Remathilis
Legend
I voted hard no, but I'd like to cavaet it with a feat (or series of feats) that can allow armored casting. If you want to wear plate AND cast fireball, its going to cost you feats to do it...
And I think this is probably how it worked in very early D&D. I think the overaly of (pseudo-)rationales from within the fiction - which then become mechanically expressed in 3E's spell failure rules - is a later thing.My preference is for wizards who can't wear armour, mostly for balance and partly for flavour.
From the point of view of the game-world's inhabitants I think wizards probably can wear armour, it's just that they don't, for whatever reason. Does there even have to be one?
3) Comparing, say, a marine medic with a more generic marine (I don't know the particular specializations) in the actual army, how different are they in terms of how well they do in armor? Do they have the same basic training, and the more generic marine is just beefier from spending extra hours running around in armor? How much would does wearing armor interfere with a medic trying to handle a combat injury?
1) Not I, as armour was not as hard to walk or fight in as some would have you believe.
2) Again, not I, with no realism whatsoever, it has no grounding, and becomes silly, IMO.
I'm not trying to convince you...I just thought that Whirlwind Attack doesn't require precise movements, it's more like a huge swing around you a couple of turns, at least in my mental image. I think there are a bunch of combat feats in 3ed which don't work in heavy armor, Spring Attack being one of them.
TBH, I could easily live with 'you may only cast spells when wearing armour in which you are proficient', especially if getting armour proficiency essentially meant either Multi-classing or playing a Swordmage or Bard.
I guess I have a problem with, "You want to mix-and-match a physical combatant, with armor and a weapon, with magic? That's overpowered / munchkin / badwrongfun," when the cleric is, like, totally sitting right there.
My preference is for wizards who can't wear armour, mostly for balance and partly for flavour.
From the point of view of the game-world's inhabitants I think wizards probably can wear armour, it's just that they don't, for whatever reason. Does there even have to be one?
Beyond that, part of my argument is based on something written in one of the D&D website articles earlier this week. According to Mike Mearls, people are feeding back that it's too easy for a Wizard to evade melee combat and want them to be unable to do so.
So the class with the least hit points, who can't wear armor, should also be unable to run away from an attack, even though if he or she gets hit, it then not only risks their life, but also makes them less apt to be effective on their next turn to act.
And people still want to reduce a Wizard's overall power on top of all of that!
Again, it's a war on magic. The far more simple answer is to build balance into all classes, raising "lesser" classes up to the assumed level of Wizards, then saying "Hey, if you don't like magic, ban it from your game, but don't demand that those who want to play with it be unable to enjoy doing so."
My idea would be to turn Mage Armor into an "add Int to AC" ability, reflecting the wizard's training and ease to put up magical force fields to defend him. This would, of course, not be cumulative with armor.I think there's 2 solutions to this:
-Have certain spells like Mage Armour be always on, lasting continuously but costing a spell slot or something similar.
-But allow wizards also to take armour proficiencies. And it shouldn't be by tier, but much like 4e where it was by very general armour type leather>hide>chain>scale>plate.
So in both cases, a Wizard would get roughly the same result in protection, but it'll cost them differently.
"Wizards cannot cast in armor" is completely metagame and explaining that armor disrupts the gestures is a poor handwave (the rogue has no problem with dodging and opening locks in his armor, after all).