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<blockquote data-quote="Ace" data-source="post: 8179685" data-attributes="member: 944">I always though it was a dumb and arbitrary rule myself and was glad it went away. Truth is a lot of older D&amp;D rules are legacy cruft , for example thieves skills and&nbsp; especially armor and come from a time in which basically no one understood how armor worked or had every worn it. When D&amp;D came out in 1974 , even police didn't have body armor and unless someone had worn a flak jacket in the military or some such (riot gear, bunker coat, that sort of thing)&nbsp; most armor they'd even worn&nbsp; was a helmet.As the SCA&nbsp; and reenactment got bigger, more and more people wore authentic medieval armor and came to understand its actually pretty easy to put on save for some kinds of plate of course. Learning to wear say a mail shirt takes a couple of minutes and is not much harder than putting on a sweater and a belt.Now the&nbsp; current system is seriously dated but does pay respect to the old ways which is fine as its better than the needless&nbsp; complexity or extreme arbitrariness&nbsp; of previous editions. As an aside, a rule saying spells can't be cast in any thickness of clothing that would grant an armor class&nbsp; would have been fine with me. It would have ended up with magic users stripping armor off foes when spells were gone but that was fine. D4 HP is stil a D4 HP.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ace, post: 8179685, member: 944"] I always though it was a dumb and arbitrary rule myself and was glad it went away. Truth is a lot of older D&D rules are legacy cruft , for example thieves skills and especially armor and come from a time in which basically no one understood how armor worked or had every worn it. When D&D came out in 1974 , even police didn't have body armor and unless someone had worn a flak jacket in the military or some such (riot gear, bunker coat, that sort of thing) most armor they'd even worn was a helmet. As the SCA and reenactment got bigger, more and more people wore authentic medieval armor and came to understand its actually pretty easy to put on save for some kinds of plate of course. Learning to wear say a mail shirt takes a couple of minutes and is not much harder than putting on a sweater and a belt. Now the current system is seriously dated but does pay respect to the old ways which is fine as its better than the needless complexity or extreme arbitrariness of previous editions. As an aside, a rule saying spells can't be cast in any thickness of clothing that would grant an armor class would have been fine with me. It would have ended up with magic users stripping armor off foes when spells were gone but that was fine. D4 HP is stil a D4 HP. [/QUOTE]

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