Ring Mail

[OracularPoet]

Obviously RAW gets disadvantage on stealth. Should it though? It’s just metal rings sewn onto leather armor.

Edit: typo

[hymer]

Obviously RAW gets disadvantage on stealth. Should it though? It’s just metal rings sewn onto leather armor.

Edit: typo
Let's start by acknowledgining that when it is all or nothing, disadvantage or not, there will always be edge cases that can be argued. That said:
It does not have to clink or clank to interfere with sneaking. Creaking could be bad enough, and the stiff leather could make low sounds when you twist and move. But ring mail could still make a little clinking or slinking noise when moved if the rings are in contact - which I assume they would be. I have to assume, because ring mail is largely fictitious.
Anyway, the armours that give disadvantage to Stealth all weigh 40lbs or more. It looks to me like the idea is just as much how much of an annoyance they will be for putting your feet just so. The more weight you have on you, the less delicate your foot and leg movements can be.

[Willie the Duck]

Out in the general Roleplaying Games section, they have a real-world armor thread out on its 18th page (despite rebooting every year or so) on just such subjects. Bottom line is there's no specific reason why armor (over any other encumbering gear) should provide a penalty to sneaking. It's more of a genre convention: the type of characters we think of as a sneaky type is supposed to be wearing light armor (light armor being somewhat ahistoric and ring mail in particular are both true statements somewhat beside the point). That said, given that the ruleset has multiple encumbrance rules, it's unsurprising that armor heft is leveraged as a shorthand.

[OverLordOcelot]

There's a lot of stuff in armor that doesn't make a lot of sense, like what exactly is 'studded leather' and why does everyone use it over leather armor? The reason it gives disadvantage is that they made the decision 'heavy armor gives disadvantage on stealth, light doesn't, medium armor is split with the higher AC medium armor giving disadvantage'. If you're really trying to be realistic, I would think that the current 'disadvantage on stealth' armors should be more like a cap on stealth or a range limit, so that it's fairly easy for a bunch of guys in chain mail to set an ambush, but not to slip through the shadows 5' behind the guard into the queen's bedchamber, but that's way more complicated that D&D rules warrant.

[hymer]

to slip through the shadows 5' behind the guard into the queen's bedchamber
There's a story right there, I'm sure. But it may be NSFW. :smallwink:

[OverLordOcelot]

There's a story right there, I'm sure. But it may be NSFW. :smallwink:

Obviously he's going there to steal jewelry, there could be nothing else going on! *looks innocent*

[Waterdeep Merch]

D&D armor makes very, very little "realistic" sense as it is. The game errs on the side of gameplay over verisimilitude, though even that's got some issues since only a handful of options are even remotely useful. It's probably the thing that annoys me most about D&D in general.

Ring armor is possibly fictitious but could have theoretically existed. It's complicated. The construction that's been detailed certainly wouldn't be any harder to sneak around in then a chain shirt, since it's just fabric with rings sewn into them. But I wouldn't bother fixing this one little detail without finally giving into mad temptation and designing an armor system for D&D that actually makes sense.

[OverLordOcelot]

Ring armor is possibly fictitious but could have theoretically existed. It's complicated. The construction that's been detailed certainly wouldn't be any harder to sneak around in then a chain shirt, since it's just fabric with rings sewn into them. But I wouldn't bother fixing this one little detail without finally giving into mad temptation and designing an armor system for D&D that actually makes sense.

You know, making ring mail not give disadvantage could be an interesting house rule. Normally no one uses ring mail, since if you start with heavy armor you get the strictly superior chain mail, and if you get it later on you can probably afford the 90g for splint. Making it the armor of choice for a low dex character who wants to sneak would give it some kind of role, even if it's mostly something to stick on thugs who lay in ambush for the party.

And I agree, the armor progression in D&D is weird, there's a lot of armors but there's pretty much always one really obvious choice, and the decision really comes down to 'can I afford the best armor' rather than weighing costs and benefits. And once you get to the top end studded/breastplate/half-plate/full-plate you just stick with it forever.

[deljzc]

Considering some of the minute details for other parts of 5e, I find the armor types and penalties/restrictions very odd and confusing. Especially after 1st level when the minor cost differences don't really matter anymore.

There is also very little discussion in the DMG about magical armor and how it could/should impact the armor "chart" in the PHB. I mean, a magical suit of Ringmail armor should certainly be better forged, softer and lighter to effect weight and eliminate the stealth disadvantage but nothing is even mentioned about that anywhere that I can find (even as a DM option in the magical items section of the DMG).