A monk can benefit from bracers of defense (DMG, 156). https://t.co/696krkrJXj
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) July 8, 2015
How about Druids. Are they restricted from those because they might be made of metal?
— tenthmatrix01 (@tenthmatrix01) December 2, 2017
A magic item has a category, such as armor, weapon, or wondrous item. A druid’s taboo against metal armor would extend to magic items in the armor category only. #DnD https://t.co/tFxP64KaAe
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) December 3, 2017
…
Are you SERIOUS? This has to be some sick joke, right?
He could have said something sensible like: “Magical items aren’t always made out of the same materials – feel free to give your Druid a pair of magical bracers made out of non-metal materials like leather, as appropriate.”
But instead he said something inexplicably stupid, in effect: “Druids have a taboo about touching metal objects, but only when those metal objects are arbitrarily categorized as “Armor” by the game rules.”
This is utter nonsense. Worse, it’s a purely meta-gaming excuse.
In the world of the game, there’s no such thing as “item categories”. In both reality and the world of the game, a pair of bracers IS a piece of armor. To claim that their categorization in the game’s rules as a “wondrous item” somehow negates this fact is complete madness.
If a Druid won’t wear a metal vambrace, they also won’t wear a metal bracer. There is no appreciable difference between those two situations.
The simple, logical solution is to just give the Druid bracers that are made of leather – which is actually what most bracers are made out of it in reality, when not made of other materials like bone or stone. In fact, bracers are rarely ever actually made out of metal anyway.
Why this easy, elegant solution was rejected by (or didn’t occur to) Mr. Crawford is beyond my powers to imagine.
In a similar vein, I’m beginning to wonder why Mr. Crawford himself is retained as the chief authority on rules for D&D when he so frequently and confusingly demonstrates an utter ineptitude for creating and parsing them as logical and consistent game systems. Surely there are far, far better people for the job.
A little harshly/strenuously phrased… but I have to admit I understand the sentiment, for sure… lol 😉 (Sidenote: JC was likely using this opportunity to make a rules/context clarification — how items are categorized, etc. — but by doing so failed to note, as you did, the more helpful/sensible response. There’s a strong level of irony in that because in a number of other instances when/where his making a similar type of delineation/clarification *would* be highly helpful, he doesn’t. But he’s right/more-on-point much more often than not, and certainly more so than Mearles, et al, soooo… >shrugs< )