Or you can design 'clothes' that look identical to your armor in a way that you can ICly take off the 'weight' that cuts down on your arcane casting and thus, do your finger-wiggling. All my casters do it, and it's not cheesed. Cheesed would be having full armor and then switching to something that looks completely different, or just switching out back and forth in between fights like every time.
Normal Clothes, that look the same as armor, or ARMOR that looks the same as normal clothing, so you can insta change back and forth for the benefit of casting spells, is the definition of Cheese. From one of Blues posts on the subject:
-No "Cheesing": "Cheesing" an ability is the act of playing your character as if they have an ability which the NWN engine would not otherwise allow them to have. There's even better versions of that in one of the dozens of Stop Cheesing threads.
That's why, a lot of places have Armor set ups, that require TIME, to take armor on and off, with significant stat reduction if you rush through the process.
The reasons for Arcane Failure, with Armor go far beyond movement hindrance (masses of Metal etc etc going way back to the dark roots of DnD), though it's specifically for spells with complicated somantic gestures. Bards get a touch shafted in NwN, because they SHOULD, be able to cast all Arcane spells they know, in Light Armor (they're supposed to get a Free proficiency in any one weapon they like as well.)
In a nutshell :
Wizards and sorcerers do not know how to wear armor effectively.
If desired, they can wear armor anyway (though they'll be clumsy in it), or they can gain training in the proper use of armor (with the various Armor Proficiency feats—light, medium, and heavy—and the Shield Proficiency feat), or they can multiclass to add a class that grants them armor proficiency. Even if a wizard or sorcerer is wearing armor with which he or she is proficient, however, it might still interfere with spellcasting.
Armor restricts the complicated gestures that a wizards or sorcerer must make while casting any spell that has a somatic component (most do). The armor and shield descriptions list the arcane spell failure chance for different armors and shields.
By contrast, bards not only know how to wear light armor effectively, but they can also ignore the arcane spell failure chance for such armor. A bard wearing armor heavier than light or using any type of shield incurs the normal arcane spell failure chance, even if he becomes proficient with that armor.
If a spell doesn't have a somatic component, an arcane spellcaster can cast it with no problem while wearing armor. Such spells can also be cast even if the caster’s hands are bound or if he or she is grappling (although Concentration checks still apply normally). Also, the metamagic feat Still Spell allows a spellcaster to prepare or cast a spell at one spell level higher than normal without the somatic component. This also provides a way to cast a spell while wearing armor without risking arcane spell failure.
That was the book version of how it works. Picking Locks doesn't compare, Underwater Demolition Teams and their civilian equivalents preform exceedingly complicated feats of manual dexterity in even more encumbering situations, but the "science" of magic requires you to be free of that sort of thing in order for it to work (the descriptive reasons for it were far better in previous editions of the game). Also, picking locks isn't that big of a deal, half the people in Construction can do it how do you think we get into half the houses we are supposed to work in, and case in point, many contractor supply house, sell Lock Picks just for that purpose. Picking a Lock is steady hands perseverance and talent. Not movement. Picking POCKETS on the other hand, you don't do wearing a full UDT rig.
I for one would be exceedingly happy, to see the Book versions of Armor, and Armor donning and it's penalties implemented. Don't think there is a way though to give the bards the no penalty cast in Light armor though. Think that's hard coded.
~Rex
