Does heavy armor have negative effect on Wizards?

[SparocheeDoom]

Does it? Usually in AD&D games, putting heavy armor on a mage makes no sense as it doesn't do the mage much good, but it also reduces some important stats for a mage. I don't recall the specifics, but I can't quite figure out if its the same way in Pillars of Eternity?

[Heijoushin]

No. Heavy armour just makes them slower. So their rate of fire will be slower. Unless you want some kind of speedy gunner wizard, it's not really a big deal.

 

Also, when it comes to effective spell use, I think timing and placement is more important than speed.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Heijoushin

[Luckmann]

Aside from the penalty of added Recovery Speed, no. But it's fairly major, considering that you don't really need any armour at all.

[Manart]

I think the most detrimental part of putting plate on your Wizard is that if you're trying to buff them during combat, it can double or triple the time it takes for them as compared to wearing clothing or robe. This ironically affects tanky Wizard the most since they relies on their buffs to survive.

[Climhazzard]

Pretty sure it won't triple it, but it will increase it.  

 

If you wear plate armor you'll have longer recovery times after casting spells or making attacks.  I tend to just wear medium or light armor on my casters, so that I can react to situations faster.  For example if I want to get a healing spell off right away it'll happen faster if I'm wearing less armor because the recovery from my previous action will be faster.  Same thing can apply to any casters, if I want to CC a group of enemies as soon as I can, I can do so faster if I'm wearing less armor.  

 

You really just have to play around with different weights of armor and decide for yourself if you think it's worth the slower recovery or not.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Climhazzard

[Climhazzard]

I also consider recovery a good reason to stick to average or better speed ranged weapons on my casters (even though the slow ones usually have better dps), I don't like recovering from firing slow or extremely slow weapons when I need to react with a specific spell right away.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Climhazzard