Basic Trope: Spellcasting characters can't or don't wear armor.
- Straight: Alice is a powerful sorceress but doesn't wear any armor.
- Exaggerated:
- Downplayed:
- Alice can wear at best leather armor.
- Alice can wear any armor, but they make her spells weaker in the process.
- Justified:
- Casting spells requires too much time spent studying to learn how to use armor effectively.
- Armor's weight interferes with spells' somatic components.
- Forged metal interferes with magic.
- Alice's defensive magics provide all the armor she needs.
- Alice specializes in casting lightning bolts and the like, and a suit of metal armor has too much chance of causing an electrical backfire.
- Ditto for fire or ice magic; metal conducts heat just as well as electricity and Alice doesn't want to burn or freeze herself.
- Alice is a young lady; armor is intended for big men. She can barely move wearing the stuff, never mind aiming fireballs and thunderbolts.
- Alice's magic is Cast from Stamina, and wearing a heavy suit of armor would tire her quickly.
- Alice knows a spell that increases her physical defense, but it loses effectiveness the more armor she's wearing.
- Spellcasters are never employed in battle, so Alice has no reason to wear armor.
- Alice is trained specifically to fight other spellcasters. Since magic in this setting completely negates armor defense, armor would be more of a liability and she doesn't bother with it.
- Alice is wearing special Anti-Magic armor that nullifies all magic used against her... as well as her own magic.
- Turns out that Alice has natural armor that's on par with regular armor types, due to having tough scales, or a shell, or other means.
- Alice has an item, perhaps a Magic Tattoo, that gives her an armor class equivalent to plate armor, without any of the drawbacks, like disadvantage on Stealth Checks. The reason as to why the more muscular fighters and such don't use them is this - the items cost a lot of money to get, and Alice needed the item's benefits more.
- The spellcasters have a set of vows that includes never wearing armor, and the Powers That Be who grant their spellcasting powers have a strictly followed policy of taking all spellcasting powers away—forever—from anyone who breaks this vow.
- Alice's Full-Contact Magic makes it so that armor may possibly encumber her and get in the way of her casting spells, so she opts for lighter clothing to let her move without obstruction.
- Magic generates a lot of heat upon casting. Wearing armor would be like wearing an oven. Magicians favour breezy robes/dresses to avoid heat-stroke. Higher-tier magician "armor" actually has a lot of convergent evolution with professional sports clothing (ie, small and tight and made out of breathable, absorbent fabrics) for this reason.
- Inverted:
- Alice wears so much armor she looks like a walking tank. She also summons explosions like one.
- Alice can only casts spells when she wears armor.
- Alice specializes in enchanting objects, so the more armor she wears, the stronger her powers are.
- The Rival of Bob, and The Brute to Emperor Evulz, Clay, is a walking monolith of muscles, but he refuses to wear armor because he prefers bouncing around from enemy to enemy without armor hindering him.
- Subverted: Alice usually walks around in a Robe and Wizard Hat, but puts on armor when combat is imminent.
- Double Subverted:
- ... armor that proves to be entirely decorative.
- But when she has to cast a spell, she has to remove her armor first.
- Emperor Evulz manages to be both an Evil Sorcerer and a Tin Tyrant in defiance of what was thought possible. It turns out he is exploiting a loophole like the power coming from his dark master doing the casting or the armor actually being his body due to being Animated Armor.
- Parodied: Bob is an intelligent mage, but when he wears armor, he suddenly becomes a Dumb Muscle.
- Zig Zagged: Certain types of magic are weakened by forged iron. Some are completely unaffected.
- Averted:
- Alice is a Magic Knight.
- One of the classes that magic users take teaches them how to wear any armor, and use magic while wearing armor. As for using weapons and magic, that's yet another class, but is also advised to be taken, just in case.
- Enforced:
- The costume designer thinks Alice looks better in robes than in armor.
- It's a matter of Competitive Balance meant to make mages Glass Cannons.
- Lampshaded:Bob: You'd think Alice would get the hint and wear a Bulletproof Vest after being shot at so many times.
- Invoked: An ancient sage cursed all magic users to be unable to cast spells when wearing armor so that any evil magocracies could be defeated by mundane means.
- Exploited: Mage Killer Bob can spend extra time honing his magic-nullifying arts because he knows his quarry won't have the armor most warriors have to be trained to deal with.
- A suit of armour is used as a Power Nullifier on Alice when she's captured.
- Defied:
- Alice enchants a suit of armor so it's practically weightless and doesn't interfere with her magical gestures.
- Alice enchants her Robe and Wizard Hat to be as strong as steel, or otherwise uses magic to enhance her defense.
- Alice puts on a suit of armor, straps herself into a hand-truck, splints her arm out, and has Bob wheel her around like a field gun.
- Alice applies her intelligence to more "lowly" fields and manages to come up with resin stiffened silk brigadine with hard ceramic plates substituting for metal plates, a very expensive armor that makes full plate look cheap but still a viable non-metal alternative.
- Iron interferes with magic, but bronze does not. Alice puts on some bronze armor so she can cast spells while protected.
- Since Alice can't wear armor, she decides to pick up a shield instead.
- Discussed: "Hey, Alice, how come you're not wearing any armor?"
- Conversed: "Let's see: the show's party consists of Bob the heavily armored Knight, Jean the heavily armored Cleric, Peter the Rogue who wears leather, and Alice the Wizard who wears a Robe and Wizard Hat."
- Implied: Sometimes, Alice wears armor, other times, she doesn't. She only casts spells during the latter.
- Deconstructed: Alice is badly wounded by an attack that armor would have protected her from.
- Reconstructed: A knight is badly wounded by an even stronger attack that he could dodge without said heavy armor. Subsequently, Alice learns how to dodge moves.
- Played For Laughs: Mages technically can wear and cast in armor but don't because they consider it too tacky.
- Played For Drama: Alice is badly needed on the battlefield, but she is terrified due to her lack of armor.
Back to Armor and Magic Don't Mix.
