I agree that insta-kill saves and skill checks are garbage. But here are some examples of situations where a failed athletics check (or, repeated failed checks) will kill you:
A flying monster grapples you and flies away high into the sky, or a swallowing monster swallows you and dives/burrows/flies away
You are climbing a cliff that is high enough to kill you/deal unreasonable damage when you fall
You need to swim for prolonged periods
You need to climb a rope to escape a hazard like a fire or a sinking ship or trap walls closing in
There's lots of situations where a failed skill check might endnager you or cause you to take damage. These are all situations though where inability to consistently pass low- or medium-difficulty checks will just outright kill you, not just put you in a disadvantageous combat position. A couple years back, I lost a really cool character wizard I was looking forward to playing because session 1 involved a fight on a sinking/burning boat. For 5 rounds straight, I could not pass the DC 12 athletics check to climb a rope out of the hold, and just straight up died before the rest of the characters had a chance to realize I was in trouble :)
Failing an acrobatics check while... tightrope walking? That could do the same thing... but its hard to imagine a character will be forced into that situation, while all of the above are situations that any or all of the party may be forced into. Otherwise, it's hard to see what sort of mandatory Acrobatics check would come up at all, let alone in a way that was deadly.
Perception, Stealth, etc.... failing those will never just kill you. It might put you into a combat you don't want to be in, or let a creature attack you from an ambush, but that's combat... you're designed to be in combat, and every character has combat tools. Not every character (most characters) have no tools to help when drowning in the middle of the ocean, falling hundreds of feet, burning to death in a chamber they can't climb out of, etc.
Strength is important. Intelligence and Charisma are never important. Dex, Con, and Wisdom are very important in combat, but only Con and Wisdom are likely to be "save or die" relevant.
Intellect Devour will kill you pretty quick with a low INT....but thats about it with INT saves to be honest and I won't argue its up there for easiest to dump. Thats not "never" though just rare.
CHA you can die instantly from Soul Jar and someone simply walks 101ft away from your body and smashes the jar. Ghost can just possess you and run away since it lasts until your go to 0 hp. You can be banished from the plane you are in...which in certain adventures is basically game over for that character.
There are several CHA based effects from undead that will just outright take you out of the game for a while if you do not have it so I would say its fairly important.
Not saying I haven't dumped it and been fine but when it hits it hits hard.
Heres how your no STR wizard would handle your situations:
A flying monster grapples you and flies away high into the sky, or a swallowing monster swallows you and dives/burrows/flies away- teleportation spells (Dimension Door, Thunderstep, Misty Step) or Gasous form.Polymorph.
You are climbing a cliff that is high enough to kill you/deal unreasonable damage when you fall- Feather fall...this is by far the easiest one. Polymorph into a bird. Fly spell. etc...
You need to swim for prolonged periods- Water walk, get a boat?, Polymorph into a shark, etc....
You need to climb a rope to escape a hazard like a fire or a sinking ship or trap walls closing in- levitate, fly, teleportation spells, polymorph into bird, etc...
none of these are really that big of an issue for a wizard or if you even have help at all in the party....like if you have to try to do all this yourself maybe but having 0 help from anyone? yeah you might die if you didn't plan for it...or if you are really low level but the game is already deadly at low levels so its moot.
Also simply taking ATH prof. will solve this as you will still have a positive modifier which if you pair it with things like Enchance Ability makes it really really good odds you won't have to deal with them.
That's a confusing way to lay that out... but I'll point you towards the fact that light armor beats medium armor in your example (edit: see below). Every character with medium armor has light armor, and light armor also does not impose disadvantage on stealth (or if compared against medium armor that doesn't impose such disadvantage, beats it even further). So why would a character with medium armor proficiency, and a +5 dexterity score, be wearing medium armor?
Again, this is an awkward thing to talk about, because the value or lack of value of medium is not just what score it hits, it's also which class is wearing it, and where they feel pressured to put their ability score, which involves whether they're using point buy, etc.... it's complicated. In my experience, which is a fuzzy thing to try to prove with data, there is a very narrow band of characters that end up wearing medium armor, vs. those that seek one of the other two extremes.
Edit: Actually, I think you just missed some math in your example, Half Plate +3 SHOULD be AC 18, with Medium matching Light instead of lagging one behind. Still, same points largely stand.
According to SAC you should a monk can hold but wield a +3 Shield to get his AC to 23. I am not sure if that counts as using a shield so I will assume you can not use that and bracers of defence. Without that cheese I think the main conclusion from your table is in high magic game where players can 20ft +3 armor, +3 shield and presumably +3 weapons monks are too brittle.
Dex is the third stat for a barb so unless he rolled well for stats he is unlikely to have 20 Dec and con.
You play in higher magic games then me, in my tier 4 games, I have a level 17 cleric with only +1 armor and shield a level 20 monk where the only pc with armor and a shield has +3 armor but only +1 shield, having said that the armor can be used on a like for like.
If Str is your primary stat (you attack with str) and you have access to heavy armor you can get an A.C. one more than a if Dex is your primary stat and you are proficient I light armor. If neither is your primary stat, then you can either get your strength up to 15 and wear heavy, get you generally more useful dex up to 14 for an A.C. 2 worse than if you wore plate.
According to SAC you should a monk can hold but wield a +3 Shield to get his AC to 23. I am not sure if that counts as using a shield so I will assume you can not use that and bracers of defence. Without that cheese I think the main conclusion from your table is in high magic game where players can 20ft +3 armor, +3 shield and presumably +3 weapons monks are too brittle.
Not sure if I got you wrong there, but if you said as a Monk you are able to use a shield then you should know: Monks don't get proficiency with shields so they wouldn't get any benefit from using one. Also the Monks Unarmored Defense and Unarmored Movement both won't work with a shield so you would terribly hurt your AC here.
Has anyone figured out other ways to take advantage of the Dwarves’ ability to ignore the strength requirement for heavy armor?
You still need proficiency, otherwise you’re screwed. All I can think of is a Dex-based Fighter or Paladin. Something like a Dwarf Archer Battle Master wearing Plate armor would be a cool concept.
10 Strength, 16-20 Dexterity. Full Plate Armor. Best of both worlds, just sacrificing stealth.
Yup my very first 5e character was a Hill Dwarf Life Cleric, 9 STR was all that you needed to carry your gear and wear plate with shield. Heck I could've gone down to 8 STR if I wanted, it just meant the Barbarian in the party had to carry my backpack lol. But we were using point buy and I had a random point left over so went with a solid 9 STR.
According to SAC you should a monk can hold but wield a +3 Shield to get his AC to 23. I am not sure if that counts as using a shield so I will assume you can not use that and bracers of defence. Without that cheese I think the main conclusion from your table is in high magic game where players can 20ft +3 armor, +3 shield and presumably +3 weapons monks are too brittle.
Not sure if I got you wrong there, but if you said as a Monk you are able to use a shield then you should know: Monks don't get proficiency with shields so they wouldn't get any benefit from using one. Also the Monks Unarmored Defense and Unarmored Movement both won't work with a shield so you would terribly hurt your AC here.
It is one of the odder things in SAC, and I must admit it isn't quite as clear as I rememebered when applied to monks but it says
Can you gain the magical bonus of a +2 shield if you are holding the shield without taking an action to don it?
Yes, but only the magical +2, which says you gain it when holding the shield. You gain the shield’s base AC bonus only if you use your action to don the shield as normal
So if you are holding a +3 shield but not donning it you get a +3 bonus to AC which increases to +5 if you don it. (the standard +2 from a shield +3 from the magical property).
Many monk abilities such as unarmored defence only apply if you ar enot "wielding" a shield. As wield is defind as "to use (a weapon, instrument, etc.) effectively; handle or employ actively." I would interpret thant to mean having the shield donned rather than just holding it but others may differ.
There is also lack of clarity regarding proficiency "Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm. Only those proficient in the armor's use know how to wear it effectively, however. Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells." The first sentence implies the rest also applies to shields but refers to wearing armor, that would imply to me that if a character that is not proficent in medium armor uis holding a breast plate in their hand they do not suffer the penalties (but do not get the AC bonus), similarly if you ar eholding a shield but not wearing/wielding it you do not suffer the penalties.
I don't agree with the rule but as it is in the SAC it is part of the official ruleset.
Yup, language about wielding vs holding vs donning shields very often is awkward, since they missed their chance to use natural language in the equipment section it knocks on everywhere else down the line. I do think it’s funny that they doubled down on that ruling for the shield in SAC instead of admitting/errata-ing if that they meant “wield”, because it leads to using its reasoning to find that a Staff of Power provides +4 to attack rolls that use it as a spell focus or material component, and that you can hold/wear multiple such types of magic items for stacking spell attack/save bonuses.
Yup, language about wielding vs holding vs donning shields very often is awkward, since they missed their chance to use natural language in the equipment section it knocks on everywhere else down the line.
They didn't miss the chance to use natural language, they just used two different and incompatible sets of natural language.
One sections says you "wield" them, the next says you "don" them, and then they're mentioned in a paragraph nearby where it talks about "wear"ing armor (but not wielding/donning shields). So, yeah, any one of those terms probably would have worked if used consistently, but then we get to magic items, which prefer "hold" or "carry" when not talking about something that's a weapon.... definitely could have used some editing!
One sections says you "wield" them, the next says you "don" them, and then they're mentioned in a paragraph nearby where it talks about "wear"ing armor (but not wielding/donning shields). So, yeah, any one of those terms probably would have worked if used consistently, but then we get to magic items, which prefer "hold" or "carry" when not talking about something that's a weapon.... definitely could have used some editing!
'Don' is basically a synonym for 'wear' (it's apparently a contraction of 'do on'), and it equally isn't super confusing to use 'hold' and 'wield' to be equivalent, though technically wielding is a particular type of holding, but they do need to decide whether shields are a thing you wear or a thing you wield (also relevant to questions such as whether a shield can be disarmed).
but they do need to decide whether shields are a thing you wear or a thing you wield (also relevant to questions such as whether a shield can be disarmed).
I'd say that you both wear and wield a shield at the same time (by D&D logic). You both hold a grip, which requires a hand, and strap it to your arm, which requires a full action to don or doff. This also dovetails nicely with the language around proficiencies --- because a shield is essentially a special type of armor.
(Obviously this wouldn't include bucklers, but 5e doesn't have bucklers, and D&D has always gotten bucklers wrong, anyway.)
I'll point out, that the Tortle's Natural Armor entry and other similar features are even more explicit than the PHB equipment section that using/wielding/donning shields are not "wearing" them, because all such features (1) don't use "wear" to refer to shields, and (2) go out of their way to discuss using shields separately from worn armor, even when the restriction on using a shield is the same penalty as wearing armor provides (monk).
Natural Armor
Due to your shell and the shape of your body, you are ill-suited to wearing armor. Your shell provides ample protection, however; it gives you a base AC of 17 (your Dexterity modifier doesn’t affect this number). You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield’s bonus as normal.
Unarmored Defense
While you are not wearing any armor, your Armor Class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Constitution modifier. You can use a shield and still gain this benefit.
You gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or wielding only monk weapons and you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a shield:
Natural Armor
You have tough, scaly skin. When you aren’t wearing armor, your AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield’s benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.
Natural Armor
You have thick, leathery skin. When you aren’t wearing armor, your AC is 12 + your Constitution modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield’s benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.
Mage Armor goes even further, to demonstrate that Shields aren't armor at all, just Shields. (unless we want to start ending that spell every time someone uses a shield?)
You touch a willing creature who isn't wearing armor, and a protective magical force surrounds it until the spell ends. The target's base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier. The spell ends if the target dons armor or if you dismiss the spell as an action.
Warforged's wording does contradict that though... which is a real tension, and should be errata'd.
You can don only armor with which you have proficiency. To don armor other than a shield, you must incorporate it into your body over the course of 1 hour, during which you remain in contact with the armor. To doff armor, you must spend 1 hour removing it. You can rest while donning or doffing armor in this way.
I'll point out, that the Tortle's Natural Armor entry and other similar features are even more explicit than the PHB equipment section that using/wielding/donning shields are not "wearing" them.
I'd disagree. All of your examples except Warforged require using a shield to be not 'wearing armor' -- but that can mean either 'not wearing' or 'not armor', you can still be wearing a shield as long as it isn't armor. Warforged is inconsistent with everything else.
I'll point out, that the Tortle's Natural Armor entry and other similar features are even more explicit than the PHB equipment section that using/wielding/donning shields are not "wearing" them.
I'd disagree. All of your examples except Warforged require using a shield to be not 'wearing armor' -- but that can mean either 'not wearing' or 'not armor', you can still be wearing a shield as long as it isn't armor. Warforged is inconsistent with everything else.
Not one of those features uses "wearing a shield." Every single one other than Warforged uses "wearing armor," and also Warforged is the only one that calls a Shield armor at all. You think that's an accident, and not an indication that E:RFTLW had a little bit of a different team working on it and could afford an errata?
Multiclassing INTO a new class does not grant new armor proficiencies.
A Sorcerer multiclassing INTO Paladin does not gain Heavy Armor Proficiency and requires 13 strength. - This sorcerer is proficient in Con Saving Throws which is nice to maintain Concentration on spells.
A Paladin multiclassing INTO Sorcerer gained Heavy Armor Proficiency (through subclass) by gaining it through class and requires 13 charisma. - This paladin is proficient in Wis Saving Throws which is nice in general. - This paladin keeps Heavy Armor Proficiency when they multi-class if gained through sub class.
You do not lose proficiencies when you multi-class. If a paladin multiclasses into sorcerer, they retain Heavy Armor Proficiency.
Intellect Devour will kill you pretty quick with a low INT....but thats about it with INT saves to be honest and I won't argue its up there for easiest to dump. Thats not "never" though just rare.
CHA you can die instantly from Soul Jar and someone simply walks 101ft away from your body and smashes the jar. Ghost can just possess you and run away since it lasts until your go to 0 hp. You can be banished from the plane you are in...which in certain adventures is basically game over for that character.
There are several CHA based effects from undead that will just outright take you out of the game for a while if you do not have it so I would say its fairly important.
Not saying I haven't dumped it and been fine but when it hits it hits hard.
Heres how your no STR wizard would handle your situations:
none of these are really that big of an issue for a wizard or if you even have help at all in the party....like if you have to try to do all this yourself maybe but having 0 help from anyone? yeah you might die if you didn't plan for it...or if you are really low level but the game is already deadly at low levels so its moot.
Also simply taking ATH prof. will solve this as you will still have a positive modifier which if you pair it with things like Enchance Ability makes it really really good odds you won't have to deal with them.
Dumping the others is less workroundable IMO...
Edited for clarity. The discussion is about the retaliative merits of medium and heavy armor and nothing else ought to have been mentioned by me.
Assuming no other factors, you start out with Magical armor at +3, and scores of 20, this is at Tier 4. I invite you to draw your own conclusions
Take a +3 Rapier. 1D8, +5 from Dex, +6 from proficiency. +14 to hit.
Half Plate armor with shield = 10 or better to hit
Plate armor with shield = 12 or better to hit
Half Plate +3 = 17 AC
Shield +3 = 5
Dexterity +2
Armor Class = 24
Plate + 3 = 21 AC
Shield +3 = 5
Armor Class = 26
<Insert clever signature here>
That's a confusing way to lay that out... but I'll point you towards the fact that light armor
beats medium armor in your example(edit: see below). Every character with medium armor has light armor, and light armor also does not impose disadvantage on stealth (or if compared against medium armor that doesn't impose such disadvantage, beats iteven further). So why would a character with medium armor proficiency, and a +5 dexterity score, be wearing medium armor?Again, this is an awkward thing to talk about, because the value or lack of value of medium is not just what score it hits, it's also which class is wearing it, and where they feel pressured to put their ability score, which involves whether they're using point buy, etc.... it's complicated. In my experience, which is a fuzzy thing to try to prove with data, there is a very narrow band of characters that end up wearing medium armor, vs. those that seek one of the other two extremes.
Edit: Actually, I think you just missed some math in your example, Half Plate +3 SHOULD be AC 18, with Medium matching Light instead of lagging one behind. Still, same points largely stand.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
According to SAC you should a monk can hold but wield a +3 Shield to get his AC to 23. I am not sure if that counts as using a shield so I will assume you can not use that and bracers of defence. Without that cheese I think the main conclusion from your table is in high magic game where players can 20ft +3 armor, +3 shield and presumably +3 weapons monks are too brittle.
Dex is the third stat for a barb so unless he rolled well for stats he is unlikely to have 20 Dec and con.
You play in higher magic games then me, in my tier 4 games, I have a level 17 cleric with only +1 armor and shield a level 20 monk where the only pc with armor and a shield has +3 armor but only +1 shield, having said that the armor can be used on a like for like.
If Str is your primary stat (you attack with str) and you have access to heavy armor you can get an A.C. one more than a if Dex is your primary stat and you are proficient I light armor. If neither is your primary stat, then you can either get your strength up to 15 and wear heavy, get you generally more useful dex up to 14 for an A.C. 2 worse than if you wore plate.
Not sure if I got you wrong there, but if you said as a Monk you are able to use a shield then you should know: Monks don't get proficiency with shields so they wouldn't get any benefit from using one. Also the Monks Unarmored Defense and Unarmored Movement both won't work with a shield so you would terribly hurt your AC here.
Kind of a sidenote here, but related to armor —
Has anyone figured out other ways to take advantage of the Dwarves’ ability to ignore the strength requirement for heavy armor?
You still need proficiency, otherwise you’re screwed. All I can think of is a Dex-based Fighter or Paladin. Something like a Dwarf Archer Battle Master wearing Plate armor would be a cool concept.
10 Strength, 16-20 Dexterity. Full Plate Armor. Best of both worlds, just sacrificing stealth.
It's also handy for cleric subclasses that get heavy armor, since they generally don't want to invest in strength 15.
Oh that's a really good point. You can pump Wisdom, distribute the rest of your points as you see fit, and still wear plate and a shield.
Yup my very first 5e character was a Hill Dwarf Life Cleric, 9 STR was all that you needed to carry your gear and wear plate with shield. Heck I could've gone down to 8 STR if I wanted, it just meant the Barbarian in the party had to carry my backpack lol. But we were using point buy and I had a random point left over so went with a solid 9 STR.
According to SAC you should a monk can hold but wield a +3 Shield to get his AC to 23. I am not sure if that counts as using a shield so I will assume you can not use that and bracers of defence. Without that cheese I think the main conclusion from your table is in high magic game where players can 20ft +3 armor, +3 shield and presumably +3 weapons monks are too brittle.
Not sure if I got you wrong there, but if you said as a Monk you are able to use a shield then you should know: Monks don't get proficiency with shields so they wouldn't get any benefit from using one. Also the Monks Unarmored Defense and Unarmored Movement both won't work with a shield so you would terribly hurt your AC here.
It is one of the odder things in SAC, and I must admit it isn't quite as clear as I rememebered when applied to monks but it says
So if you are holding a +3 shield but not donning it you get a +3 bonus to AC which increases to +5 if you don it. (the standard +2 from a shield +3 from the magical property).
Many monk abilities such as unarmored defence only apply if you ar enot "wielding" a shield. As wield is defind as "to use (a weapon, instrument, etc.) effectively; handle or employ actively." I would interpret thant to mean having the shield donned rather than just holding it but others may differ.
There is also lack of clarity regarding proficiency "Anyone can put on a suit of armor or strap a shield to an arm. Only those proficient in the armor's use know how to wear it effectively, however. Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells." The first sentence implies the rest also applies to shields but refers to wearing armor, that would imply to me that if a character that is not proficent in medium armor uis holding a breast plate in their hand they do not suffer the penalties (but do not get the AC bonus), similarly if you ar eholding a shield but not wearing/wielding it you do not suffer the penalties.
I don't agree with the rule but as it is in the SAC it is part of the official ruleset.
Yup, language about wielding vs holding vs donning shields very often is awkward, since they missed their chance to use natural language in the equipment section it knocks on everywhere else down the line. I do think it’s funny that they doubled down on that ruling for the shield in SAC instead of admitting/errata-ing if that they meant “wield”, because it leads to using its reasoning to find that a Staff of Power provides +4 to attack rolls that use it as a spell focus or material component, and that you can hold/wear multiple such types of magic items for stacking spell attack/save bonuses.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
They didn't miss the chance to use natural language, they just used two different and incompatible sets of natural language.
One sections says you "wield" them, the next says you "don" them, and then they're mentioned in a paragraph nearby where it talks about "wear"ing armor (but not wielding/donning shields). So, yeah, any one of those terms probably would have worked if used consistently, but then we get to magic items, which prefer "hold" or "carry" when not talking about something that's a weapon.... definitely could have used some editing!
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
'Don' is basically a synonym for 'wear' (it's apparently a contraction of 'do on'), and it equally isn't super confusing to use 'hold' and 'wield' to be equivalent, though technically wielding is a particular type of holding, but they do need to decide whether shields are a thing you wear or a thing you wield (also relevant to questions such as whether a shield can be disarmed).
I'd say that you both wear and wield a shield at the same time (by D&D logic). You both hold a grip, which requires a hand, and strap it to your arm, which requires a full action to don or doff. This also dovetails nicely with the language around proficiencies --- because a shield is essentially a special type of armor.
(Obviously this wouldn't include bucklers, but 5e doesn't have bucklers, and D&D has always gotten bucklers wrong, anyway.)
I'll point out, that the Tortle's Natural Armor entry and other similar features are even more explicit than the PHB equipment section that using/wielding/donning shields are not "wearing" them, because all such features (1) don't use "wear" to refer to shields, and (2) go out of their way to discuss using shields separately from worn armor, even when the restriction on using a shield is the same penalty as wearing armor provides (monk).
Mage Armor goes even further, to demonstrate that Shields aren't armor at all, just Shields. (unless we want to start ending that spell every time someone uses a shield?)
Warforged's wording does contradict that though... which is a real tension, and should be errata'd.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I'd disagree. All of your examples except Warforged require using a shield to be not 'wearing armor' -- but that can mean either 'not wearing' or 'not armor', you can still be wearing a shield as long as it isn't armor. Warforged is inconsistent with everything else.
It would be kind of handy if you just used the simple rule that unless the class has a feature that says they can use a shield, they can't.
<Insert clever signature here>
Not one of those features uses "wearing a shield." Every single one other than Warforged uses "wearing armor," and also Warforged is the only one that calls a Shield armor at all. You think that's an accident, and not an indication that E:RFTLW had a little bit of a different team working on it and could afford an errata?
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Multiclassing INTO a new class does not grant new armor proficiencies.
- This sorcerer is proficient in Con Saving Throws which is nice to maintain Concentration on spells.
- This paladin is proficient in Wis Saving Throws which is nice in general.
- This paladin keeps Heavy Armor Proficiency when they multi-class if gained through sub class.
You do not lose proficiencies when you multi-class. If a paladin multiclasses into sorcerer, they retain Heavy Armor Proficiency.