins are completely different.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, no. Nobody went out and used magic or curses to create the Platypus. Their origins are completely different.

Well, we modern humans know this. But certainly in the past people had all sort of wild origin stories for various things, including animals. In any case, personally I don't find the distinction meaningful, as I don't think it is something the people in the setting would generally be able to determine. Besides, if it is a world where gods created things, isn't everything created by magic anyway?

 

[Faolyn]

I've gamed with Dungeon Masters who pull your character around by the nose a little bit, but I've never dealt with or witnessed a DM wholesale possessing anyone's character.

I played in a game like that once (lasted one session, then we told the Storyteller no) and read plenty of stories like this on r/rpghorrorstories--even if we are to assume only half of those stories are true and not made up for karma, it can get really bad at times.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, we modern humans know this. But certainly in the past people had all sort of wild origin stories for various things, including animals. In any case, personally I don't find the distinction meaningful, as I don't think it is something the people in the setting would generally be able to determine. Besides, if it is a world where gods created things, isn't everything created by magic anyway?

In the D&D world they know what has been created by curses and magic experiments and what is natural. As for everything being created by magic, that's not actually known. The gods claim to have created everything, but you have 2 billion different gods around all the settings all claiming to have created everything and perhaps none of them did. It actually very probable that none of them did, because whichever one of them it was could just snap his gauntlet and wipe out all the competition, yet that hasn't been done.

 

[tetrasodium]

For thematics of fantasy game it makes perfect sense. Of course everything is natural in a sense that is part of nature; uranium is natural so nukes are natural! But this is not what the theme means!

The "theme" is a misplaced virulent bit of misplaced setting specific trash. Also your barkskin "improvement" is no better than said theme. I say that about your "improved" version because it displays the same profound lack of understanding of the class as your arguments about "will not wear metal armor".

"Randomly improved" & "functionally improved" are two different things, here are some details.

Spoiler: 5e barkskin

Note that it's a 1 hour concentration second level spell. You proposed changing nothing but the highlighted bit to be ac18 & work with a shield. It's still a level 2 1hr concentration spell. That's important for several reasons

• a huge percentage of the druid's spell list is concentration, including most of their go to spells.
• A spell can't be cast unless it is first prepared & prepared spells is a very limited resource of class level+wis mod.
• Even if prepared, second level slots are already in conflict for Flaming Sphere, heat metal, hold person, lesser restoration, moonbeam & pass without a trace.
• Your talking about expending a limited prep slot and a high demand spell slot in order to get the benefit of 500go +1 half plate* the druid can already use or 1500gp plate for one hour if they maintain concentration & don't cast any concentration spells or spells with a cast time greater than one action.** This is an extremely important point because other classes who get their AC from equipment continue to improve it with better equipment that has none of the very real costs that go with barkskin (prep slot spell slot concentration). It's also the standing AC of a level 1 cleric paladin or fighter in starting gear showing up to their first session before they have had a chance to take a single action & you think that AC at a cost for a brief period is a fix... yeano
• The "improvement" is already bad even before noting the fact that it doesn't scale at all and the game continues beyond level 5, most of my campaigns run into the low to mid teens as an example.

* Like it or not, this is the nonsense wotc created in the dmg & doubled down on in xge. 5e's whole excuse may be an awful "rulings not rules", but if you want to argue RAW you need to take the good with the bad rather than just ignoring it when RAW is inconvenient.
**

Spoiler: longer casting times

 

[Faolyn]

I always saw it as a future-proofing mechanic. If the druid was proficinct in just light + hide

• They wouldn't be able to wear dragon scale or any other "natural" medium armor the game later adds. (Each item would have to call out that the druid is proficinct or not)
• You'd still have the problem on a micro-scale with shields since their is only one shield in the game and its stats don't vary by material.
• That doesn't stop the weirdness with elven chain.

Honestly, I'm not even sure they thought that far ahead. They have a sidebar on what you would call weapons in a Wuxia-style campaign, but not one word on unusual materials for armor or weapons. They didn't even need to give those materials special properties; they just need to exist. Heck, they could have included a line in the druid entry itself about breastplates made from wood or overlapping turtle shells.

That's what bugs me the most about this. It would have been so very simple for them to have avoided this whole issue with just a couple of sentences. Heck, even the Sage Advice could have said "Yes, they're proficient in metal armor; yes, they can wear it without mechanical penalty; no, they won't wear it because it's culturally taboo." Or no, they're not proficient and this is the only case of armor proficiency based on material. Or yes, they're proficient but if they wear it they can't Wildshape--I agree with you that that's a perfectly reasonable penalty. Or it doesn't matter if they're proficient or not, because the Official Rules, which aren't actually in the PH, say they explode if they wear it.