spell failure while wearing armor

[xsweetpeaxs]

Hi everyone,

A few questions.

What exactly about wearing armor causes a wizard to (partially) fail at casting magic? Is it because of the metal restricting arm movements? Is it because the metal surrounding the body prevents the flow of magic?

Thank you in advance. I am trying to get a better understanding so I can develop my CDT for my wizard.

-Kylie

[Acacea]

The former, and then only with spells that have a somatic component. It's cumbersome. If you think about it, druids with their divine casting are not actually hampered in any way by the heaviness of their armor, just the material interference. Arcane casters are the exact opposite. They can wear metal, they just cast less effectively the more they are burdened. Arcane casters require special training (still spell) to cast in it, because of the movement required.

Edit - to clarify, the training is to learn to prepare spells without a somatic component, not to train in making the gestures in armor.

[darkstorme]

To further clarify, the feat that spellswords get is because they train like crazy to be able to cast while wearing armour.  The gestures in a spell's somatic component have to be precise, and that's hard to do when wearing hardened leather or metal strapped to your body.

With divine casters of any stripe, their spells come from a different source, so precision isn't as vital.  Ergo, armour doesn't cause them any trouble.