Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Stupid Question...

For the first in many a moon...

I'm just back from a few months of tabletop playing, 3.5 D&D, if you care.

anyway, in BG3, if you have the medium armour feat and wear medium armour,, is your arcane casting goosed?

No.

In 5e, no armour affects your ability to cast spells of any kind (Aside from Druids and Metal armour... But that doesn't exist in BG3)

The only penalty associated with wearing armour you are proficient in, is the Stealth penalty found on Heavy Armour and some pieces of Medium Armour (It will state on it that it will provide Disadvantage on Stealth checks).

So you are completely fine with having say a Wizard run around in full plate armour and casting spells all day (In fact, this is actually a pretty strong build when set up correctly)

Most excellent!

Definitely one of my favorite parts about 5e, they finally solved the annoying armor issue that plagued D&D since version 2.

The only thing that remains is that you can equip stuff thats considered medium or even heavy armor and suddenly your mage cannot cast spells anymore.

Happends for example with Mitharas boots.

It's more they shifted the issue.

Since with the 5e approach you have the whole "Everyone just wears Medium/Heavy Armour" thing because there's no downsides to doing so. So things like Light Armour and stuff like Mage Armour/Barkskin are massively devalued.

I'll admit that the prior version where Arcane spells could simply fail randomly because you were wearing something more sturdy than tissue paper was not a particularly fun mechanic. But it at least made clothes/Light armour relevant (Even more so when classes like Bard got perks that removed the malus from Light Armour). It also provided more of a distinction between Arcane and Divine magic (In 5e there's no difference besides Divine casters just getting their full spell list for free while Arcane casters have to pick things to learn with Wizards having their additional scribing source of spells)

So yeah, now we have to deal with the issue of defence creep due to everyone running around in heavier armour and wielding shields for much higher AC's (And overall more competition between gear since everyone wants the best Medium/Heavy armour to wear) as opposed to having to deal with the issue of the spell failures chance and the risk/reward that wearing heavier armour brought for Arcane casters as a result.

Agreed, I’ve always supported a simple -2,-4,-6 (light, med, heavy with this halved for certain armors like mythril) to the to attack hit roll for spells that use your attack stats. If you forgo hand covering gauntlets, that drops the malus by 2 points. So that would still allow light armor to be used without any penalty. Bracers and gloves would be fine and penalty free. Spells that do not need a somatic component are exempt (wither it’s temporary or permanent). Spells that depends on the target’s saves than your to hit are also exempt, this adds some spell casting flavor. These can be negated if you take the appropriate armor master feats. That way if you really want a tank mage, take the feat. As it is now, just dip one level of another class. Dipping should only give you proficiency. Divine spell casters and classes (i.e. warlocks) that have an outside entity empowering them are also exempt. IMO…