Can Humans Wear Armor Made for Dwarves?

[An Enemy Spy]

My players are a human and a halfling and the dungeon I just made is an abandoned dwarven holdfast and in one room is a suit of half plate armor. Obviously the halfling can't wear it since she's Small size but can the human? Dwarfs have a pretty different body type to humans and I feel like it would be too small to fit him.

[Thurbane]

You know, for a fraction of a second, I misread that as "Can Humans Wear Armor Made from Dwarves?" :smalltongue:

(If that was the actual question, I'd recommend Fleshshifter Armor, BoVD p.111).

...AFAIK, yes, no issues here. But there are some rules specific to full plate armor, where it may need to be re-sized before it can be worn (some other non-core armors may also have this stipulation)


Each suit of full plate must be individually fitted to its owner by a master armorsmith, although a captured suit can be resized to fit a new owner at a cost of 200 to 800 (2d4×100) gold pieces.

I've often seen house-rules for re-sizing armor, especially when the body shapes of the original owners may be quite different (like a thin female elf and a rotund male dwarf, for instance), but RAW generally does not require it.

[Torpin]

common sense, no, RAW yes.
never forget this is a world where saying a few weird words and waving your arms might let you talk to an actual god

ultimately you are the DM and have final say, i pretty much always allow it

[Thurbane]

In regards to the above rule about re-sizing full plate, if original owner was same general race/gender/build as the new owner, out table has always house-ruled a flat 20% chance that re-sizing would not be required.

Also, I made a magic item back in my 2E days to deal with this issue (please forgive the appalling outdated and terrible page design): http://www.angelfire.com/games/thurbanesdomain/items/rods.htm

[tiercel]

Pretty much explicitly, if the armor is magical it will fit anyone (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicItemBasics.htm#sizeAndMagicItems) of the same size dategory (Medium) and general shape (humanoid) unless specifically constructed not to.

If it’s nonmagical, I would expect it to need some manual resizing for all but the shortest-and-stoutest humans; if it’s magical, it probably should fit any Medium humanoid unless its a dwarvencraft Mountain Armor of Dwarven Might of Dwarvenness, specifically designed to only ever fit dwarves (and even attempts to crush to death any goblinoid or orc sho is silly enough to try to wear it).

That said, if someone is going to go to the expense of making armor magical, I’d assume that person would start with full plate, not half plate (unless full plate just isn’t in your game, even for dwarves).

[DrMotives]

1st ed & 2e had charts and numbers for this, by 3e they decided to back off from this level of detail and let the table resolve it. I'd suggest like the others, a chance at no action required, or a moderate fee / crafting check to resize the suit.

[Telonius]

Personally I just handwave it; my players generally aren't interested in that level of detail, and neither am I. But if I were going to enforce something like that, I'd probably allow the character to wear it unmodified at 2 less than whatever AC it usually grants (minimum AC 0). Even ill-fitting armor is (usually) better than no armor.

[Keltest]

For the most part, they should be able to. When you get into the full plate and half plates and what not, they would probably need more refitting than from dwarf to dwarf, and your legs and arms would probably not get the same level of protection, but theres no reason a human couldn't comfortably wear, say, a dwarven boot that wouldn't also apply to the boot of a different human.

[gkathellar]

Yes, but only if it's magical and they pass a UMD check.

[denthor]

In the dim distance past magic clothing, rings and armor as part of the magic fit from Giant to halfling.

Non magic armor was specific said things like dwarves leather armor. A set of halfling sized boots high soft(those that wanted to sneak)

In the feel good easy world that is now less complicated they got away from that. More true to life but also more bookkeeping.

[HouseRules]

A player character should not be using the mundane items by the time they reach ECL 5 or higher, unless the GM is intentionally making the game low on magic items.

Thus, only mundane and masterwork items are limited to the SubType (not Race exactly), Size, Gender issue.

Most games would house rule away the book keeping elements of the game as much as they could.