The Mage Robe/Armor Dilemma

[ArcaneLurker]

People wear armour because they're afraid of getting killed.
If you were so powerful that you could walk around in a bathrobe, without fear of-- ACK.

[Big Red Dog]

Battlemages were a knight class, in Cyrodiil, and Oblivion depicts one with two axes and some blend of armor. The Mages Guild have the Order of the Lamp, on top of that. If the empire conquered the continent with them, why can't I larp as an effective spellsword/battlemage? I don't remember any explanation for this.

how do you larp in a videogame

How do you keep getting in? Is it a trait all mexicans have?

do you know what larp means?

[Big Red Dog]

Lotta "Real World Logic = Better" and "Pillars Might Wizard" fagging going on here.

Wizard's don't get heavy armor. Period. Don't like it? Multiclass.

it doesn't need to be real world logic, just say the god of magic will send any wizard who wears armor to a pit full of horny gay orcs or something. any reason is better than "erm just let people enjoy things"

[Shillitron]

Lotta "Real World Logic = Better" and "Pillars Might Wizard" fagging going on here.

Wizard's don't get heavy armor. Period. Don't like it? Multiclass.

it doesn't need to be real world logic, just say the god of magic will send any wizard who wears armor to a pit full of horny gay orcs or something. any reason is better than "erm just let people enjoy things"

When people real-world *** about fantasy worlds, it sucks the air out of the room. A game should never cater to "muh real world logic" apologists.

EDIT - actually it's not the same thing, I'm dumb. Both still annoy me tho.

[Vergil]

How is the topic of arguing from realism come up in a discussion about casting magic?

[maidenhaver]

how do you larp in a videogame

How do you keep getting in? Is it a trait all mexicans have?

do you know what larp means?

I had to larp as a Battlemage in Oblivion, because the Battlemage faction is unplayable. They just work for the Mages Guild, like Knights of the Lamp, so I had to larp like Frostcrag Spire was my Battlemage fief.

[Vergil]

How do you keep getting in? Is it a trait all mexicans have?

do you know what larp means?

I had to larp as a Battlemage in Oblivion, because the Battlemage faction is unplayable. They just work for the Mages Guild, like Knights of the Lamp, so I had to larp like Frostcrag Spire was my Battlemage fief.

I used to pretend to be an evil necromancer even though that requires actually beating the mages guild and killing Mannimarco to even begin the larp.

[rusty_shackleford]

I liked that oblivion let me play as a fighter/mage character because you could cast spells with weapons equipped

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If you go with a common Chinese Xianxia novel explanation (though in a lot of them you have people wearing armor and doing magic too), then magic is cast by intaking aether/chi from the surrounding world, condensing and shaping it inside your body, and then expelling in a concentrated form. Wearing armor could inhibit the aether/chi intake.

Could also be that in a particular setting, wizards do not feel like they are in danger enough to warrant wearing armor. Maybe the wizards don't usually hang around armies or get involved in wars, or if they do then they don't get involved in field battles and do work in the back lines like enchanting the armor of men marching to the front line, go use a disguise spell and go behind enemy lines to do reconnaissance or sabotage.

Perhaps in a certain setting, wizards commonly shapeshift or using mirage spells to lower their visibility, which wouldn't work very well with clanky and reflective metal armor.

Ultimately though it's just aesthetics.

[Big Red Dog]

How do you keep getting in? Is it a trait all mexicans have?

do you know what larp means?

I had to larp as a Battlemage in Oblivion, because the Battlemage faction is unplayable. They just work for the Mages Guild, like Knights of the Lamp, so I had to larp like Frostcrag Spire was my Battlemage fief.

please type out the meaning of larp and tell me how you larp in a videogame

When people real-world *** about fantasy worlds, it sucks the air out of the room. A game should never cater to "muh real world logic" apologists.

EDIT - actually it's not the same thing, I'm dumb. Both still annoy me tho.

do you wait an hour to swim after eating?

[Brother Michael]

While I have nothing against spellcasters being allowed to wear armor, the reason why you don't see it more often is simply because there are certain expectations when it comes to archetypes. Tolkien wasn't reinventing the wheel when it came to Gandal, he was tapping into the collective storytelling consciousness of humanity.

It's why a wizard in armor will always look "off".

The way I prefer it is armor being prohibitively expensive. At least in a tabletop game, a party with limited funds must prioritize who gets plate armor that needs to be fitted to have its full effect.

The issue with that is that armor wasn't prohibitively expensive, at least not in Europe. Yes, a bespoke suit of plate made by a German or Italian armorer was going to cost you an arm and a leg, but there was nothing stopping less prestigious individuals from purchasing something like a brigandine. Alternatively, if you go ahead a few centuries, we begin seeing "standardized" munitions-grade armor that was being mass produced.

Then again, alchemically or magically enhanced armor that can withstand spells or magical weapons should be scarce.

The reason we have this image of mages in robes is because they’re not shooting lasers like today’s mages. Merlin in Excalibur 1981 is an example. He’s a powerful member of the court, and he’d probably turn you into a frog if you tried to attack him, but he can’t (or won’t) vaporize columns of infantry like a Warhammer wizard.

It’s true that there were more affordable armors, but I am also thinking about plate armor in particular because this is about magic knights. These cheaper armors are not going to stand up to the magical beasts that laser wizards fight, meaning that expensive enchanted master crafted armor needs to be allocated where it is most valuable.

What’s funny is how Pathfinder 1e implemented arcane spell failure and then unintentionally made pajama tanks vastly superior to armor, at least in the crpgs.

[maidenhaver]

do you know what larp means?

I had to larp as a Battlemage in Oblivion, because the Battlemage faction is unplayable. They just work for the Mages Guild, like Knights of the Lamp, so I had to larp like Frostcrag Spire was my Battlemage fief.

I used to pretend to be an evil necromancer even though that requires actually beating the mages guild and killing Mannimarco to even begin the larp.

It works thematically, because Traven did a necromancy, when he sacrificed his own soul.

[Vergil]

I had to larp as a Battlemage in Oblivion, because the Battlemage faction is unplayable. They just work for the Mages Guild, like Knights of the Lamp, so I had to larp like Frostcrag Spire was my Battlemage fief.

I used to pretend to be an evil necromancer even though that requires actually beating the mages guild and killing Mannimarco to even begin the larp.

It works thematically, because Traven did a necromancy, when he sacrificed his own soul.

Nothing fills my heart with glee like imagining the CoC calling Traven a pack of rollaids and immediately reversing the ban on necromancy once becoming Arch-Mage.

[Orvas Dren]

Lotta "Real World Logic = Better" and "Pillars Might Wizard" fagging going on here.

Wizard's don't get heavy armor. Period. Don't like it? Multiclass.

it doesn't need to be real world logic, just say the god of magic will send any wizard who wears armor to a pit full of horny gay orcs or something. any reason is better than "erm just let people enjoy things"

When people real-world *** about fantasy worlds, it sucks the air out of the room. A game should never cater to "muh real world logic" apologists.

EDIT - actually it's not the same thing, I'm dumb. Both still annoy me tho.

oh my god ***** SHUT UP

[UltraFan123]

What’s funny is how Pathfinder 1e implemented arcane spell failure and then unintentionally made pajama tanks vastly superior to armor, at least in the crpgs.

It was a leftover from 3.5 dnd, but regardless of how I felt about only arcane casters not being allowed to normally wear armor, both 3.5 and Pathfinder 1st edition had in-built ways of bypassing said arcane spell failure.

For starters, both settings had the "mithral" ore which somewhat decreased the arcane spell failure of any wizard/sorcerer who weared armor made out of it, but never really decreased the failure percentage to a flat 0.

To circumvent this, 3.5 edition had a prestige class known as [Spellsword] which sacrificed some caster level progression in exchange of further decreasing the failure percentage, and with enough levels of this prestige class you could even use armor that wasn't made out of mithral and you would still be able to cast arcane spells, but your spells would be weaker than the spells of a pure wizard/sorcerer. Even if there was a [Practiced Spellcaster] line of feats to somewhat compensate for the lack of caster levels.

Meanwhile, Pathfinder 1st edition did it better by adding two feats called [Arcane Armor Training] and [Arcane Armor Mastery] which allowed you to cast arcane spells while wearing all types of mithral armor bar the heavy ones, and if you wanted to use heavy armor there was a prestige class called [Hellknight Signifer] which decreased the failure percentage even further without sacrificing caster level progression.

On top of this the PF 1e ruleset also had a feat called [Shielded Mage] which allowed you to use all shields bar the tower shields and still be able to cast arcane spells, something that 3.5 edition never introduced.

I personally feel that arcane mages being able to wear armor and shields should be reserved to those who are willing to hyper-specialize for it, giving the ones willing to burn feats and levels in a prestige class a high level of, well, "prestige". lol

[Shillitron]

it doesn't need to be real world logic, just say the god of magic will send any wizard who wears armor to a pit full of horny gay orcs or something. any reason is better than "erm just let people enjoy things"

When people real-world *** about fantasy worlds, it sucks the air out of the room. A game should never cater to "muh real world logic" apologists.

EDIT - actually it's not the same thing, I'm dumb. Both still annoy me tho.

oh my god ***** SHUT UP

No.

[J1M]

D&D decided the primary spellcaster attribute should be CHARISMA so you don't have to worry about the robe thing anymore.

[Magick]

I belive the out-of-universe meta explanation is that game devs want the mages to look like Gandalf, but the reason Gandalf didn't wear any armor in-story wasn't because he couldn't, it was simply that he was so powerful that almost nothing in Middle Earth could hurt him so there was no need for him to use armor of any sort.

gandalf was afraid of wolves what the **** are you talking about

****** what are you on about? Gandalf was not afraid of wolves. He recognized the danger they pose, not for himself but rather those he aids and travels with. The wolves that attack the Fellowship after they climb back down from Caradhras were most likely not normal wolves since he says that they aren't normal. Which could mean that they were werewolves. Sauron after all was the lord of them.

He was probably on about this bit in the Hobbit:

In T.A. 2941, the Wargs appeared once to meet the Goblins and organize a raid to the nearby villages, in order to drive the Woodmen out and capture some slaves. As a pack of Wargs approached east of the Misty Mountains to meet them, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, and Thorin and Company were escaping the goblins. Gandalf seeing the pack coming, suggested to climb the trees and Dori helped Bilbo in the nick of time.

The Wargs, thinking that the Dwarves are allies of the Woodmen, surrounded the glade and didn't let them descend. Gandalf then used his magic to light up pinecones and hurl them against the Warg until he drove them out. The wolves that had caught fire fled into the forest and had set it alight in several places, since it was high summer, and on this eastern side of the mountains there had been little rain for some time. However the guards left under the trees did not go away. Eventually Goblins showed up and lit the trees the Dwarves were onto, until the Eagles came to rescue them.[3]

The Goblins and the Wargs insisted on looking for the band, since Gandalf had killed the Great Goblin, and also burnt the chief wolf's nose. They went as far as Beorn's homestead, but he caught a pair of them and stuck the goblin's head outside the gate and nailed the warg-skin to a tree just beyond[1]

[Vergil]

I think I've come to a conclusion about how I think this could be addressed best going forward. I think there shouldn't be any inherent penalties to magic casting from using armor full stop. However I think there are bonuses from robes that you would miss out on from wearing armor. To do this I think something like limiting the enchantments (either quantity or magnitude) on armor (getting worse and worse as the material gets heavier) whilst making robes very desirable for enchants. This would incentivize traditional pure mages to stick to robes but allow for battlemages to exist without being directly penalized from using magic.

[Magick]

I like the idea of robes BOOSTING magic rather than armour penalising it.
Though a certain level of strength/stamina or equivalent should probably be required for the heaviest armour.

Either way, some balance must be maintained. You can't have fully plated up mages running around completely nuking everything from range at full power, while being equally armoured, making wielding a sword equally pointless. The only other way is to heavily penalise / restrict casting, which then makes it unfun and your mages are sat plinking at things with a ******* SLING.

[rusty_shackleford]

Either way, some balance must be maintained. You can't have fully plated up mages running around completely nuking everything from range at full power, while being equally armoured, making wielding a sword equally pointless. The only other way is to heavily penalise / restrict casting, which then makes it unfun and your mages are sat plinking at things with a ******* SLING.

Just make their magic only usable at close range, problem solved.
Ranged magic requires you to use a totally-not-a-dress, melee magic doesn't, ez.

[Vergil]

Either way, some balance must be maintained. You can't have fully plated up mages running around completely nuking everything from range at full power, while being equally armoured, making wielding a sword equally pointless. The only other way is to heavily penalise / restrict casting, which then makes it unfun and your mages are sat plinking at things with a ******* SLING.

Just make their magic only usable at close range, problem solved.
Ranged magic requires you to use a totally-not-a-dress, melee magic doesn't, ez.

At that point why not just use a sword?

[rusty_shackleford]

Either way, some balance must be maintained. You can't have fully plated up mages running around completely nuking everything from range at full power, while being equally armoured, making wielding a sword equally pointless. The only other way is to heavily penalise / restrict casting, which then makes it unfun and your mages are sat plinking at things with a ******* SLING.

Just make their magic only usable at close range, problem solved.
Ranged magic requires you to use a totally-not-a-dress, melee magic doesn't, ez.

At that point why not just use a sword?

You do use the sword, you use both.

[Vergil]

Just make their magic only usable at close range, problem solved.
Ranged magic requires you to use a totally-not-a-dress, melee magic doesn't, ez.

At that point why not just use a sword?

You do use the sword, you use both.

So while trying to swing your sword you're also rubbing their head trying to use your hot hands to burn them?

[Brother Michael]

Just make their magic only usable at close range, problem solved.
Ranged magic requires you to use a totally-not-a-dress, melee magic doesn't, ez.

At that point why not just use a sword?

You do use the sword, you use both.

Another of Rusty’s iconic non-answers. The question is why not just use the sword.

[rusty_shackleford]

At that point why not just use a sword?

You do use the sword, you use both.

So while trying to swing your sword you're also rubbing their head trying to use your hot hands to burn them?

I said melee range, not touch.

[rusty_shackleford]

The question is why not just use the sword.

It was "why not just a sword", as in, "why not use a sword instead of magic?"

[Lich]

[Vergil]

You do use the sword, you use both.

So while trying to swing your sword you're also rubbing their head trying to use your hot hands to burn them?

I said melee range, not touch.

So you're gonna aim your little 3 inch range **** blast whilst trying to swing a sword effectively?

[rusty_shackleford]

So while trying to swing your sword you're also rubbing their head trying to use your hot hands to burn them?

I said melee range, not touch.

So you're gonna aim your little 3 inch range **** blast whilst trying to swing a sword effectively?

Have you ever seen a paladin in a video game? Maybe played Witcher 3?