Where, in the Baldur's Gate rulebook, does it say that fighter druids are restricted from wearing metal because of religion? This is not P&P; there are no DMs to define what 'religion' means to a martial group. Please keep religion out of this; druidic beliefs are free of dogma; they have no fixed beliefs or practices; they have no sacred text; druidism is a spiritual path (more a way of life) than a religion, and no point in that path forbids them from wearing metal. Period.

I'm saying that from a meta point of view, the restriction which the game imposes with regards to Druids (which *is* on page 85 of the manual and implemented in the game) is in place due to a particular reason, much like clerics with their weaponary restrictions, that is inconsistent with bypassage by way of multiclassing.

My two cents...

BG1 Jaheira: The level cap is too low for her to become really useful, and she also has one huge disadvantage: Yeslick, who is a better fighter/divine caster than her in every respect. Plus apart from Call Lightning, I really hate the vanilla BG1 druid spell selection.

B2 Jaheira: Can become a decent tank once she gets Ironskins, which is not much of use for a pure class druid, but prefect for a fighter/druid. Insect Plague is also a great debilitating spell, especially against spellcasters, and her fire elemental is very effective against a great number of enemies. However, given the number uf undead in the game, Anomen is still the better option for a fighter/divine caster hybrid, but Jaheira can also wear that amulet which gives immunity to level drain, which even things out a bit for her.

Personality wise I like her, but I realise that a good many people cannot stand her bossy attitude.

As for the metal armor debate...From a "religious" viewpoint, it never really made sense to me that druids are restricted to wearing leather armor, which is basically made from the skins of slaughtered and flayed animals (or maybe they only use the skins of animals which died of natural causes?) as opposed to metal armor, which is made from iron, a resource just as natural as animal skin. Sure you have to mine for it, which druids might look at as something that damages the earth, still, I do not see how it is any better than wearing the skins of dead animals, which they are supposed to protect and venerate. Not to mention that to to make a staff, you will need to acquire wood somehow...But anyway, better not to go there, a lot of things in FR lore do not make too much sense.

This sprang to mind almost at once. Taking what one needs from the forest without damaging it needlessly is likely how Druids are able to justify, say, eating, be it meat or plant, or else they would have died out long ago. I don't agree with their opposition to industrialization on those grounds, however; it seems like their efforts would be better spent trying to aid in ensuring that mining operations are done with minimal harm in order to make use of the resulting resources, but then again they're apparently supposed to be stand-ins for hardcore environmentalists, for better or for worse.

Then again, the Forgotten Realms is the kind of setting that is home to a race of black people who do nothing but cause trouble for the rest of the predominately white Realms; trying to make sense of it all after that, let alone when pondering the more generalized issues of theology of Clerics and Druids, can be a bit of a headache.

It's not inconsistent at all. You choose to see it that way, but it isn't. The restriction on page 85 is specifically for druids. Again, Jaheira is not a druid, she's a fighter druid. She possesses fighter skills and traits, as well as druid skills and traits. A fighter may use metal armour. Jaheira is a fighter. Jaheira is a druid. I see no inconsistency.

Can you explain why a fighter-cleric multiclass can't use edged weapons, then? The situation seems to be pretty similar to me, and the rules are different for the two options...

If you *only* look at it from the point of view of the rules as written in the BG manual and dont try to think about why the restrictions for druids exist, then yes, it is technically consistent. I'm saying that the rules in the manual are inconsistent with the reason for introducing the restriction (see my hypo on kashrut).

It gets even worse when you realize that this is something set out in the PHB for 2E, which the target audience for this game back in the day would have likely been very familiar with. To quote directly the sections on Preists and Druids respectively,

"All priests have a limited selection of weapons and armor, but the restrictions vary according to the mythos. "

"The druid is an example of a priest designed for a specific mythos." "Unlike the cleric, the druid is allowed to use only “natural” armors -- padded, hide, or leather armor and wooden shields, including those with magical enhancements. All other armors are forbidden to him."

Ergo, the Druid is forbidden from wearing metal armor; it's not that they don't know how to use it, but their specific ethos prohibits it, meaning that it should always apply from a character perspective no matter how many levels of other classes that can use metal armor they have (again, see my kashrut hypo).

But that's just me. If you have a sensible explanation as to why the designers made Druids unable to use metal armor that doesn't involve some connection to their faith, I'd love to hear it.
This. This is what I have been trying to get across with my kashrut hypo.

Designers are not sensible. That good enough for you? I doubt it.

THERE is the inconsistency. It is because of some inconceivable 'rule' devised by D&D writers concerning 'god-given' powers forbidding edged weapons to clerics purely for the purpose of supposed balance. It's insane. Death by a club/mace is just as bloody, probably more so, than death by decapitation.

Only if one accepts the premise that designers are careless and design their world and rules without any thought, which I do not, barring evidence to the contrary.

It might be a questionable ethos, but it is there, and it serves as the basis for the restriction, just like every other gear restriction based on Priests.

Oh, before I forget, given that the rule was in fact conceived of and implemented, it's hardly inconceivable.

Your arrogance is showing once again. Inconceivable does not mean 'to be conceived and implemented', and your insinuation that I don't understand my own language is frankly extremely insulting. Maybe I can return the favour and educate you:

Inconceivable: not capable of being imagined or grasped mentally; unbelievable.
It seems inconceivable that the designers came up with such a foolish rule.

Fair enough. However, foolish as the rule might be, it is a restriction on the class that has a basis that indicates that it should remain in effect upon multiclassing. The fact that BG failed to do so is somewhat baffling, seeing as how its big draw was how it emulated a game of AD&D 2E.

This is why all of 2E's hard and fast "thou shalt not" rules *really* tick me off ... even to the point that fans get into arguments about how much sense they make.

I think it is safe to agree that these rules don't make much sense at all, and if somebody were to try too hard to make sense of them it might hurt.

She's annoying, but I usually keep her in my party. I feel guilty not keeping her (though I found it creepy the first time she tried to romance me). On my last play through, she got killed in my first fight after the dungeon and I just decided to leave it at that.

Druids in D&D are based on the Celtic druids. It's been a while since I read anything about them, but, from what I recall, iron interferes with magic according to Celtic believe. So, wearing an iron armour would be akin to being surrounded by an anti-magic field: you wouldn't be able to cast any spells. That the designers decided to restrict the Druids in D&D from wearing all metal armours, however, doesn't make sense to me.

As for Jaheira, she's a useful combatant. However, I can't stand her condescending, abrasive, holier-than-though attitude. I'd rather have Khalid around than her. Or Xan. Those two I could at least relate to.