Why can't mages use armor?

Since I'm assuming you're talking about classic D&D, specifically 3.PF and earlier, and the answer to why those games make it hard/impossible for wizards to wear armor, is because in the source material that inspired the original D&D, the archetypal wizard didn't wear armor. That's it, but I'm okay with that, because archetypes are cool.

Game balance.

>depends_on_the_setting.jpg

You can't in 3.finder because heavy armor has arcane spell failure and interferes with somatic components. Though in 5e you could probably pull it off with some multiclassing. Cleric 1/Wizard 19 would work for a plated mage, seeing as there is no arcane spell failure on heavy armor, and the only thing you need to cast spells in armor is the proficiency.

The same goes for acrobatics checks, actually, so you could be a plate-wearing dexterity-based class and suffer zero penalty besides stealth checks if you can figure out the multiclassing for it.

>I can't play an anime character, therefore it's boring.
You know, there might be people out there without shit taste. Just a thought.

>Using Magical Energy to produce an effect.
>A common by-product energy of converting one type of energy to another is heat.
>Claiming that magic causing heat as a by-product of utilizing magical energy is a dumb rationale.

Do you even logic?

Because it inverts the fluxtronic capacitors and meddles with forces man was not meant to know.

And other bullshit.

>balance bullshit

Fluff explanation

>Arcane magic is physically, and mentally demanding. Armor is hot, and heavy. For someone who has spent most of their time unlocking the secrets of the universe, casting a defensive spell is easier than wearing armor.

Not sure if you're missing the point intentionally or by accident.

The implied underlying question which you may have missed due to your autism is in fact "Why are so many roleplaying systems designed in a way that armor and magery are incompatible?"

They can, go fighter at level 1, then multiclass to wizard.

In 5e you could get medium armor by being a human or dwarf and bump that up to heavy armor at 4, if you really felt the need. It'd help fill out the strength requirements for plate, too.

Outside of pure Wizard, consider that Eldritch Knight fighters both cast arcane magic and wear armor, and by this combination make the defensively strongest characters around.

Because plate wearing mages isn't the popular trope, friend.

I was under the assumption that the spell failure chance in 3.P was strictly for spells that require somatic spells due to their interfering with the magi's movements.

They can. The reason most mages don't wear armor is that you take extra fatigue based on your encumbrance level, and armor that provides good damage reduction tends to be pretty heavy. Mages need their fatigue points to cast spells, so most opt for lighter armor, if any armor at all.

All my favorite knights are also wizards, I have no idea what you mean.

Which is pretty silly really. Are wizards dancing around? I can't see how pic related would fuck up a spell 25% of the time. He still has total freedom of movement in his arms and hands.

The same reason you can't really do archery in full plate. Mage stuff often requires precise hand signs and/or fiddling about with small tools. Big ass helmets and heavy gauntlets are not conducive to this process.

Wizards are fags.
Clerics and Druid do it fine

On the other hand, wizards don't intend to fight in melee. People who didn't intend on fighting in a pitched battle didn't wear those back in the day, even if there was a chance they'd end up in a scuffle (drunken fight, mugging, other potential city dangers). Its a fact that soldiers in the 30 Years War hated wearing those things (and the associated helmet) and as campaigns went on would discard them. Why would a wizard want to haul that thing around everywhere? When he can just cast a spell that gives him the same AC?

...

>Its a fact that soldiers in the 30 Years War hated wearing those things (and the associated helmet) and as campaigns went on would discard them

Really?

In D&D "balance" in a game that has no fucking idea what the word means

There is a reason Spaniards wore the gear they wore.

3e was made on videogame logic. Stats are stats.

>wizards don't intend to fight in melee
Maybe not, but adventurers often end up in it whether they intend to or not. Nobody wants to wear armour all the time. It's a huge pain in the ass. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea occasionally. Wizards often don't even have very good range on their spells anyway. This is besides the point though, it's such a clumsy excuse when a simple breastplate (which doesn't even require the long sleeves and vambraces of the previous photo) fucks up spells a quarter of the time. What are Wizards doing? Sit-ups?

>druids
>wearing plate

If someone tries to stab you, it is objectively better to be wearing your armor. Problem is that most of the time you aren't fighting, and you have to transport it.

>stats are stats
Not an argument.

>Not wearing epic molded plastic molded into superior plasteel
>Not wearing hemp plastic, with better properties than the contemporary metal
>Not wearing living roots or living carapaces

okay, bark plate armor would be baller as fuck actually

forged steel plate is still a no go though

The point is that much of 3e's design has no logical basis.
2e had the archetype/tradition excuse, everyone was brands of weaboo fightan magic/ EPIC HEROISM in 4e (and could perform heroic feats/weeb magic spells in their armor), and 5e lets mages wear armor just fine if they're proficient.

No reason. It's like asking why a modern heavy weapons operator doesn't wear a helmet and kevlar.

They can and should, unless they wanna get shot for looking like a mage.

Rule 0 of the streets: geek the mage.

>one of the most standard equalizing mechanics in fantasy
>mages do more but are more squishy
>waaaaah this is boring I actually have to git gud

Please tell us more about your Sonic OC

Magic-users wearing armor it's kinda my fetish

Don't tell anybody

I thought rule 0 was: Never screw over your Johnson or Fixer?

>my fetish
>fetish
Let me get this straight: mages in armor sexually arouse you? You cannot get hard unless your girlfriend puts on an authentic medieval suit of armor and starts pulling rabbits out of bascinets?

I shoot the elf girl with tattoos in the top right, was she the mage?

Still a better fetish than feet! Am I right or am I right?

Nope, it's the Orc.

True. Garden of Words almost makes footfaggotry seem passable though.

from a mechanic standpoint it doesn't really make sense but from a setting standpoint it'd work with spending 80% of your time studying makes most armour too heavy for extended usage. But that doesn't really explain why sorcerers wouldn't wear heavy plate while throwing around arcane death.

You are a huge retard. I hope you die in a fire with your family. Allah ahkbar allah ahkbar

People who haven't played IK, Anima, or ToME?

Well I'm playing 3.5 DnD right now as a Duskblade
And I get full BAB while wearing chainmail and using a greatsword but can cast magic with no penalty

>mages and stickmen are equalized by armor
>mages are squishy
Have you actually tried to play as a mage, or is it too unsporting?

>Standard equalizing mechanics.

The advantages a suit of armor gives wizards in most games is totally negligible to what they already have.

He says implying LotR isn't the popular trope.

...

in my setting magic use relies on the caster's connection to the astral plane, and wearing too much heavy metal armor essentially blocks the voices like a tinfoil hat. you aren't exposed enough to properly act as a conduit for magic.

like in judge dredd, how psi-judges can't wear helmets.

>Ironwood enchantment / material exists specifically to allow druids to wear any armor type because 'it's not metal, it's just wood that functions identically to metal!'

Pathfidner lets you cast in armor.

It takes some optimizing and your going to have to invest resources into doing it, but it's possible.

You would know this if you new anything about 3.PF aside from memes.

They can in 5e, as long as they have proficiency in it.

>Always wanted to play a plate wearing war mage
>Most games, video or tabletop, either don't allow or heavily penalize that play style
>D&D 5e comes out
>Finally can play what I want without shooting myself in both feet
>Everyone else in the group rolls heavy armor wearing arcane casters or melee fighters
>Settle for fireball chucking Light Cleric

Close enough. Though I did get bitched at by other PCs for spending spell slots burning monsters to death rather than casting Cure Wounds on every little scratch they took

I actually like this one. Silly shit like this is the stuff good campaign settings are built on.

>Tumblr image
>Of shit game
>Using "magic" in steampunk (the worst) setting
3 slots in my bingo card. Keep them coming.

Because playing as Golbez would be pretty overpoweredd in most systems.

Ek's are actually pretty bad at everything.

This. All it takes is 2 to 3 feats and you're golden. You get light armor just being a Warlock or certain Wizard archetype and you can start with light/medium at level 1 just being a Variant Human

I wouldn't say that. The use of Shield makes you a super tank as long as you have the slots for it, and who doesn't want Booming Blade with a melee class?

I never let me cleric be the wet nurse of HP and to suckle off of me, I tell them to buy potions so I can keep smiting and cleaving in the name of my god as a enlarged dwarf with a greatsword

>All it takes is 2 to 3 feats and you're golden.
Or a single level in another class, like fighter or cleric.

Because OP, people are normalized on D&D's tropes of squishy mage, buff fighter as if mundane armor actually does anything in the face of spells. Hell, you can't even block spells with a shield without feats or special class features.

If this was the case I'd buy into it but frankly if you get rid of the idea of a magic user and a guy with a sword being two distinct entities then everything is better

>Hell, you can't even block spells with a shield without feats or special class features.
You can in 4e. Shields grant a bonus to AC and Reflex, and a lot of spells target Reflex.

Because they spent all of their money on wizard school and don't have the cash to buy armor

If you want the pure mechanics of it for 3.PF then it's simple:
Non-proficiency and Interference with Somatic components of spell casting.
To go into that in a little more detail:
Most wizardly folks don't spend their time traipsing around places full of things looking to stab them. They tend to sit in their towers and universities and practice magic, funnily enough. That means when Joe Less-Dumb-Than-The-Average-Peasant comes in and hands over his family's life savings for an apprenticeship they aren't going to be shelling out for armour. Armour, especially metal armour, is expensive, takes up space, needs maintenance skill and knowledge and requires time to learn to wearn and fight in. And you can be sure Joe The-Newest-Apprentice doesn't have to time learn armour care while dusting the fragile vials of spell components and practicing each cantrip 2000 times. And no wizard has time to be swinging practice swords at each other to learn to take, avoid and roll with blows in armour. They've got 6 tomes to read you stupid peasant. Factor in some arrogance and pride and you end up with a group that relies of defensive magics and meatshields and running like buggery over self defence.
That's your non-proficiency.
The interference with somatic components is simpler in that some spells (and not all) require some arm/body/finger/ect wiggling in extremely precise and exact motions to make it work. And wearing stiff protective gear gets in the way of that.
With that in mind a 3.PF magy type can overcome their inability to wear armour by:
Getting armour proficiency from feats or multi-classing (i.e. going out of their war to get training)
Avoiding spells with somatic components
Taking the Still Spell Metamagic feat
Or just accepting that some spells will fizzle

Thus it's actually pretty simple to have an arcane casting in armour, it's just less efficient, so most people don't do it.
The in game and metagame reasoning match up! Shocking stuff!

Wizards start around middle age. They are scholars and students, having spent most of their lives studying. They have never taken the time to train their body, as that would distract them from their research.
I'd bet that the robes they wear are almost too heavy, given how physically weak they must be.

Although that doesn't stop Aristotle from being a badass wrestling/fighting philosopher.

This is a lame ass cop out that needs to die along with the gun powder doesn't exist thing as well.

I always liked the idea that mana corrodes metal, or is otherwise interfered by it. Like being dispersed by metal substances, so you'd end up wasting the mana.

>Are wizards dancing around?
Yeah, sometimes. It depends on the spell.

>A living construct
> A wizard

If you say so. That's like saying Gandalf's a wizard when he's closer to being a Native Outsider (I believe someone compared him to a Solar)

>dnd
Not a problem in 5e. Maybe play a non-shit edition.

Its bullshit because 50 lbs across your body is nothing.

So, in my setting Mages can't use Armor because Iron/Steel has an opposite polar chargeand many Metals blocks the flow of magic, this also keeps warriors from getting fucked 100-0. (They are still going to get fucked)

FEEL THE VOID

HUH HUH HUH

DECTAFLONTUN

BOING

....

UUUAAAAHHH

.... Sorry, I play dissidia final fantasy some times. Exdeath is a very hard character to play, so that means the computer was always terrible at playing him. That meant all matches against exdeath were basically an insta-win for you.

Ramblings about decent PSP games aside, a Mage having armor seems like a "final perk on the skill tree" sort of deal, but not absolutely final.