Do bards get medium armor proficiency?

[Seak]

Question that's been bugging me for a bit. The bard's entry in the PHB only states giving them light armor, but the text for the medium armor proficiency feat says bards get it. From a strict RAW reading of the rules, how do you determine which to give precedence? Or do they even contradict each other? After all, the bard entry doesn't explicitly state that they don't have medium armor proficiency, just that they suffer ASF. Thanks for any answers.

[Thurbane]

Good pickup, never noticed that before.


Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A bard is proficient with all simple weapons, plus the longsword, rapier, sap, short sword, shortbow, and whip. Bards are proficient with light armor and shields (except tower shields).


Special: Fighters, barbarians, paladins, clerics, druids, and bards automatically have Armor Proficiency (medium) as a bonus feat. They need not select it.

I don't think it would break anything to let them have medium armor proficiency.

However, in my game, I'd probably rule the class writeup to be the primary source.

Not sure if this was addressed in any errata?

Just checked the errata: nope, not mentioned. Looking at this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?118416-Medium-armoured-bard) old thread, seems like it might have been a copy/paste issue from 3.0

[Biggus]

I don't think there's a strictly RAW answer, but looking at similar classes like the Spellthief, Hexblade and Dread Necromancer who can cast arcane spells in light armor without ASF like the Bard, all of them only get light armor proficiency, so it's likely the feat description is in error.

Also, in 3.0 Bards got medium armor proficiency, so it's likely what happened is that they just forgot to change the feat's wording in 3.5.

[tiercel]

I’d never noticed this either! The SRD version of the feat does also mention bards; interestingly, the PHB (Premium Edition, p.89) has removed bards from the Armor Proficiency (Medium) feat listing.

I don’t know if or when there was an errata correcting this inclusion, which was used to update the Premium Edition, or if the PE *is* meant to be the errata.

[Thurbane]

I’d never noticed this either! The SRD version of the feat does also mention bards; interestingly, the PHB (Premium Edition, p.89) has removed bards from the Armor Proficiency (Medium) feat listing.

I don’t know if or when there was an errata correcting this inclusion, which was used to update the Premium Edition, or if the PE *is* meant to be the errata.

I had heard that there was "stealth" errata in the premium edition 3.5 books, so sounds like that is what has happened.