Land Druid and it's AC problems

[Dr. Cliché]

if they wrote that, what would happen is every druid that actually gets played will wear metal armor. It would be meaningless.

Yep, if they changed it to a fluff "most Druids don't wear metal armour" every single Druid character would end up being the super special exception to the rule.

Yep. And then the DM can respond by pointing the player to the fluff that says why druids refuse to wear metal.

Oh, wait, there isn't any.

If you want most players to choose fluff over optimisation, then it would help if the fluff actually existed in the first place.

If they really want most/all druids to abstain from wearing metal armour, then perhaps they should add a reason. Because what we have at the moment is action without purpose.

The struggle that creates, to me, is that *every* PC would be 'the exception' because of gamist concerns (I mean, do you ever see a fighter in Chain Mail for 'rp reasons'?). I would have liked some minor, but annoying, mechanical effects myself (takes an extra use of wildshape? Difficulty with concentration checks?). I could envision a subclass, or even background (heretic: background benefit: can ignore strictures of religions etc) that removes the restriction but still keeps it 'rare' in some way

As I said before, I'd have much preferred an actual mechanical consequence to wearing metal armour (whether impeding wild shape in some way or hindering spellcasting or somesuch). This would both provide a solid reason for most druids to not wear armour, whilst still keeping the actual choice in the hands of the player.

Well... the more relevant point for me is: 'campaign settings were built with the assumptions and aesthetics of previous editions, so to keep consistency in those settings I maintain it' much more than 'old edition fluff applies universally to new editions'

But that ceases to work when the actual mechanics of the class change drastically. In 3.5, a druid who wore metal armour lost all his powers for the duration and for an additional 24hrs thereafter. In 5e, a druid who wears metal armour suffers no penalties whatsoever . . . yet every druid, no matter their background, will always refuse to wear metal armour under every conceivable circumstance. So, at best, we have a situation where the mechanics have split off from the fluff they're supposed to be representing.

At the very least, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the current edition to supply some fluff to explain why druids will not wear metal, in spite of their being no drawback to them doing so.

And that's before we even get into how much metal a druid can willingly use or even wear, so long as it doesn't improve his AC.

Something else to consider is that, unlike in 3.5, we have druids that can be tied to the underdark. Would they really see metal as unnatural? It seems rather odd that they would eschew wearing metals harvested from their own land, and would instead prefer using the skin of a creature that only exists outside of their domain.