Oryan77
Adventurer
You're thinking of D&D as a video game where everything is there to provide bonuses or penalties to your stats. This may be confusing you a lot.SRD said:Clothing: Entertainer’s Outfit, Monk’s Outfit, Noble’s Outfit: I didn't see any bonuses for these- what do they do? I mean, why would someone want any of these things that don't grant anything?
Don't think of D&D as just a video game type of hack & slash game. It helps to think of D&D as a real life experience. For example, in a video game, I'm not going to care about my character having leather boots that don't give me any bonuses to my stats because it won't affect anything in a premade video game world.
But in D&D, you will want some regular leather boots for the same reason you wear shoes in real life (so your feet stay warm, so you can walk comfortably, ect ect). Your character will want to wear clothing that doesn't give you in-game bonuses so he's not walking around naked. If your PC is walking around town naked, some guards might throw him in jail for indecent exposure just like cops would do to you in real life. Those outfits listed in the PHB are just suggestions/examples for clothing that you might be interested in wearing.
You can play it like a video game and not worry about things that don't give bonuses to your stats if that's the way your group plays the game. But D&D is a game that allows you to play imaginary characters living in a real world where real life situations happen. It can be much more than a simple video game type of game!
A co-worker of mine that played D&D with us had this problem since he is a huge video game fan. Even after several sessions he still didn't understand how it's different from a video game. The idea of being able to do anything you want and interacting with an imaginary environment just didn't make sense to him. After an hour of me explaining it to him, he finally understood and he had a lot more fun playing after that.