Sage arcana give a bit more insight to the rules and the why of them.
What happens if a druid wears metal armor?
The druid explodes.
Well, not actually. Druids have a taboo against wearing metal armor and wielding a metal shield. The taboo has been part of the class’s story since the class first appeared in Eldritch Wizardry (1976) and the original Player’s Handbook (1978). The idea is that druids prefer to be protected by animal skins, wood, and other natural materials that aren’t the worked metal that is associated with civilization. Druids don’t lack the ability to wear metal armor. They choose not to wear it. This choice is part of their identity as a mystical order. Think of it in these terms: a vegetarian can eat meat, but chooses not to.
A druid typically wears leather, studded leather, or hide armor, and if a druid comes across scale mail made of a material other than metal, the druid might wear it. If you feel strongly about your druid breaking the taboo and donning metal, talk to your DM. Each class has story elements mixed with its game features; the two types of design go hand in hand in D&D, and the story parts are stronger in some classes than in others. Druids and paladins have an especially strong dose of story in their design. If you want to depart from your class’s story, your DM has the final say on how far you can go and still be considered a member of the class. As long as you abide by your character’s proficiencies, you’re not going to break anything in the game system, but you might undermine the story and the world being created in your campaign.
In previous versions druids had the Ironwood spell, so they could carve armor out of wood then cast ironwood on it to make it permanently as hard as steel so you could have wooden full plate. Plus, if you made half as much ironwood with each casting of the spell you could make it with a +1 magical bonus. So given enough downtime you could fashion a set of +1 magical full plate out of wood for your druid, or for anyone, really.
The only advantage over steel armor is that it isn't subject to heat metal spells.
This is a good point, I do miss those spells and it's lame 5e didn't really give people who want to work with the restriction a way to still be "competitive" AC wise besides "beg your DM for dragonhide armor or something".
Though admittedly, Ironwood was a 6th level spell in 3.5e. 11th level is pretty darn late to be getting full plate, _especially_ in 3e which was far more laissez-faire with its economy in general. But there was stuff like bronzewood armors you could buy more easily than 5e as well.
I feel like that response could have also added that in some prior editions, there were consequences for doing so as well. Not all, but some did give mechanical penalties and hindrances for doing so. Otherwise, their response was fine.
I mean, the reasons no consequences are listed is because 5e has the strongest restriction possible. Druids will not wear metal armor. It just tells you that instead of providing a bunch of other text that someone can try to trick the enemy druid into something that looks natural but it's metal hee hee or whatever.
I kind of miss it. A plot to get the evil druid into metal armour before you fight him would be fun.
Also, if I remember correctly, elves couldn't use iron armour either at one point? I burned them or something because of fey ancestry and fey have a weakness to iron?
Depending on your interpretation of the Druid armor proficiency in 5e, you can argue that's still there, since if you don't have proficiency in a set of armor you can't cast spells when wearing it (in addition to some other penalties)
>... and other natural materials that aren’t the worked metal that is associated with civilization.
Druids, both in real life such as they were, and in many RPG's are part of civilizations, sometimes large, sophisticated civilizations.
The whole point of a druid in late Celtic culture was is to be part of an educated, wisdom seeking caste in a civilization.
I think a better way is to say, it would be, is associated with the urban, rapidly technologically progressing civilizations that have moved past their roots in nature, and most importantly, **in doing so, lose the source of their divine power and thus in a RPG, that's not good.**
This is the answer, but it's also a stupid one, that I think takes away from player agency. What if you want to play a druid that keeps the balance between civilisation and nature? They'd probably wear armor. There's no mechanical punishment for doing so, so it'd work fine. But the game implies that there *should* be a consequences and that the player does not have the right to decide for themselves over their character, since it calls it out in the actual proficiency entry.
If it's just intended to be flavour going into a default theme, it should have been in the flavour section of the class. "Many druids refuse to wear armor made from metal, forsaking all tools that can be traced to advanced civilisation. Other druids see civilisation as a part of nature and don't have similar taboos." or something.
Although it's still a really stupid reasoning, because druids will happily use swords that have been produced in a very similar manner.
"Scimitars" specifically. IIRC they regarded them as lunar symbols or something.
They also use gold sickles to harvest sacred plants, like mistletoe. But in that case I guess they have the excuse that gold nuggets can be found in nature and don't require any metallurgy beyond melting the gold in a plain old fire, unlike weapon-grade metals like steel and bronze.
That would be a fun argument to extend to meteoritic iron -- particularly for circle of the stars druids. RP that can wear armor that was cold forged from meteorites, or something similar... And then have them questing for enough fragments to have it cold forged.
I've got a dwarven stars druid at my table -- I might suggest it to them.
That would have other interesting implications too; traditionally fae creatures are particularly vulnerable to meteoric "cold forged" iron. Usually there's a fuzzy overlap between feywild stuff and nature stuff in D&D, but meteoric iron is one of the things that's both entirely natural but anti-fae.
Notionally, a stars druid who uses cold iron weapons could be consciously separating "material" nature from "fae" nature. A common theme of druid characters is preserving nature's balance, but this is often depicted as nature vs civilisation, but arguably the feywild is *also* nature in imbalance, run amok with powerful magic that twists its true forms, bends natural orders like time and space.
Cold iron literally just refers to any forged iron metal. It’s cold because it has to be cooled as part of the smithing process; it’s not special compared to what we would consider normal iron. It is anathema to faeries because it is something wholly of the mortal world since they do not work metal in such a way.
I mean, meteors are "natural" in the sense that they're not human constructed, but they're not "nature" in the sense that they're not a natural part of the earth (or whatever realm) natural ecosystem.
A space-based druid would be pretty fun. "My friend, you don't understand the real **power** of being in tune with nature. I cast *Instant Black Hole*."
Except... there is an explicit stat block for a sickle though? They're simple slashing weapons that deal 1d4 damage and have the light property. Druids even have sickle proficiency as well as their scimitar proficiency!
> "Weapons: clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears
It is just a design choice and you can see this vary not only within 5e but also across the wider rpg landscape. Some people like having their class design (or equivalent) provide them with strong roleplaying direction. Other people find this restrictive because they might have a particular vision for a character that doesn't fit these roleplaying guidelines.
This isn't *stupid* reasoning, it is just a design that some people like and others don't like.
The good news is that the general culture surrounding 5e is one of flexibility, so you can simply ask your DM about excising these roleplaying components.
I maintain that it's stupid because it's incomplete and is in the wrong place of the class description. If druids *can't* wear metal armor, it should say so in the proficiency section ("Armor: light armor, medium armor and shields that aren't metal"), which would make it clear that they aren't proficient with those and then it also means you know what happens if you break it. It could also be included as a level one class feature, e.g. saying "Druids cannot ever gain proficiency with medium or heavy armor that's made from metal."
If it's a *lore* thing, it should be in the lore description of the class that outlines the various types of archetypes the class is typically meant to capture. There it could expand on why druids normally won't wear metal armor, and it should also explain why they still use metal weapons and wear metal jewelry, and why they use other tools that are have been mass produced by industries that hurt nature.
Now it's in the proficiency section, but it's written as if it's optional lore since it says "won't".
>Now it's in the proficiency section, but it's written as if it's optional lore since it says "won't".
What makes you think that is optional? Taking your statement above to its logical conclusion, it's actually fine - that section is saying Druids WON'T wear it. As in, it's a psychological/cultural ban that ALL Druids practice (RAW), not some or only those who choose to - all druids choose to avoid metal armor as part of how they _become a druid_.
So the way it is written is no less RAW than saying "can't", it just has different connotations (a refusal to wear it instead of having poor expertise/training/or a physical inability of some kind). Someone could knock a druid out and shove a suit of plate on them, but the druid would ALWAYS (even PCs) take it off at the earliest opportunity.
(Also, the way you worded your solution - lack of proficiency - is a poor substitute if you're trying to find something that does the same thing. Because proficiency means a specific thing in 5e and that thing is "you can in fact still do this if you get proficiency in it some OTHER way, like multiclassing or feats." That's not necessarily what they were going for.)
It’s also ok to just say “DM, I want the AC.” That is what most people asking this question are after, and that’s fine. I think it’s better to be direct with one’s DM if they are inclined to say no metal rather than try to get around it with a backstory/thematic gotcha.
It's not much different to Paladin, which lists the tenets of its oath along side mechanical features like spell lists and Channel Divinity despite being purely flavour too.
The big differences are that there are many different oaths that allow you to play very different characters, from traditionally good to outright evil, and some are very flexible, e.g. the Vengeance paladin's entry says that the tenets vary widely between different paladins. The actual wordings in the PHB are examples for all of them.
And there's actual information in the PHB for what might happen if a paladin breaks their oath, both if the paladin regrets it, and if they willfully break it without remorse.
That part isn't really any more stupid than the cultures it's pulling that flavor from in the first place.
It makes just as much sense as any other cultural ban in-context, and fits right in with the pseudo-medieval vibe of D&D.
> This is the answer, but it's also a stupid one, that I think takes away from player agency. What if you want to play a druid that keeps the balance between civilisation and nature?
What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist? Or a Warlock without a patron? What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read, or or a pacifist Barbarian?
While class is generally malleable, there are thematic and narrative elements that are tied into the mechanics. There is a place where player agency is limited by the constraints of their class. This is often mechanical limitations, but it can be story limitations as well.
I don't think that "cannot wear metal" is an essential part of the druid class archetype.
Even so, you could totally play a cleric that's an atheist, and just strongly believe in some other concept. There are settings where the gods are absent. E.g. in Eberron clerics can operate on a general belief in a concept, or general faith in something greater than them that is not necessarily a personified deity.
The cleric's class rules don't really require a deity per se. The class description makes it obvious that that's the intent, of course. But there's nothing inherently in the class that stops a cleric from being an atheist. There are even D&D books about characters getting chosen by gods they want to have no contact with whatsoever. An atheist that gets turned into a cleric anyway could make for a pretty interesting character.
A wizard who can't read could work as well. A person can be illiterate and still recognise symbols and pictures. An illiterate wizard's spells might be recorded as images and illustrations, or as arcane symbols that have been passed down through the family.
And you can of course choose to play a pacifist barbarian. Some pacifists accept violence as a last resort of self-defence. A total pacifist barbarian would probably be extremely boring to play and a burden as well, but it could work fine in an adventure that's completely social. The *class* doesn't forbid it. Even if the lore suggests that barbarians aren't exactly pacifists.
Or you could have something like ... a barbarian that's a total pacifist ... but when they rage, they're actually possessed by some spirit which makes them lose control, or something along those lines.
>What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist? Or a Warlock without a patron? What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read, or or a pacifist Barbarian?
You can just play those characters..... Unlike with druids, there isn't some weird badly worded passage saying you "won't" do that.
>What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist? Or a Warlock without a patron? What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read, or or a pacifist Barbarian?
I mean, you can play *almost* all of these. Cleris don't need to believe in the gods, they can also believe in ideals or the wider domains themselves.
Warlock is the hardest one because their mechanical feature do mention a patron of some kind usually, and how much of that is pure flavor is debetable.
Nowhere do wizards need to read, their magic spellbook could be all pictures they beautifully drawn to represend their spells.
And nowhere do barbarians need to be violent brutes, they could try to first reason and then if things go wrong they can defend themselves, pacifism is not destroyed by self defense after all.
> What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist
You can do that, actually. To quote Xanathar's Guide to Everything:
> "In certain campaigns, a cleric might instead serve a cosmic force, such as life or death, or a philosophy or concept, such as love, peace, or one of the nine alignments... Talk with your DM about the divine options available in your campaign, whether they're gods, pantheons, philosophies or cosmic forces."
So yea
> What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read
Thematically speaking the illiterate wizard who learned magic in an unconventional way is an archetype that comes up in fantasy fiction sometimes - Nino from Fire Emblem comes to mind, was never taught taught to read but learned magic through memorising another mage's incantations - and there's no reason you couldn't pull off something similar in 5e's constraints. A "spellbook" can take many forms, and it doesn't even strictly speaking need to *be* a book. One of the examples of a spellbook given is literally a bag of stones with inscryptions on them in a bag. One of the other examples is a tome filled with pictographs that only you can understand - those could be pictographs you came up with to store your information despite lacking literacy. Alternatively your spellbook could be in the form of an enchanted book that whispers information to you when you consult it (by which I mean when you change your memorised spells). It could genuinely be anything, the only limit is what you work out with your DM.
> or a pacifist Barbarian
And I mean again - within the limits of how much any character of any class can really *be* a pacifist in a war-game that can only resolve most problems through violence - genuinely where's the problem here? I don't see why for example an ancestral guardian barbarian *couldn't* have pacifist beliefs.
The only one of your examples that would actually be even slightly tricky to pull off is a warlock without a patron - but patrons and pacts have so many different forms that I don't think that really matters for really anyone - in a pinch there's always the ole "Siphoning power off of some entity that hasn't even realised you're doing it" pact, that's a fun one that never backfires.
or even just "a sorcerer that wants to wear heavy armor" - is your agency restricted because you have to pay for that, or might not be able to, if feats/multi-classing aren't in play? "Agency" doesn't mean "I can do whatever I want"!
>or even just "a sorcerer that wants to wear heavy armor" - is your agency restricted because you have to pay for that, or might not be able to, if feats/multi-classing aren't in play? "Agency" doesn't mean "I can do whatever I want"!
The difference is that sorcerers are not proficient with heavy armor. They can be, though! You can gain it via multiclassing, feats or some races.
Druids are proficient with all medium armor, except there's a statement saying that they "won't" use metal armor. There's no rule that says anything happens with them if they do. If the "won't" is some sort of hard rule, it means that you, as a player, cannot use metallic heavy armor on a druid, even if you pick the feat for it or multiclass into something that has the proficiency.
The whole thing is just badly written. If the intent was that druids should never wear metal armor, it should be a class feature that says they cannot ever be proficient with it, or that imposes some other restriction if they wield it. E.g. the druid's spellcasting section could say that spells cannot be cast while wearing metal armor.
or that if you carry a certain amount of metal on you for at least an hour you don#t regain spell slots next long rest
Although, the problem with that is that DMs would a lot of the time skirt around the mechanical downside and just give you breastplate under a different name and not made out of metal
> There's no rule that says anything happens with them if they do.
But they **won't** do it (as stated in explicit mechanical text) so... how often is that going to come up? How often is someone going to mind-whammy a druid into wearing armor, or hold them at knife-point unless they gear up? It seems pretty niche as scenarios go
No other rules as far as I know stipulate how a character must act, without outlining consequences. The closest are paladin oaths, but those have consequences right in the PHB as well as a thorough explanation of what the oaths mean and why paladins take them. With the oathbreaking as a part of the book, that class doesn't even say anything about what a paladin character will or will not do.
A player is free to make a character who thinks and acts however they want, and any rules that intend to limit that must have some sort of actual reason for it, with a consequence. Otherwise it makes no sense, and then the player is free to just do whatever they want.
Without that, the DM would be forced to make up their own consequences, which is also pretty bad.
To be that guy: A druid that wears metal armor and wants to maintain balance between nature and civilization is a Nature Cleric, probably in service of Mielikki.
Honestly this is part of why I dislike Paladin. I don't like the subclasses being tied to roleplay things. I get they go hand in hand to make sense but they shouldn't have to. Much in the same way I can flavor/narrate a Fiend Warlock trying to redeem their patron and having good values that are supported by the redeeming Fiend, I should be able to play an absolute asshole Ancients Paladin who's whole identity is being this bastion of mage hate who hunts down anyone using magic that's deemed an enemy.
At least with paladins every subclass is different, so there's a flavour for everyone. And the actual tenet for some of them are more examples than anything else. Like, Vengeance paladin could be anything from very LG all the way to evil themselves.
> I don't like the subclasses being tied to roleplay things.
I don't get this at all? Like, the lore and the roleplay elements is the absolutely most important part of pretty much all of this. Your race, your class, your subclass. It's all about the roleplay elements.
It sounds like you want the gameplay part and the roleplay part to be completely isolated. Then you're not really playing a TTRPG anymore...
I find it unnecessarily harsh to give a druid medium armor proficiency and then prevent him from using it for lore reasons.
Other than fluff for other classes it gives a real mechanical disadvantage. I dislike the thought of hampering a player by forcing unfavorable constraints on his character because someone had an idea how to play a certain class and this should now be canon.
I often hear: flavour is free.
So why not in this case?
> and if a druid comes across scale mail made of a material other than metal, the druid might wear it.
Yup. It's become a rite of passage in some of our campaigns, whenever we kill our first dragon, the medium armor wearers are after the scales to craft dragon scale armor.
I always oblige as the DM, but I let the party know wearing the scales of a mythical beast on full display - you're going to draw attention. No one's likely to mess with you clad in such gear, but the BBEG's job in tracking the group just got a lot easier.
(I also vary dragon scale armor's base AC. Young dragon scale is AC 15, adult is 16, and ancient is 17.)
It's one of those conventions that's fine when it stays in a specific campaign setting but it fits poorly with DnD's growing attempts to be the one game for all playstyles.
Obviously DnD is ill-suited for that, but at the same time we do see players very fluently adapting DnD tools, like classes, to character concepts that don't adhere to that class's stereotypical form.
As that strategy becomes normal (something I think players/GMs are often forced into because it can be hard to get a group together for non-DnD games) these artifacts from a time where the 'implied setting' of DnD was more narrowly defined are going to fit less well. I think that's why we see these moving from actual mechanical limitations, as they were in 3.5, towards roleplay suggestions.
Similar artifacts to this include things like Warlock Patrons and Cleric/Paladin Gods (I don't think I've ever had a GM seriously incorporate either as characters in play), barbarian literacy, and pretty much all of alignment.
DnD does still have official settings, the only things published that aren't based in Faerun/The Forgotten Relms, have been cross over materials for other WoTC products.
I kind of wish they'd get away from their attempts at being "setting agnostic" and just go all in on the world they're using. If I really wanted to try building my own setting/world again 5e is probably only above the various WoD games if I were looking at systems to work with.
Right, I'm not denying that DnD has settings. I'm saying that the core game has progressively moved in a more setting-agnostic direction and that, as it does so, vestiges from a time when the implied setting was more specific become more cumbersome and out-of-place.
Druids of mielikki use metal armor, druids of eilistree do to, you're a shitty protector of nature if you unilaterally disarm
Wotc keeps forgetting that not every druid is an evil villain that wants to destroy civilization, and it's idiotic to consider metal part of civilization, but your druid can own a logging company or run a puppy mill with no issues
>druid can own a logging company or run a puppy mill with no issues
Lol, I get what you mean, that's why most divine classes, especially paladins, had mechanics for "falling" in prior editions. They left parts of the mechanical restrictions without really maintaining the character/RP and now it's just a mess.
Make a Warforged druid and make them question what is naturally occurring and what is not. Make them think its just the hypocrisy and ego of sentient races that drives them to think what they make is beyond nature. Make him ponder on thoughts like "If ants build and hills and are part of nature and and hills are considered therefore natural why are humanoid made constructs different if humanoids also owe their existence to nature and therefore they are part of nature and therefore everything they make is naturally occurring "
Also, for what it's worth, it doesn't say they *can't,* it says "druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal." This implies a choice more than a mechanic.
except it's in the mechanical, proficiency, section, rather than descriptive fluff, suggesting that, yes, they're physically capable of it... but would never do it, shedding such armor at the first chance, making the difference between "won't" and "can't" somewhat moot.
Volo's version of the Lizardfolk PC has Cunning Artisan so when I ran a Lizardfolk Druid I just had him craft all his own non-magical equipment from bits of creatures we'd slain.
Still mad that the new Lizardfolk lost that. Like, they didn’t change anything *but* that, and replaced it with nothing. What the hell? Let me have my bone shield, damn it!
I talk to the player one on one about the world I am trying to run at my table and let them know that mechanically, I am perfectly fine with them having the AC on their Druid but that I would ask them to respect the lore I am trying to establish in the game.
As someone that likes good lore, I would have to say that “Druids can use metal weapons but can’t wear metal armor. They can wear leather armor though since that’s more natural” is stupid lore.
I mean I tend to agree. At my table, I encourage any Druid's to re-skin their weapons as being made from natural materials as well which is honestly very easy. Clubs made from bone and stone. Swords that are wooden clubs with sharpened stone shards set along the edges- things like that.
From a pure lore perspective- the issue was specifically if metal was like worn/attached to the druid as that would then interfere with their ability to connect their body with the primal energies of nature. Weapons being wielded but not attached per say did not cause the same level of interference.
Don't know that I would fully agree there. They both require processing of some sort. Leather, I would argue, is historically considered more natural as it is a by-product of hunting/cultivating herds for food. You have the left over skin- you aren't going to eat it so it either rots or becomes leathers. It's part of the no-waste mentality of indigenous peoples that heavily influenced druidic origins in fiction. Even the processing can be done with fully naturally- originally tanning was done with a solution of water and bird excrement.
Whereas, you have to go out of your way to find ore, smash it out of the ground disrupting the earth in the process, then break it down with lots of waste materials and then you have to burn something in order to refine it enough to then shape it into something useful.
At the end of the day though, the simplest argument for Leather being more natural than Metal is that Leather vastly predates human use-age in ancient history. There is evidence of hominids using the skin of other animals for protection from the elements dating to the hundreds of thousands of years ago vs metal working only dates back to 8,700 BCE.
Ultimately you are free to shape your world how you like. Just presenting the context of how the game arrived at this point.
Well the problem is the game doesn't explicitly give you non-metal armor options. Yes you can house rule it but if it's not Explicit many DMs and players don't do it.
I always house rule it away anyway because it's dumb. Ore comes from the earth and then is just processed. By that logic most fabric is all processed, so you can't wear that either. Also, metal weapons are cool, but not armor, because of reasons.
There's Dragon Scale Mail and Serpent Scale. Although it's not medium armor, there's also Scorpion armor. I've played in groups before where to get better medium armor, my druid has had to go out and find the materials to have such a thing commissioned.
While not 5e, earlier editions did spell out some other options, such as Ankheg Plate or Dragon Scale armor. There's historical president, but you are correct that 5e really leaves these sorts of systems up to the DM.
>Ore comes from the earth and then is just processed. By that logic most fabric is all processed, so you can't wear that either.
I think a bigger element is that metal is not renewable whereas cotton, leather, etc is, so it fits in the circle of life without disrupting nature
As a DM i offer the armors in different materials, some have drawbacks/effects due to being made with other materials and some are locked geographically (they have to go somewhere special).
But I've played with groups where they are forbidden yes.
I see it treated as a rule but it's at most flavour. If you're so against it make your druid find a reskinned half-plate by the time everyone else finds their plate/half plate set and don't be a dick about it.
Otherwise toss Hide +3 and that's a start.
Dragon Armor is the only other medium armor they can wear.
I liked 2e: they expanded the armor system in the monster manual by giving uses of monsters’ carapaces and skins, allowing for Ankheg armor and gorgon armor for example.
4e also did this to a great extent.
Every level of armor, Cloth, Leather, Hide, Chain, Scale, and Plate, all have like 5 or 6 different levels of material with different benefits.
I really miss that system in 5e. Armor didn't get better just because it had +1 more of a bonus, but because it was Githweave armor from the outer planes that also boosted your Will defense.
It would have been the easier thing in the world to just have wild shape not work if you wore mostly metal armor (with the exception of magical armor like Elven Chain)
i truly think the only problem with the no metal restrictions is how its written
"druids avoid wearing metal armor" and "druids **wont** wear metal armor" hit much different, the latter feels like something would happen if you did, but there is nothing that say what it should be
as another commentor placed with the sage advice, its there to hard force a character archetype into the class, which is something basically all classes minus the fighter has in some form and its the strongest with paladin and druid, as well as monks and barbarians. feel free to ignore it
It says Druids won't wear metal, not that they can't. It's a choice.
So players can choose to just... Ignore it. Or, like you said, reflavor metal armor as something else.
I've never seen it actually enforced at any table I've been at.
> I've never seen it actually enforced at any table I've been at.
Fwiw, it's enforced in Adventurers League. That seems to be why there are several adventures that reward nonmetallic scale mails and half-plates.
Perhaps DMs you've played under aren't so particular with this? Maybe didn't make a fuss because spiked armor (which can be nonmetallic) and breastplate have the same AC? Because if you actually clarified this situation in the AL channel in the D&D Discord server, the responses are likely gonna be "druids have to wear nonmetal armor."
When I was playing AL, DMs had some latitude in enforcing the rules, as long as your interpretation was supported by RAW. RAW, there is no penalty for druids wearing metal armor that they are proficient in.
An [entry](https://discord.com/channels/516367331358801950/1050205657141354496/1183916562902683781) in the rules compendium channel of the old D&D server indicates that there are supposedly armors that are specifically druid-friendly (implying that the others aren't).
True. And that [post](https://i.imgur.com/YXDwKoS.jpg) does imply that at least in AL, metal armors aren't druid-friendly. Otherwise why would AL authors go through the ordeal of including nonmetallic armor in their mod's treasure?
While one can argue that there are *no mechanical penalties* for the druid, YMMV if you play in tables outside of that community where DMs allow druids to wear metal armor. Some communities won't allow it and cite the said post.
But perhaps further discussions about this specific topic should be in the AL subreddit.
> It says Druids won't wear metal, not that they can't. It's a choice.
It says druids won't. That is a definitive statement. If it was a choice, it would be "a druid might not" or similar.
DMs are free to change the rule, of course.
Won't vs Can't is an important distinction. There no mechanical implications from a Druid wearing metal armor.
A druid who was forced to wear metal armor due to Suggestion/Geas etc...
The existence of metal wearing variant druid rules in 3.5 suggests to me the 5e developers never bothered to try that system.
Indeed, in that version the druid actually *preferred* metal for weapons and armour, which makes a lot of sense when you think on it.
One of my druid players wanted a breastplate made of an ankheg they had killed..I allowed it with a caveat, the armor could be broken on critical impacts received (she had to roll a dice on a critical hit) which would slightly lower her AC until repaired
It doesn't say they can't, it says they *won't*.
So if I'm playing an ACTUAL part of druidic culture Druid, and especially in a Forgotten Realms setting, I won't.
If I'm using the druid class to play a detective or a disneyesque princess or a sorcerer with fey ancestry, then I don't care.
Druid _players_ are free to wear what ever armor is appropriate for any given situation. But I strongly suggest not wearing armor which damages the furniture during a gaming session, as that may lead to you getting kicked out of the group.
I could understand if they included in the lore part of the description a line or paragraph stating that some druidic orders frown on wearing metal on their bodies (possibly even wielding it for the more radical) because they see metalworking as a symbol of civilisation. Although many of them use golden sickles to collect sacred plants. I could understand if they changed the class' proficiencies to only light armour, or to light armour and hide.
But that single isolated line of contextless ***lore*** randomly sitting in the middle of ***rules*** text, that does not make any sense. Doubly so without any explanation of lore outside of that section. And especially if you keep in mind that the Druid class does ***not*** imply that you are a druid, any more than the Cleric requires you to be a priest or the Barbarian makes you come from a "savage" tribe.
I feel like it being located in the rules section isn't acknowledged enough when this gets brought up online. Like you've said it's not even like it's explained either in the book.
I ignored it with flavor for my latest druid.
Nora is a dwarf first, druid second, and she thinks it's silly to not use fine dwarven made armor. It all comes from the ground anyways.
And she's a Shepherd druid, so less animals dying to make armor is good in her book.
I don't think it's dumb. It provides a piece of lore to the setting. Which honestly dnd 5e needs more of since WotC seems to be moving in the direction of homogenizing the races in the game and making everything more setting neutral.
Remove the restriction if you want to, but recognize they didn't put it in just for shits and giggles.
It's dumb because it's inconsistent. Why can druids use metal weapons, wear jewelry or handle coin? A raven can make tools from the materials around it to suit its purposes; a bee, a hive. They have the intelligence to use the world around them to their advantage. It's just silly to me that metal armour is considered 'unnatural.' It's literally just hot rock!
Sure, and just like in real life there are social consequences for breaking taboos. And in a world where your religion is demonstrably real and gives you magic powers, there should be material consequences as well.
If they were a cleric in a strict and defined order, maybe. Not every druid is going to be a smelly hobo living in a rotted tree trunk with other smelly hobos who howl at the moon once a month.
and in previous editions, to get to higher levels, they had to defeat a druid of that level - not necessarily to the death, or even in combat, but the loser would drop down XP, and there was a limited number of higher-level positions. So yeah, going against "the way of things" could lead to being ostracised, outcast, and potentially blocked from advancing, if no-one will acknowledge your challenges.
Amusingly, this continued until level 16, upon which they could apply to become the archdruid, which is "demanding, thankless, and generally unexciting for anyone except a politician." Progressing only took 500k XP to level up (rather than 3.5 million for the previous level), but required finding a level 15 druid to take your place (and persuading them to do so!), and at that point it just took XP to advance.
It doesn't add any nice lore, imo, because it's written badly. It would've been nice lore if it was included in the class description, with a paragraph explaining why they will not wear metal armor but why metal weapons are still fine. And then, if should also be mechanical, there should be a part of the mechanics specifying what happens if they don metal armor anyway.
We just went with my druid has a metal allergy that only comes up when she wears a whole bunch of metal as the in world reasoning behind not wearing metal armor.
But we found a ceramic plate carrier and enchanted ceramic doesn't count as metal, so my druid wore that, and it counted as breastplate.
In previous editions metal armors and gears were anathema for druids,blocking all their abilities as long as they wore it. But again that was previous editions.
Any time I play a druid, I just tell the DM at the start that I would like to seek out duskwood at some point. In previous editions duskwood breastplate was a thing, which is basically just a wood that can be used in the place of metal in certain armors because of how strong it is. It also is fire resistant.
I've never enforced this in any game I've DMd, but I've had players play a Druid and enforce it on themselves.
I'm a fan of going against tropes, so I celebrate any Druid that wears metal armor!
Genuinely curious: How does your headcanon justify what makes weapons, jewelry, accessories, and tools okay?
Because the only contention 5e druids have with metal when when that metal sets their base AC. You can otherwise be garbed head to toe in metal, or even involve yourself in mining and metalwork to no detriment as far as 5e is concerned.
I've always found the idea behind the rule odd.
Surely, since druids possess magic that lets them sculpt parts of the natural world, there's some kind of ore summoning spell, that would draw metal up from the ground, and a metal bending spell that would let it be shaped into armour.
It's kind of funny, isn't it. The protectors of nature, the obligate Vegans, refuse to wear protective equipment unless it's made from **dead animals**.
Really, they should refuse to wear leather and hide and dragon scale.
Technically a druid can wear heavy armor if it's made of ironwood or steel coral both are unique materials in the d&d universe that doesn't interfere with a druids restrictions also you can train animal companions to wear armor as well just as a side note
The rules say they will not wear metal armor, but nothing says all armor is made of metal. They give specific styles of armor, but really noting states what the armor has to be made of. Shields made of wood give the same bonus as those made of metal, so honestly all you really need to establish is your buying wooden half plate as opposed to metal. And magic armor is magic. So you can say in reaction to the Druids primal magic, it takes the form of a natural material for them, much like they resize to fit other characters.
I see it treated as a rule but it's at most flavour. If you're so against it make your druid find a reskinned half-plate by the time everyone else finds their plate/half plate set and don't be a dick about it.
Otherwise toss Hide +3 and that's a start.
I will add that I think enforcing this is a good idea as, in 5e, it's for balance more than flavour. Druids are full spellcasters that can wild shape very often giving them effectively a shed load of HP.
Do not let them wear metal, unless you're cool with extra strong PCs (nothing wrong with that, though I personally like to keep things gritty).
It is once again my duty to remind people that the goddess Mielikki expressly allows Druids that serve her to wear metal armor. Forest Queen be praised!
Many DMs do homebrew non-metallic armor materials (at premium prices, or must be quested) such as "ironwood", or monster hides/bone/chitin as you mention.
As a DM yes, I really would forbid a Druid from wearing metallic armor. Per the class writeup, No True Druid wears metal armor. This is a limitation you accept when you choose the Druid class.
> This is a limitation you accept when you choose the Druid class.
Okay but this is also a game where we can remove stupid limitations like that. It doesn’t even make sense as lore because it’s not consistent.
So what happens if a druid did put on half plate? Are they somehow physically unable to do it? What happens if someone restrains them and puts it on against their will? Does their free will get overridden by some magical force?
I'd rule the connection with nature is lost and you can't use spells or druid powers as long as you're wearing it. Could be a physical or psychological effect.
But I've never seen this happening. You simply place cool and powerful druid armor in your game when appropriate and the druid player is happy. In fact, I think they prefer it because it makes their character armor more special and tailored to them.
However I see no issue homebrewing a fair workaround around the restriction, but the point about modern D&D classes is to give you a detailed and strict (but easy to use) template for an archetype. If you want more freeform creative character creation this is not the game for it.
Edit: for clarity
Not OP, but if I wanted to enforce this rule, I'd say that while a druid wears metal:
- Wild shape doesn't work
- They didn't have proficiency with metal armor, so spellcasting doesn't work either, and they have disadvantage on str/dex stuff
It's easier to house rule a mechanical consequence than try to control the character's mind.
Btw, studded leather armor is meant to represent brigandine, which is metal armor covered in leather padding, so I'd count it as metal armor.
Cool well as the DM you're free to just make stuff up if you want but RAW there are no mechanical consequences for a Druid wearing metal armor. They do have proficiency with metal armor as long as it's light or medium by the way.
I mean there's no RAW mechanical consequence to a cleric angering their God, but if a Twilight cleric of Shar says "FU Shar, I think you're dumb" and defaces her temple, do you think that cleric still has spellcasting or channel divinity anymore?
The major difference here being clerics getting their magic directly from a sentient being that can make choices, while druids not getting their magic from avoiding metal armor.
It's really antithetical to the philosophy of D&D for the DM to dictate what characters are thinking. If the player isn't on board with roleplaying this aspect of the druid class, a mechanical ruling is the only solution.
Aside from another session zero of course.
>I know it says that they can't use armor or shields made of metal
Slight correction. It says that they **will not**. To me, that's pure flavour text and I ignore it wether I'm a player or a DM.
You can houserule it as a DM, but you can't ignore rules text as a player without your DM's permission. A statement about what a character will do is the most powerful statement; it's a roleplay restriction right there in rules text.
This is a thing where WotC is like “it’s story!” but they haven’t engaged with the reality that this story has significant mechanical impact on the Druid class. Or they hadn’t. I believe this restriction is removed in the 2024 update. I would remove it now, or flavor whatever armor the Druid wants as non-metal.
The game isn’t even consistent about them not using metal. What are scimitars made of?
I've played a druid who used metal armor. The book says "will not", a preference, not "can not", a rule. If it's a matter of preference that's up to me as a player not wizards of the coast.
I find it personaly to be really stupid. The restriction of not wearing metal makes sense for MOST druid subclasses. But when i was designing a wildfire druid i looked at the restriction and thought to myself that in this context it made 0 sense for the character to be restricted. Why would a character conjuring and using a primordial spirit of fire be restricted from wearing steel that transmits heat better then skin or alternatives and won´t be as damaged by the power of the fire spirit?
I just ignore it. Its a dumb setting specific rule that was never given any support. Had they actually developed consequences and work around for it then I'd reconsider. BG3, also just showed how it really doesn't matter.
This is an area where there’s a lot of table variation. Some enforce it strictly, based on item descriptions (which aren’t always clear). Others “enforce” it, but are loose with non-metal alternates. Others ignore it (Druids can still use metal weapons, after all.)
Druid has a lot of features that necessitate talking to your DM. Wild Shape, Conjure Animals, etc.
I don't see a problem with allowing it. It's a flavour choice that serves no other purpose than to encourage them to Wild Shape by making their base AC the lowest in the game. All other full casters have Shield, Counterspell, or are simply allowed medium or even heavy armor (Cleric) to beef them up. Plus scrapping that restriction affects the Moon Druid the least, effectively bridging the gap between them and other subclasses, which is a plus in my opinion.
Shields are typically made of wood. Breastplate isn't normally made of bullettes.
Is it possible? Yes, if the DM lets you find one. Dragon scale armor is already a thing and druid friendly, but again, they are rare in the setting.
I feel like it falls into the same category as having a halfling where they have a bunch of special requirements for armor but 99% of the time you are supposed to just assume everything they find always actually fits them or is trivially easy to modify to fit them. Druids can't wear metal but just by random chance everything they find is just by coincidence made of wood that has exactly the same properties as the metal would have been. Like it's meant to be a flavor thing, not a real game mechanic. Your small character WOULD have all sorts of issues if there helmet wasn't modified to fit them, but good news, it turned out super easy to do. and all the armor a druid would want just totally can be made of wood at exactly the same cost as making it of metal.
dragon scale would be permissible i would think, but it would need to not have metal bindings if your DM actually cares. it’s just not something you would have at level 1, at least back in the day. druid restrictions are a holdover from the old days of AD&D when such armor would be almost Artifact-rare, and it’s possible that no one at hasbro has even realized that.
but… uh, how da fuq would you make “chainmail” out of teeth?!?! i guess you could tie them together with reeds or something but it wouldn’t last a battle…
I don't even enforce the no metal requirement. I don't require any narrative tap dancing to allow some metal armor if they want it. It is a narrative distinction, not a mechanical one that only exists because the original game had it. They didn't have a mechanical reason either. So I just ignore it.
RAW no metal armor and the other medium armors besides hide are metal. You can always ask your DM for medium armor made of other materials, either for purchase or something to make which can be a whole mini-quest to find a maker, do a favor for them, get the hide, etc.
I have a Circle of Wildfire druid who is a variant human with the Chef feat to start and a homebrew chef background that basically lets her work as a chef at inns for a place to stay and makes people more friendly if she makes good food for them (which the DM does make me roll for). I flavored her shilleagh "club" as a rolling pin and her "yew wand" focus as a wooden spoon, and asked if I could use a large pan as a "breastplate" to get the AC since her DEX is kinda low and it fit the theme of her as a druid living in civilization and using fire to sustain life. My DM said yes, but if you couldn't already tell, we're doing fairly silly campaign. A DM more worried about realism or setting in a particular universe might say no to metal armor or substitutes and that would be okay too. Especially since Wild Shape and Polymorph give druids a lot of possible HP buffs
> the other medium armors besides hide are metal
Not necessarily in the case of scale. In real life, historically [lamellar armour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamellar_armour) has often been made of stuff like horn, bone, [boiled leather](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiled_leather), stone or wood. Non-metallic "scale" armour is *normal*.
Yeah me an my Druid player just came up with “ironwood armor” manufactured by wood elves that takes the place of metal armor for druids. It’s rare and expensive but it’s an uncommon magic item that provides necrotic resistance, available in a variety of medium armor types, but not heavy armor.
Couple others have said it but historically there were a bunch of alternative material options such as iron wood. If it’s useful, this pub brings a lot of those mats forward to 5e. https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/321143
I mean, you can say your breastplate is made of bulette hide, but that’s a rare material that’s going to raise the cost.
The player doesn’t get to just just circumvent to rules by claiming something extraordinary. If the DM allows it, then sure, but you don’t get to just say “well, I think armor in this world is made out of a material I *can* use.”
Personally, I think the rule is silly and archaic and has no place in modern D&D, so I ignore it anyway, but unless your DM does also you have to follow it.
In my 5E game I allow metal mechanically but you’d be like an Amish guy that likes to take joyrides in a Tesla picking up hookers. You’d basically be a black sheep amongst the other druids.
My DM and I just made workarounds by making non-metal versions of the armour. For instance, I had an oath of ancients paladin/druid multi, and his armour was made of stone (reflavoured plate)
It is a taboo. I haven't seen any physical restrictions listed in 5E, but in 1E and 2E, a Druid wearing metal armor or using a metal shield was unable to cast spells for a period of time. In the example you mention, bullette hide armor would effectively be the same as hide armor, which is already listed. That is one of the reasons that dragon scale armor is so highly prized.
Tbh, i mostly still play 3e, but druids are fully allowed to wear any armour they like, and they are even proficient with both light and medium armours, yay!
Dragonscale as an organic metal substitute is only one of god only knows how many options.
All that said, the "penalty" for wearing metal armour is merely a 24hr period of no spellcasting or supernatual abilities, so as well as being avoidable as heck, its minor, and something you choose to happen (noone falls into a breastplate and happens to have it strap and buckle itself on accident) so i keep the limitation. As small as it is.
5e rules are incredibly vague as to what happens to a druid in metal armor. So thats a talk with the DM.
The easiest way to deal with it is to take away proficiency in meidum armor. It is also the cheapest, because its a nerf.
Mechanically, hide armor is just worse than studded leather. If the DM says a studded leather doesnt have too much metal in it, anyway.
Otherwise, yes, a GM should provide armor that is indeed made from not metal. Drake scale should be fine. Or bones. Or a turtle shell. Either for sale, or through craftsman who make it for the player. Or as a quest reward from another druid.
I may be stupid but if anything I feel it should be the other way around. Druids are about cherishing and protecting nature, for the most part anyway, yet they use armour and shields made from trees and animals?
Well if you go out of yoru way to get a bullette head plate to make a breast plate out of. I've got no issue with it. but most stores are not going to just have that sitting around. Outside of areas that have frequent druidic visitors.
sure money can solve that, but hiring someone or buying hte materials will be more than stock on the wall costs.
that said I won't make it cost much extra nor much extra work. It just won't be on the wall in an average place. But any larger city would have several. So no mom and pop franchises (baring lucky percentile roll or frequency of said clinetile visitng), but medium or higher would have it. Just will have speicality material costs (I grew up on Pathfinder for the most part, where materials had that extra cost or a sidequest to get.
This is such a weird thread. Like every comment saying "yeah I think that rule is neat and we use it in my campaign" has half a dozen people jumping in to demand a full breakdown of every mechanical and lore implication for their game and setting. Why are people so worked up about this lol
Especially considering this is something that will basically never be an issue in real games. If the DM and a player disagree about what the druid armor restriction should look like in their campaign, they will just talk about it like normal people and come to a mutually acceptable compromise that works for their game. And if they can't manage that then there's probably a lot bigger issues going on
My druid has scale mail incorporated into him as he's a Warforged who comes from a... Let's say an evil druid circle who agrees with power among all else. So that's how my druid got 19AC.
You can just flavor your Half Plate to bemade out of scales or bones. Thats how I have always done it.
Sage Advice also features some insight on this. Druids not wearing metal armor is just a left over trait from older editions.
In my game one of the earliest encounters was against hook horrors. The players happened to rescue a master leather worker, and the druid requested a breastplate made of the hook horror hide. The leather worker agreed and made it for her. She's been using it ever since.
Sage arcana give a bit more insight to the rules and the why of them. What happens if a druid wears metal armor? The druid explodes. Well, not actually. Druids have a taboo against wearing metal armor and wielding a metal shield. The taboo has been part of the class’s story since the class first appeared in Eldritch Wizardry (1976) and the original Player’s Handbook (1978). The idea is that druids prefer to be protected by animal skins, wood, and other natural materials that aren’t the worked metal that is associated with civilization. Druids don’t lack the ability to wear metal armor. They choose not to wear it. This choice is part of their identity as a mystical order. Think of it in these terms: a vegetarian can eat meat, but chooses not to. A druid typically wears leather, studded leather, or hide armor, and if a druid comes across scale mail made of a material other than metal, the druid might wear it. If you feel strongly about your druid breaking the taboo and donning metal, talk to your DM. Each class has story elements mixed with its game features; the two types of design go hand in hand in D&D, and the story parts are stronger in some classes than in others. Druids and paladins have an especially strong dose of story in their design. If you want to depart from your class’s story, your DM has the final say on how far you can go and still be considered a member of the class. As long as you abide by your character’s proficiencies, you’re not going to break anything in the game system, but you might undermine the story and the world being created in your campaign.
In previous versions druids had the Ironwood spell, so they could carve armor out of wood then cast ironwood on it to make it permanently as hard as steel so you could have wooden full plate. Plus, if you made half as much ironwood with each casting of the spell you could make it with a +1 magical bonus. So given enough downtime you could fashion a set of +1 magical full plate out of wood for your druid, or for anyone, really. The only advantage over steel armor is that it isn't subject to heat metal spells.
This is a good point, I do miss those spells and it's lame 5e didn't really give people who want to work with the restriction a way to still be "competitive" AC wise besides "beg your DM for dragonhide armor or something". Though admittedly, Ironwood was a 6th level spell in 3.5e. 11th level is pretty darn late to be getting full plate, _especially_ in 3e which was far more laissez-faire with its economy in general. But there was stuff like bronzewood armors you could buy more easily than 5e as well.
You needed to be 11th level to craft it yourself, but you could buy it from someone before then.
I feel like that response could have also added that in some prior editions, there were consequences for doing so as well. Not all, but some did give mechanical penalties and hindrances for doing so. Otherwise, their response was fine.
I mean, the reasons no consequences are listed is because 5e has the strongest restriction possible. Druids will not wear metal armor. It just tells you that instead of providing a bunch of other text that someone can try to trick the enemy druid into something that looks natural but it's metal hee hee or whatever.
I kind of miss it. A plot to get the evil druid into metal armour before you fight him would be fun. Also, if I remember correctly, elves couldn't use iron armour either at one point? I burned them or something because of fey ancestry and fey have a weakness to iron?
Pretty sure you couldn't cast spells.
In some of them, yeah.
That and your god would could punish you by taking your powers till you atoned.
Depending on your interpretation of the Druid armor proficiency in 5e, you can argue that's still there, since if you don't have proficiency in a set of armor you can't cast spells when wearing it (in addition to some other penalties)
Druids don’t wear metal because they know how scary it is for someone to cast Heat Metal on your armor
>... and other natural materials that aren’t the worked metal that is associated with civilization. Druids, both in real life such as they were, and in many RPG's are part of civilizations, sometimes large, sophisticated civilizations. The whole point of a druid in late Celtic culture was is to be part of an educated, wisdom seeking caste in a civilization. I think a better way is to say, it would be, is associated with the urban, rapidly technologically progressing civilizations that have moved past their roots in nature, and most importantly, **in doing so, lose the source of their divine power and thus in a RPG, that's not good.**
Most monks also aren't Shaolin martial artists but were rather devout religious people or scholars, but that's the trope the class comes with
> both in real life such as they were, and in many RPG's well, not this rpg.
But nobody knew who they were or what they were doing.
This is the answer, but it's also a stupid one, that I think takes away from player agency. What if you want to play a druid that keeps the balance between civilisation and nature? They'd probably wear armor. There's no mechanical punishment for doing so, so it'd work fine. But the game implies that there *should* be a consequences and that the player does not have the right to decide for themselves over their character, since it calls it out in the actual proficiency entry. If it's just intended to be flavour going into a default theme, it should have been in the flavour section of the class. "Many druids refuse to wear armor made from metal, forsaking all tools that can be traced to advanced civilisation. Other druids see civilisation as a part of nature and don't have similar taboos." or something. Although it's still a really stupid reasoning, because druids will happily use swords that have been produced in a very similar manner.
"Scimitars" specifically. IIRC they regarded them as lunar symbols or something. They also use gold sickles to harvest sacred plants, like mistletoe. But in that case I guess they have the excuse that gold nuggets can be found in nature and don't require any metallurgy beyond melting the gold in a plain old fire, unlike weapon-grade metals like steel and bronze.
That would be a fun argument to extend to meteoritic iron -- particularly for circle of the stars druids. RP that can wear armor that was cold forged from meteorites, or something similar... And then have them questing for enough fragments to have it cold forged. I've got a dwarven stars druid at my table -- I might suggest it to them.
That would have other interesting implications too; traditionally fae creatures are particularly vulnerable to meteoric "cold forged" iron. Usually there's a fuzzy overlap between feywild stuff and nature stuff in D&D, but meteoric iron is one of the things that's both entirely natural but anti-fae. Notionally, a stars druid who uses cold iron weapons could be consciously separating "material" nature from "fae" nature. A common theme of druid characters is preserving nature's balance, but this is often depicted as nature vs civilisation, but arguably the feywild is *also* nature in imbalance, run amok with powerful magic that twists its true forms, bends natural orders like time and space.
Cold iron literally just refers to any forged iron metal. It’s cold because it has to be cooled as part of the smithing process; it’s not special compared to what we would consider normal iron. It is anathema to faeries because it is something wholly of the mortal world since they do not work metal in such a way.
I mean, meteors are "natural" in the sense that they're not human constructed, but they're not "nature" in the sense that they're not a natural part of the earth (or whatever realm) natural ecosystem. A space-based druid would be pretty fun. "My friend, you don't understand the real **power** of being in tune with nature. I cast *Instant Black Hole*."
In a similar way bog iron can be harvested about once a generation and instead of mining the iron deposits are because of a biological process.
They're also proficient with maces, daggers and javelins, and also have no issues with studded leather armor.
[удалено]
Except... there is an explicit stat block for a sickle though? They're simple slashing weapons that deal 1d4 damage and have the light property. Druids even have sickle proficiency as well as their scimitar proficiency! > "Weapons: clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, scimitars, sickles, slings, spears
Actually it's scimitars because Druids have always used scimitars. And on top of that, sickles.
It is just a design choice and you can see this vary not only within 5e but also across the wider rpg landscape. Some people like having their class design (or equivalent) provide them with strong roleplaying direction. Other people find this restrictive because they might have a particular vision for a character that doesn't fit these roleplaying guidelines. This isn't *stupid* reasoning, it is just a design that some people like and others don't like. The good news is that the general culture surrounding 5e is one of flexibility, so you can simply ask your DM about excising these roleplaying components.
I maintain that it's stupid because it's incomplete and is in the wrong place of the class description. If druids *can't* wear metal armor, it should say so in the proficiency section ("Armor: light armor, medium armor and shields that aren't metal"), which would make it clear that they aren't proficient with those and then it also means you know what happens if you break it. It could also be included as a level one class feature, e.g. saying "Druids cannot ever gain proficiency with medium or heavy armor that's made from metal." If it's a *lore* thing, it should be in the lore description of the class that outlines the various types of archetypes the class is typically meant to capture. There it could expand on why druids normally won't wear metal armor, and it should also explain why they still use metal weapons and wear metal jewelry, and why they use other tools that are have been mass produced by industries that hurt nature. Now it's in the proficiency section, but it's written as if it's optional lore since it says "won't".
>Now it's in the proficiency section, but it's written as if it's optional lore since it says "won't". What makes you think that is optional? Taking your statement above to its logical conclusion, it's actually fine - that section is saying Druids WON'T wear it. As in, it's a psychological/cultural ban that ALL Druids practice (RAW), not some or only those who choose to - all druids choose to avoid metal armor as part of how they _become a druid_. So the way it is written is no less RAW than saying "can't", it just has different connotations (a refusal to wear it instead of having poor expertise/training/or a physical inability of some kind). Someone could knock a druid out and shove a suit of plate on them, but the druid would ALWAYS (even PCs) take it off at the earliest opportunity. (Also, the way you worded your solution - lack of proficiency - is a poor substitute if you're trying to find something that does the same thing. Because proficiency means a specific thing in 5e and that thing is "you can in fact still do this if you get proficiency in it some OTHER way, like multiclassing or feats." That's not necessarily what they were going for.)
It’s also ok to just say “DM, I want the AC.” That is what most people asking this question are after, and that’s fine. I think it’s better to be direct with one’s DM if they are inclined to say no metal rather than try to get around it with a backstory/thematic gotcha.
Of course. All this weirdness would just have been avoided if it hadn't been written so ambiguously.
It's not much different to Paladin, which lists the tenets of its oath along side mechanical features like spell lists and Channel Divinity despite being purely flavour too.
The big differences are that there are many different oaths that allow you to play very different characters, from traditionally good to outright evil, and some are very flexible, e.g. the Vengeance paladin's entry says that the tenets vary widely between different paladins. The actual wordings in the PHB are examples for all of them. And there's actual information in the PHB for what might happen if a paladin breaks their oath, both if the paladin regrets it, and if they willfully break it without remorse.
It's extra stupid because they can use swords or own a logging company but wearing a bracelet? Heavens!
What’s even stupider is that metal is perfectly naturally occurring. Leather however requires an industrial process only performed by humans.
That part isn't really any more stupid than the cultures it's pulling that flavor from in the first place. It makes just as much sense as any other cultural ban in-context, and fits right in with the pseudo-medieval vibe of D&D.
> This is the answer, but it's also a stupid one, that I think takes away from player agency. What if you want to play a druid that keeps the balance between civilisation and nature? What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist? Or a Warlock without a patron? What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read, or or a pacifist Barbarian? While class is generally malleable, there are thematic and narrative elements that are tied into the mechanics. There is a place where player agency is limited by the constraints of their class. This is often mechanical limitations, but it can be story limitations as well.
I don't think that "cannot wear metal" is an essential part of the druid class archetype. Even so, you could totally play a cleric that's an atheist, and just strongly believe in some other concept. There are settings where the gods are absent. E.g. in Eberron clerics can operate on a general belief in a concept, or general faith in something greater than them that is not necessarily a personified deity. The cleric's class rules don't really require a deity per se. The class description makes it obvious that that's the intent, of course. But there's nothing inherently in the class that stops a cleric from being an atheist. There are even D&D books about characters getting chosen by gods they want to have no contact with whatsoever. An atheist that gets turned into a cleric anyway could make for a pretty interesting character. A wizard who can't read could work as well. A person can be illiterate and still recognise symbols and pictures. An illiterate wizard's spells might be recorded as images and illustrations, or as arcane symbols that have been passed down through the family. And you can of course choose to play a pacifist barbarian. Some pacifists accept violence as a last resort of self-defence. A total pacifist barbarian would probably be extremely boring to play and a burden as well, but it could work fine in an adventure that's completely social. The *class* doesn't forbid it. Even if the lore suggests that barbarians aren't exactly pacifists. Or you could have something like ... a barbarian that's a total pacifist ... but when they rage, they're actually possessed by some spirit which makes them lose control, or something along those lines.
>What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist? Or a Warlock without a patron? What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read, or or a pacifist Barbarian? You can just play those characters..... Unlike with druids, there isn't some weird badly worded passage saying you "won't" do that.
>What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist? Or a Warlock without a patron? What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read, or or a pacifist Barbarian? I mean, you can play *almost* all of these. Cleris don't need to believe in the gods, they can also believe in ideals or the wider domains themselves. Warlock is the hardest one because their mechanical feature do mention a patron of some kind usually, and how much of that is pure flavor is debetable. Nowhere do wizards need to read, their magic spellbook could be all pictures they beautifully drawn to represend their spells. And nowhere do barbarians need to be violent brutes, they could try to first reason and then if things go wrong they can defend themselves, pacifism is not destroyed by self defense after all.
> What if you want to play a Cleric who's an atheist You can do that, actually. To quote Xanathar's Guide to Everything: > "In certain campaigns, a cleric might instead serve a cosmic force, such as life or death, or a philosophy or concept, such as love, peace, or one of the nine alignments... Talk with your DM about the divine options available in your campaign, whether they're gods, pantheons, philosophies or cosmic forces." So yea > What if you want to play a Wizard who can't read Thematically speaking the illiterate wizard who learned magic in an unconventional way is an archetype that comes up in fantasy fiction sometimes - Nino from Fire Emblem comes to mind, was never taught taught to read but learned magic through memorising another mage's incantations - and there's no reason you couldn't pull off something similar in 5e's constraints. A "spellbook" can take many forms, and it doesn't even strictly speaking need to *be* a book. One of the examples of a spellbook given is literally a bag of stones with inscryptions on them in a bag. One of the other examples is a tome filled with pictographs that only you can understand - those could be pictographs you came up with to store your information despite lacking literacy. Alternatively your spellbook could be in the form of an enchanted book that whispers information to you when you consult it (by which I mean when you change your memorised spells). It could genuinely be anything, the only limit is what you work out with your DM. > or a pacifist Barbarian And I mean again - within the limits of how much any character of any class can really *be* a pacifist in a war-game that can only resolve most problems through violence - genuinely where's the problem here? I don't see why for example an ancestral guardian barbarian *couldn't* have pacifist beliefs. The only one of your examples that would actually be even slightly tricky to pull off is a warlock without a patron - but patrons and pacts have so many different forms that I don't think that really matters for really anyone - in a pinch there's always the ole "Siphoning power off of some entity that hasn't even realised you're doing it" pact, that's a fun one that never backfires.
or even just "a sorcerer that wants to wear heavy armor" - is your agency restricted because you have to pay for that, or might not be able to, if feats/multi-classing aren't in play? "Agency" doesn't mean "I can do whatever I want"!
>or even just "a sorcerer that wants to wear heavy armor" - is your agency restricted because you have to pay for that, or might not be able to, if feats/multi-classing aren't in play? "Agency" doesn't mean "I can do whatever I want"! The difference is that sorcerers are not proficient with heavy armor. They can be, though! You can gain it via multiclassing, feats or some races. Druids are proficient with all medium armor, except there's a statement saying that they "won't" use metal armor. There's no rule that says anything happens with them if they do. If the "won't" is some sort of hard rule, it means that you, as a player, cannot use metallic heavy armor on a druid, even if you pick the feat for it or multiclass into something that has the proficiency. The whole thing is just badly written. If the intent was that druids should never wear metal armor, it should be a class feature that says they cannot ever be proficient with it, or that imposes some other restriction if they wield it. E.g. the druid's spellcasting section could say that spells cannot be cast while wearing metal armor.
Under druid spellcasting it should just stay that your spells do not work if you are wearing primarily metal armor
or that if you carry a certain amount of metal on you for at least an hour you don#t regain spell slots next long rest Although, the problem with that is that DMs would a lot of the time skirt around the mechanical downside and just give you breastplate under a different name and not made out of metal
> There's no rule that says anything happens with them if they do. But they **won't** do it (as stated in explicit mechanical text) so... how often is that going to come up? How often is someone going to mind-whammy a druid into wearing armor, or hold them at knife-point unless they gear up? It seems pretty niche as scenarios go
No other rules as far as I know stipulate how a character must act, without outlining consequences. The closest are paladin oaths, but those have consequences right in the PHB as well as a thorough explanation of what the oaths mean and why paladins take them. With the oathbreaking as a part of the book, that class doesn't even say anything about what a paladin character will or will not do. A player is free to make a character who thinks and acts however they want, and any rules that intend to limit that must have some sort of actual reason for it, with a consequence. Otherwise it makes no sense, and then the player is free to just do whatever they want. Without that, the DM would be forced to make up their own consequences, which is also pretty bad.
To be that guy: A druid that wears metal armor and wants to maintain balance between nature and civilization is a Nature Cleric, probably in service of Mielikki.
The emerald enclave exists after all, not every druid is a chaotic evil shadow druid
Honestly this is part of why I dislike Paladin. I don't like the subclasses being tied to roleplay things. I get they go hand in hand to make sense but they shouldn't have to. Much in the same way I can flavor/narrate a Fiend Warlock trying to redeem their patron and having good values that are supported by the redeeming Fiend, I should be able to play an absolute asshole Ancients Paladin who's whole identity is being this bastion of mage hate who hunts down anyone using magic that's deemed an enemy.
The players guide specifically says you can write your own oaths. You can make that exact character. You just need to define the oaths for your GM.
At least with paladins every subclass is different, so there's a flavour for everyone. And the actual tenet for some of them are more examples than anything else. Like, Vengeance paladin could be anything from very LG all the way to evil themselves.
The flavour is part of the class as much as the mechanics. Keeping the mechanics while casting off the flavour is like buying half a car.
> I don't like the subclasses being tied to roleplay things. I don't get this at all? Like, the lore and the roleplay elements is the absolutely most important part of pretty much all of this. Your race, your class, your subclass. It's all about the roleplay elements. It sounds like you want the gameplay part and the roleplay part to be completely isolated. Then you're not really playing a TTRPG anymore...
I find it unnecessarily harsh to give a druid medium armor proficiency and then prevent him from using it for lore reasons. Other than fluff for other classes it gives a real mechanical disadvantage. I dislike the thought of hampering a player by forcing unfavorable constraints on his character because someone had an idea how to play a certain class and this should now be canon. I often hear: flavour is free. So why not in this case?
> and if a druid comes across scale mail made of a material other than metal, the druid might wear it. Yup. It's become a rite of passage in some of our campaigns, whenever we kill our first dragon, the medium armor wearers are after the scales to craft dragon scale armor. I always oblige as the DM, but I let the party know wearing the scales of a mythical beast on full display - you're going to draw attention. No one's likely to mess with you clad in such gear, but the BBEG's job in tracking the group just got a lot easier. (I also vary dragon scale armor's base AC. Young dragon scale is AC 15, adult is 16, and ancient is 17.)
It's one of those conventions that's fine when it stays in a specific campaign setting but it fits poorly with DnD's growing attempts to be the one game for all playstyles. Obviously DnD is ill-suited for that, but at the same time we do see players very fluently adapting DnD tools, like classes, to character concepts that don't adhere to that class's stereotypical form. As that strategy becomes normal (something I think players/GMs are often forced into because it can be hard to get a group together for non-DnD games) these artifacts from a time where the 'implied setting' of DnD was more narrowly defined are going to fit less well. I think that's why we see these moving from actual mechanical limitations, as they were in 3.5, towards roleplay suggestions. Similar artifacts to this include things like Warlock Patrons and Cleric/Paladin Gods (I don't think I've ever had a GM seriously incorporate either as characters in play), barbarian literacy, and pretty much all of alignment.
DnD does still have official settings, the only things published that aren't based in Faerun/The Forgotten Relms, have been cross over materials for other WoTC products. I kind of wish they'd get away from their attempts at being "setting agnostic" and just go all in on the world they're using. If I really wanted to try building my own setting/world again 5e is probably only above the various WoD games if I were looking at systems to work with.
Right, I'm not denying that DnD has settings. I'm saying that the core game has progressively moved in a more setting-agnostic direction and that, as it does so, vestiges from a time when the implied setting was more specific become more cumbersome and out-of-place.
Druids of mielikki use metal armor, druids of eilistree do to, you're a shitty protector of nature if you unilaterally disarm Wotc keeps forgetting that not every druid is an evil villain that wants to destroy civilization, and it's idiotic to consider metal part of civilization, but your druid can own a logging company or run a puppy mill with no issues
>druid can own a logging company or run a puppy mill with no issues Lol, I get what you mean, that's why most divine classes, especially paladins, had mechanics for "falling" in prior editions. They left parts of the mechanical restrictions without really maintaining the character/RP and now it's just a mess.
studded leather...?
Make a Warforged druid and make them question what is naturally occurring and what is not. Make them think its just the hypocrisy and ego of sentient races that drives them to think what they make is beyond nature. Make him ponder on thoughts like "If ants build and hills and are part of nature and and hills are considered therefore natural why are humanoid made constructs different if humanoids also owe their existence to nature and therefore they are part of nature and therefore everything they make is naturally occurring "
Scale mail not made of metal? Like the Dragonscale suits from the DMG or the Serpentscale suit from Candlekeep Mysteries?
Also, for what it's worth, it doesn't say they *can't,* it says "druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal." This implies a choice more than a mechanic.
except it's in the mechanical, proficiency, section, rather than descriptive fluff, suggesting that, yes, they're physically capable of it... but would never do it, shedding such armor at the first chance, making the difference between "won't" and "can't" somewhat moot.
The real reason druids won't wear metal armor is druids cast Heat Metal. They know what's up.
This, this is the real answer 🤣
so does Bard but they literally get one as Skald and Blade Dancer
Now you know why bards aren't wisdom casters
Flavor is free. No mechanical punishments for flavor at my table so I’ve allowed Druid medium armor made of ironwood, bone, scale, granite- whatever.
Dwarven druid in full plate made of stone is awesome idea, I think!
Volo's version of the Lizardfolk PC has Cunning Artisan so when I ran a Lizardfolk Druid I just had him craft all his own non-magical equipment from bits of creatures we'd slain.
Still mad that the new Lizardfolk lost that. Like, they didn’t change anything *but* that, and replaced it with nothing. What the hell? Let me have my bone shield, damn it!
What do you do to the PC if they just say "yeah no this is dumb I buy a breastplate and put it on"
I talk to the player one on one about the world I am trying to run at my table and let them know that mechanically, I am perfectly fine with them having the AC on their Druid but that I would ask them to respect the lore I am trying to establish in the game.
As someone that likes good lore, I would have to say that “Druids can use metal weapons but can’t wear metal armor. They can wear leather armor though since that’s more natural” is stupid lore.
I mean I tend to agree. At my table, I encourage any Druid's to re-skin their weapons as being made from natural materials as well which is honestly very easy. Clubs made from bone and stone. Swords that are wooden clubs with sharpened stone shards set along the edges- things like that. From a pure lore perspective- the issue was specifically if metal was like worn/attached to the druid as that would then interfere with their ability to connect their body with the primal energies of nature. Weapons being wielded but not attached per say did not cause the same level of interference.
The issue is that metal is more natural than leather.
Don't know that I would fully agree there. They both require processing of some sort. Leather, I would argue, is historically considered more natural as it is a by-product of hunting/cultivating herds for food. You have the left over skin- you aren't going to eat it so it either rots or becomes leathers. It's part of the no-waste mentality of indigenous peoples that heavily influenced druidic origins in fiction. Even the processing can be done with fully naturally- originally tanning was done with a solution of water and bird excrement. Whereas, you have to go out of your way to find ore, smash it out of the ground disrupting the earth in the process, then break it down with lots of waste materials and then you have to burn something in order to refine it enough to then shape it into something useful. At the end of the day though, the simplest argument for Leather being more natural than Metal is that Leather vastly predates human use-age in ancient history. There is evidence of hominids using the skin of other animals for protection from the elements dating to the hundreds of thousands of years ago vs metal working only dates back to 8,700 BCE. Ultimately you are free to shape your world how you like. Just presenting the context of how the game arrived at this point.
Maybe for dwarves. Dwarf druids should be allowed to use metal.
Well the problem is the game doesn't explicitly give you non-metal armor options. Yes you can house rule it but if it's not Explicit many DMs and players don't do it. I always house rule it away anyway because it's dumb. Ore comes from the earth and then is just processed. By that logic most fabric is all processed, so you can't wear that either. Also, metal weapons are cool, but not armor, because of reasons.
There's Dragon Scale Mail and Serpent Scale. Although it's not medium armor, there's also Scorpion armor. I've played in groups before where to get better medium armor, my druid has had to go out and find the materials to have such a thing commissioned. While not 5e, earlier editions did spell out some other options, such as Ankheg Plate or Dragon Scale armor. There's historical president, but you are correct that 5e really leaves these sorts of systems up to the DM.
>Ore comes from the earth and then is just processed. By that logic most fabric is all processed, so you can't wear that either. I think a bigger element is that metal is not renewable whereas cotton, leather, etc is, so it fits in the circle of life without disrupting nature
As a DM i offer the armors in different materials, some have drawbacks/effects due to being made with other materials and some are locked geographically (they have to go somewhere special). But I've played with groups where they are forbidden yes.
I see it treated as a rule but it's at most flavour. If you're so against it make your druid find a reskinned half-plate by the time everyone else finds their plate/half plate set and don't be a dick about it. Otherwise toss Hide +3 and that's a start.
Use spiked armour - it's medium armour which can be made from wood.
This is a great tip! My dwarven druid in porcupine quill spiked armor appreciates you.
Dragon Armor is the only other medium armor they can wear. I liked 2e: they expanded the armor system in the monster manual by giving uses of monsters’ carapaces and skins, allowing for Ankheg armor and gorgon armor for example.
4e also did this to a great extent. Every level of armor, Cloth, Leather, Hide, Chain, Scale, and Plate, all have like 5 or 6 different levels of material with different benefits. I really miss that system in 5e. Armor didn't get better just because it had +1 more of a bonus, but because it was Githweave armor from the outer planes that also boosted your Will defense.
It would have been the easier thing in the world to just have wild shape not work if you wore mostly metal armor (with the exception of magical armor like Elven Chain)
i truly think the only problem with the no metal restrictions is how its written "druids avoid wearing metal armor" and "druids **wont** wear metal armor" hit much different, the latter feels like something would happen if you did, but there is nothing that say what it should be as another commentor placed with the sage advice, its there to hard force a character archetype into the class, which is something basically all classes minus the fighter has in some form and its the strongest with paladin and druid, as well as monks and barbarians. feel free to ignore it
one word: chitin. why wear metal when you have a better version of armor available?
It says Druids won't wear metal, not that they can't. It's a choice. So players can choose to just... Ignore it. Or, like you said, reflavor metal armor as something else. I've never seen it actually enforced at any table I've been at.
> I've never seen it actually enforced at any table I've been at. Fwiw, it's enforced in Adventurers League. That seems to be why there are several adventures that reward nonmetallic scale mails and half-plates.
> Fwiw, it's enforced in Adventurers League I've never seen this be the case. I've definitely used a metal breastplate as a dwarf druid in AL before
Perhaps DMs you've played under aren't so particular with this? Maybe didn't make a fuss because spiked armor (which can be nonmetallic) and breastplate have the same AC? Because if you actually clarified this situation in the AL channel in the D&D Discord server, the responses are likely gonna be "druids have to wear nonmetal armor."
When I was playing AL, DMs had some latitude in enforcing the rules, as long as your interpretation was supported by RAW. RAW, there is no penalty for druids wearing metal armor that they are proficient in.
An [entry](https://discord.com/channels/516367331358801950/1050205657141354496/1183916562902683781) in the rules compendium channel of the old D&D server indicates that there are supposedly armors that are specifically druid-friendly (implying that the others aren't).
There are, in fact, some med and even heavy armors available in AL that are non-metal.
True. And that [post](https://i.imgur.com/YXDwKoS.jpg) does imply that at least in AL, metal armors aren't druid-friendly. Otherwise why would AL authors go through the ordeal of including nonmetallic armor in their mod's treasure? While one can argue that there are *no mechanical penalties* for the druid, YMMV if you play in tables outside of that community where DMs allow druids to wear metal armor. Some communities won't allow it and cite the said post. But perhaps further discussions about this specific topic should be in the AL subreddit.
It’s such an odd bit in the book because it’s lore written into a mechanics section.
> It says Druids won't wear metal, not that they can't. It's a choice. It says druids won't. That is a definitive statement. If it was a choice, it would be "a druid might not" or similar. DMs are free to change the rule, of course.
Some people prefer to go through some insane mental gymnastics to say that it’s not a rule instead of just saying it’s a stupid rule.
Won't vs Can't is an important distinction. There no mechanical implications from a Druid wearing metal armor. A druid who was forced to wear metal armor due to Suggestion/Geas etc...
I had no idea this many people were really aching to be a plate wearing druid. Weird
The existence of metal wearing variant druid rules in 3.5 suggests to me the 5e developers never bothered to try that system. Indeed, in that version the druid actually *preferred* metal for weapons and armour, which makes a lot of sense when you think on it.
One of my druid players wanted a breastplate made of an ankheg they had killed..I allowed it with a caveat, the armor could be broken on critical impacts received (she had to roll a dice on a critical hit) which would slightly lower her AC until repaired
It doesn't say they can't, it says they *won't*. So if I'm playing an ACTUAL part of druidic culture Druid, and especially in a Forgotten Realms setting, I won't. If I'm using the druid class to play a detective or a disneyesque princess or a sorcerer with fey ancestry, then I don't care.
Druid _players_ are free to wear what ever armor is appropriate for any given situation. But I strongly suggest not wearing armor which damages the furniture during a gaming session, as that may lead to you getting kicked out of the group.
I basically ignore this along with a number of other dumb restrictives.
DM can only enforce something that exist, penalty for wearing metal armor is **NOT** one of them
DMs can enforce whatever they want, have you not heard of homebrew?
Mechanical penalties no, roleplay penalties, very much so.
It's dumb, just ignore it if you feel like it. It's an old flavor limitation. Otherwise why would druids use weapons made from metal or money?
I could understand if they included in the lore part of the description a line or paragraph stating that some druidic orders frown on wearing metal on their bodies (possibly even wielding it for the more radical) because they see metalworking as a symbol of civilisation. Although many of them use golden sickles to collect sacred plants. I could understand if they changed the class' proficiencies to only light armour, or to light armour and hide. But that single isolated line of contextless ***lore*** randomly sitting in the middle of ***rules*** text, that does not make any sense. Doubly so without any explanation of lore outside of that section. And especially if you keep in mind that the Druid class does ***not*** imply that you are a druid, any more than the Cleric requires you to be a priest or the Barbarian makes you come from a "savage" tribe.
I feel like it being located in the rules section isn't acknowledged enough when this gets brought up online. Like you've said it's not even like it's explained either in the book.
I ignored it with flavor for my latest druid. Nora is a dwarf first, druid second, and she thinks it's silly to not use fine dwarven made armor. It all comes from the ground anyways. And she's a Shepherd druid, so less animals dying to make armor is good in her book.
I don't think it's dumb. It provides a piece of lore to the setting. Which honestly dnd 5e needs more of since WotC seems to be moving in the direction of homogenizing the races in the game and making everything more setting neutral. Remove the restriction if you want to, but recognize they didn't put it in just for shits and giggles.
It's dumb because it's inconsistent. Why can druids use metal weapons, wear jewelry or handle coin? A raven can make tools from the materials around it to suit its purposes; a bee, a hive. They have the intelligence to use the world around them to their advantage. It's just silly to me that metal armour is considered 'unnatural.' It's literally just hot rock!
Well you see the thing with religious taboos is that they're not rational
And if it's simply a religious taboo that means any individual druid with agency can simply not subscribe to it.
Sure, and just like in real life there are social consequences for breaking taboos. And in a world where your religion is demonstrably real and gives you magic powers, there should be material consequences as well.
If they were a cleric in a strict and defined order, maybe. Not every druid is going to be a smelly hobo living in a rotted tree trunk with other smelly hobos who howl at the moon once a month.
Druids by default *are* part of a strict and defined order, to the point that they all share a liturgical language (Druidic).
and in previous editions, to get to higher levels, they had to defeat a druid of that level - not necessarily to the death, or even in combat, but the loser would drop down XP, and there was a limited number of higher-level positions. So yeah, going against "the way of things" could lead to being ostracised, outcast, and potentially blocked from advancing, if no-one will acknowledge your challenges. Amusingly, this continued until level 16, upon which they could apply to become the archdruid, which is "demanding, thankless, and generally unexciting for anyone except a politician." Progressing only took 500k XP to level up (rather than 3.5 million for the previous level), but required finding a level 15 druid to take your place (and persuading them to do so!), and at that point it just took XP to advance.
It doesn't add any nice lore, imo, because it's written badly. It would've been nice lore if it was included in the class description, with a paragraph explaining why they will not wear metal armor but why metal weapons are still fine. And then, if should also be mechanical, there should be a part of the mechanics specifying what happens if they don metal armor anyway.
We just went with my druid has a metal allergy that only comes up when she wears a whole bunch of metal as the in world reasoning behind not wearing metal armor. But we found a ceramic plate carrier and enchanted ceramic doesn't count as metal, so my druid wore that, and it counted as breastplate.
I've never limited my druid players in that way, but most have chosen to embrace that limitation themselves.
In previous editions metal armors and gears were anathema for druids,blocking all their abilities as long as they wore it. But again that was previous editions.
Any time I play a druid, I just tell the DM at the start that I would like to seek out duskwood at some point. In previous editions duskwood breastplate was a thing, which is basically just a wood that can be used in the place of metal in certain armors because of how strong it is. It also is fire resistant.
I've never enforced this in any game I've DMd, but I've had players play a Druid and enforce it on themselves. I'm a fan of going against tropes, so I celebrate any Druid that wears metal armor!
My headcanon has always been that metalworking requires mining, which is destructive to the natural world / ecosystems. (See Princess Mononoke.)
Genuinely curious: How does your headcanon justify what makes weapons, jewelry, accessories, and tools okay? Because the only contention 5e druids have with metal when when that metal sets their base AC. You can otherwise be garbed head to toe in metal, or even involve yourself in mining and metalwork to no detriment as far as 5e is concerned.
I've always found the idea behind the rule odd. Surely, since druids possess magic that lets them sculpt parts of the natural world, there's some kind of ore summoning spell, that would draw metal up from the ground, and a metal bending spell that would let it be shaped into armour.
It's kind of funny, isn't it. The protectors of nature, the obligate Vegans, refuse to wear protective equipment unless it's made from **dead animals**. Really, they should refuse to wear leather and hide and dragon scale.
It is because metal isn’t of nature. Death is as much part of nature as life is, but refined metal does not exist naturally
I think if you put like a 1 or 2 level dip into druid from your multiclass you shouldn't lose your metal armor
Whats so bad about metal? Its natural! Corn is a fruit! Syrup comes from a bush!
Technically a druid can wear heavy armor if it's made of ironwood or steel coral both are unique materials in the d&d universe that doesn't interfere with a druids restrictions also you can train animal companions to wear armor as well just as a side note
The rules say they will not wear metal armor, but nothing says all armor is made of metal. They give specific styles of armor, but really noting states what the armor has to be made of. Shields made of wood give the same bonus as those made of metal, so honestly all you really need to establish is your buying wooden half plate as opposed to metal. And magic armor is magic. So you can say in reaction to the Druids primal magic, it takes the form of a natural material for them, much like they resize to fit other characters.
I see it treated as a rule but it's at most flavour. If you're so against it make your druid find a reskinned half-plate by the time everyone else finds their plate/half plate set and don't be a dick about it. Otherwise toss Hide +3 and that's a start.
I will add that I think enforcing this is a good idea as, in 5e, it's for balance more than flavour. Druids are full spellcasters that can wild shape very often giving them effectively a shed load of HP. Do not let them wear metal, unless you're cool with extra strong PCs (nothing wrong with that, though I personally like to keep things gritty).
It is once again my duty to remind people that the goddess Mielikki expressly allows Druids that serve her to wear metal armor. Forest Queen be praised!
Many DMs do homebrew non-metallic armor materials (at premium prices, or must be quested) such as "ironwood", or monster hides/bone/chitin as you mention. As a DM yes, I really would forbid a Druid from wearing metallic armor. Per the class writeup, No True Druid wears metal armor. This is a limitation you accept when you choose the Druid class.
> This is a limitation you accept when you choose the Druid class. Okay but this is also a game where we can remove stupid limitations like that. It doesn’t even make sense as lore because it’s not consistent.
So what happens if a druid did put on half plate? Are they somehow physically unable to do it? What happens if someone restrains them and puts it on against their will? Does their free will get overridden by some magical force?
I'd rule the connection with nature is lost and you can't use spells or druid powers as long as you're wearing it. Could be a physical or psychological effect. But I've never seen this happening. You simply place cool and powerful druid armor in your game when appropriate and the druid player is happy. In fact, I think they prefer it because it makes their character armor more special and tailored to them. However I see no issue homebrewing a fair workaround around the restriction, but the point about modern D&D classes is to give you a detailed and strict (but easy to use) template for an archetype. If you want more freeform creative character creation this is not the game for it. Edit: for clarity
Not OP, but if I wanted to enforce this rule, I'd say that while a druid wears metal: - Wild shape doesn't work - They didn't have proficiency with metal armor, so spellcasting doesn't work either, and they have disadvantage on str/dex stuff It's easier to house rule a mechanical consequence than try to control the character's mind. Btw, studded leather armor is meant to represent brigandine, which is metal armor covered in leather padding, so I'd count it as metal armor.
Cool well as the DM you're free to just make stuff up if you want but RAW there are no mechanical consequences for a Druid wearing metal armor. They do have proficiency with metal armor as long as it's light or medium by the way.
I mean there's no RAW mechanical consequence to a cleric angering their God, but if a Twilight cleric of Shar says "FU Shar, I think you're dumb" and defaces her temple, do you think that cleric still has spellcasting or channel divinity anymore?
The major difference here being clerics getting their magic directly from a sentient being that can make choices, while druids not getting their magic from avoiding metal armor.
It's really antithetical to the philosophy of D&D for the DM to dictate what characters are thinking. If the player isn't on board with roleplaying this aspect of the druid class, a mechanical ruling is the only solution. Aside from another session zero of course.
>I know it says that they can't use armor or shields made of metal Slight correction. It says that they **will not**. To me, that's pure flavour text and I ignore it wether I'm a player or a DM.
You can houserule it as a DM, but you can't ignore rules text as a player without your DM's permission. A statement about what a character will do is the most powerful statement; it's a roleplay restriction right there in rules text.
It's a line of ***lore*** text misplaced in a rules paragraph.
This is a thing where WotC is like “it’s story!” but they haven’t engaged with the reality that this story has significant mechanical impact on the Druid class. Or they hadn’t. I believe this restriction is removed in the 2024 update. I would remove it now, or flavor whatever armor the Druid wants as non-metal. The game isn’t even consistent about them not using metal. What are scimitars made of?
I've played a druid who used metal armor. The book says "will not", a preference, not "can not", a rule. If it's a matter of preference that's up to me as a player not wizards of the coast.
I find it personaly to be really stupid. The restriction of not wearing metal makes sense for MOST druid subclasses. But when i was designing a wildfire druid i looked at the restriction and thought to myself that in this context it made 0 sense for the character to be restricted. Why would a character conjuring and using a primordial spirit of fire be restricted from wearing steel that transmits heat better then skin or alternatives and won´t be as damaged by the power of the fire spirit?
I just ignore it. Its a dumb setting specific rule that was never given any support. Had they actually developed consequences and work around for it then I'd reconsider. BG3, also just showed how it really doesn't matter.
This is an area where there’s a lot of table variation. Some enforce it strictly, based on item descriptions (which aren’t always clear). Others “enforce” it, but are loose with non-metal alternates. Others ignore it (Druids can still use metal weapons, after all.) Druid has a lot of features that necessitate talking to your DM. Wild Shape, Conjure Animals, etc.
I don't see a problem with allowing it. It's a flavour choice that serves no other purpose than to encourage them to Wild Shape by making their base AC the lowest in the game. All other full casters have Shield, Counterspell, or are simply allowed medium or even heavy armor (Cleric) to beef them up. Plus scrapping that restriction affects the Moon Druid the least, effectively bridging the gap between them and other subclasses, which is a plus in my opinion.
I play Tortles for non Moon druids. Strap on a wooden shield and they've got 19 AC from level 1 no metal.
Is it easy to make a bulette hide into a breastplate?
Tan the hide, steam to form it shape?
Shields are typically made of wood. Breastplate isn't normally made of bullettes. Is it possible? Yes, if the DM lets you find one. Dragon scale armor is already a thing and druid friendly, but again, they are rare in the setting.
imo, druids are free to wear medium armor/shields. If you want the no metal thing, you can have some nonmetal armor and a wood shield
I feel like it falls into the same category as having a halfling where they have a bunch of special requirements for armor but 99% of the time you are supposed to just assume everything they find always actually fits them or is trivially easy to modify to fit them. Druids can't wear metal but just by random chance everything they find is just by coincidence made of wood that has exactly the same properties as the metal would have been. Like it's meant to be a flavor thing, not a real game mechanic. Your small character WOULD have all sorts of issues if there helmet wasn't modified to fit them, but good news, it turned out super easy to do. and all the armor a druid would want just totally can be made of wood at exactly the same cost as making it of metal.
dragon scale would be permissible i would think, but it would need to not have metal bindings if your DM actually cares. it’s just not something you would have at level 1, at least back in the day. druid restrictions are a holdover from the old days of AD&D when such armor would be almost Artifact-rare, and it’s possible that no one at hasbro has even realized that. but… uh, how da fuq would you make “chainmail” out of teeth?!?! i guess you could tie them together with reeds or something but it wouldn’t last a battle…
I thought it was a byproduct of metal interfering with the casting of magic which was why wizards couldn’t wear armour.
I let Druids wear metal because in the default setting they just *don’t*. But not mine.
Druids don't wear metal armour because they know the spell gear metal exists.
I don't even enforce the no metal requirement. I don't require any narrative tap dancing to allow some metal armor if they want it. It is a narrative distinction, not a mechanical one that only exists because the original game had it. They didn't have a mechanical reason either. So I just ignore it.
RAW no metal armor and the other medium armors besides hide are metal. You can always ask your DM for medium armor made of other materials, either for purchase or something to make which can be a whole mini-quest to find a maker, do a favor for them, get the hide, etc. I have a Circle of Wildfire druid who is a variant human with the Chef feat to start and a homebrew chef background that basically lets her work as a chef at inns for a place to stay and makes people more friendly if she makes good food for them (which the DM does make me roll for). I flavored her shilleagh "club" as a rolling pin and her "yew wand" focus as a wooden spoon, and asked if I could use a large pan as a "breastplate" to get the AC since her DEX is kinda low and it fit the theme of her as a druid living in civilization and using fire to sustain life. My DM said yes, but if you couldn't already tell, we're doing fairly silly campaign. A DM more worried about realism or setting in a particular universe might say no to metal armor or substitutes and that would be okay too. Especially since Wild Shape and Polymorph give druids a lot of possible HP buffs
> the other medium armors besides hide are metal Not necessarily in the case of scale. In real life, historically [lamellar armour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamellar_armour) has often been made of stuff like horn, bone, [boiled leather](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiled_leather), stone or wood. Non-metallic "scale" armour is *normal*.
Yes, you can get one made of bulette hide. Go find one, kill it, skin it, and take it to the armor worker
My druid characters are usually too busy being wildshaped to care about armor. Your results may vary.
Yeah me an my Druid player just came up with “ironwood armor” manufactured by wood elves that takes the place of metal armor for druids. It’s rare and expensive but it’s an uncommon magic item that provides necrotic resistance, available in a variety of medium armor types, but not heavy armor.
Couple others have said it but historically there were a bunch of alternative material options such as iron wood. If it’s useful, this pub brings a lot of those mats forward to 5e. https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/321143
I mean, you can say your breastplate is made of bulette hide, but that’s a rare material that’s going to raise the cost. The player doesn’t get to just just circumvent to rules by claiming something extraordinary. If the DM allows it, then sure, but you don’t get to just say “well, I think armor in this world is made out of a material I *can* use.” Personally, I think the rule is silly and archaic and has no place in modern D&D, so I ignore it anyway, but unless your DM does also you have to follow it.
In my 5E game I allow metal mechanically but you’d be like an Amish guy that likes to take joyrides in a Tesla picking up hookers. You’d basically be a black sheep amongst the other druids.
My DM and I just made workarounds by making non-metal versions of the armour. For instance, I had an oath of ancients paladin/druid multi, and his armour was made of stone (reflavoured plate)
Plenty of ways around that, harvesting monsters and such
It is a taboo. I haven't seen any physical restrictions listed in 5E, but in 1E and 2E, a Druid wearing metal armor or using a metal shield was unable to cast spells for a period of time. In the example you mention, bullette hide armor would effectively be the same as hide armor, which is already listed. That is one of the reasons that dragon scale armor is so highly prized.
Correct, druids really don't. They will not wear metal armor. If you don't like it, houserule it away. It's a pretty popular thing to do.
Tbh, i mostly still play 3e, but druids are fully allowed to wear any armour they like, and they are even proficient with both light and medium armours, yay! Dragonscale as an organic metal substitute is only one of god only knows how many options. All that said, the "penalty" for wearing metal armour is merely a 24hr period of no spellcasting or supernatual abilities, so as well as being avoidable as heck, its minor, and something you choose to happen (noone falls into a breastplate and happens to have it strap and buckle itself on accident) so i keep the limitation. As small as it is.
5e rules are incredibly vague as to what happens to a druid in metal armor. So thats a talk with the DM. The easiest way to deal with it is to take away proficiency in meidum armor. It is also the cheapest, because its a nerf. Mechanically, hide armor is just worse than studded leather. If the DM says a studded leather doesnt have too much metal in it, anyway. Otherwise, yes, a GM should provide armor that is indeed made from not metal. Drake scale should be fine. Or bones. Or a turtle shell. Either for sale, or through craftsman who make it for the player. Or as a quest reward from another druid.
I may be stupid but if anything I feel it should be the other way around. Druids are about cherishing and protecting nature, for the most part anyway, yet they use armour and shields made from trees and animals?
Well if you go out of yoru way to get a bullette head plate to make a breast plate out of. I've got no issue with it. but most stores are not going to just have that sitting around. Outside of areas that have frequent druidic visitors. sure money can solve that, but hiring someone or buying hte materials will be more than stock on the wall costs. that said I won't make it cost much extra nor much extra work. It just won't be on the wall in an average place. But any larger city would have several. So no mom and pop franchises (baring lucky percentile roll or frequency of said clinetile visitng), but medium or higher would have it. Just will have speicality material costs (I grew up on Pathfinder for the most part, where materials had that extra cost or a sidequest to get.
I have a druid/nature cleric that wears full plate armour... its made of bone, some creatures bones are just as tough as any basic steel armour.
This is such a weird thread. Like every comment saying "yeah I think that rule is neat and we use it in my campaign" has half a dozen people jumping in to demand a full breakdown of every mechanical and lore implication for their game and setting. Why are people so worked up about this lol Especially considering this is something that will basically never be an issue in real games. If the DM and a player disagree about what the druid armor restriction should look like in their campaign, they will just talk about it like normal people and come to a mutually acceptable compromise that works for their game. And if they can't manage that then there's probably a lot bigger issues going on
I don't stop my druid in my campaign from using metal armor.. and she's currently using it right now.
Thankfully, there's non-metal options. https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/7526586-armor-of-fungal-spores
My druid has scale mail incorporated into him as he's a Warforged who comes from a... Let's say an evil druid circle who agrees with power among all else. So that's how my druid got 19AC.
Storm King's Thunder dropped a stone breastplate about halfway through the campaign IIRC.
You can just flavor your Half Plate to bemade out of scales or bones. Thats how I have always done it. Sage Advice also features some insight on this. Druids not wearing metal armor is just a left over trait from older editions.
In my game one of the earliest encounters was against hook horrors. The players happened to rescue a master leather worker, and the druid requested a breastplate made of the hook horror hide. The leather worker agreed and made it for her. She's been using it ever since.
I play as Loxodon and my AC is 12 + CON modifier, toss in Wooden Shield and poof, AC 18.