| Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook page 104:
"Anything heavier than leather hurts your ability to use some of your skills. Some characters don't much care, others do. The barbarian, in particular, faces a trade-off between heavier armor and better skill checks.
Skills: The armor check penalty numbver is the armor check penalty you apply to certain skill checks. If you're wearing any armor heavier than leather, you can't climb, sneak, or tumble aswell as you would if you weren't waering such heavy armor. This penalty applies to Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Pick Pockets, and Tumble ckecks. Swim checks face a similar penalty based on the weight of the gear you are carrying and wearing.
Shields: If you are wearing armor and using a shield, both armor check penaltes apply.
Non Proficient With Armor Worn:If you wear armor with which you are not proficient, you suffer the armor's armor check penalty on attack rolls and on all skill rolls that involve moving, include Riding.
Sleeping in Armor: If you sleep in a suit of armor with an armor check penalty of -5 or worse, you are automatically fatigued the next day. Youy suffer a -2 penlaty on Strength and Dexterity and you can't charge or run.
Arcane Spell failure: Armor interferes with the gestures that you need to maken to cast an arcane spell. Arcane spellcasters face the possibiloty of arcane spell failure if they're wearing armor, so wizards and sorcerers usually don't wear armor. Bards have a hard choice because they're more likely to get into combat than wizards and they cast fewer spells, so getting more armor makes more sense for them than it does for a wizard.
Casting an arcane spell in armor: When you cast an arcane spell while wearing armor, you often must make an arcane spell failure roll.
Speed: Medium and heavy armor slows you down. It's better to be slow and alive than to be quick and dead, but don't neglect to give speed some thought."
If you want to know the exact numbers of penalties per type of armor, please let me know and I will post them here....
RD
__________________
Broken promises
"They made us many promises,
more than I can remember.
But they kept but one -
They promised to take our land...
and they took it"
Chief Red Cloud | 
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