D&D 5e 2014 Gear Guide - Armor, Weapons, Mounts & Vehicles

Introduction

Chapter 5 of the Player's Handbook is the chapter most players skim once at level 1 and never open again. It holds four decisions that keep mattering: what armor you wear, what weapon you swing, what carries your gear across a map, and what it costs to keep all of it moving. This guide has the full tables for each, plus the framework for reading them - which armor category actually fits your build, what Finesse and Versatile change at the table, where the Strength requirements and Stealth penalties bite, and what a mount or a ship is really buying you.

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Armor

Armor falls into three categories, and the category determines how much of your Dexterity modifier applies to your Armor Class.

• Light armor adds your full Dexterity modifier.
• Medium armor adds your Dexterity modifier, capped at +2.
• Heavy armor adds no Dexterity modifier, but also applies no penalty for a negative one.

A Strength requirement in the table means exactly one thing mechanically: wear that armor without the listed Strength score, and your speed drops by 10 feet until you meet it. It doesn't block you from wearing the armor entirely, it just costs you movement.

Proficiency matters more than the AC number. Wear armor you're not proficient with and you take disadvantage on every Strength or Dexterity ability check, saving throw, and attack roll, and you lose the ability to cast spells, for the whole time you're wearing it. Check your class's armor proficiency list before buying anything outside it.

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Weapons

Weapons split into four groups: Simple Melee, Simple Ranged, Martial Melee, and Martial Ranged. Every class gets proficiency with Simple weapons at minimum; most martial classes add some or all Martial weapons on top.

Hot Take: Finesse is the single most build-defining weapon property in the game. It's the difference between a Dexterity-based Rogue or Fighter using a real weapon and being stuck attacking with a dagger's small damage die out of necessity. If your concept is a nimble striker, check the Finesse column before anything else.

Simple Melee Weapons

Simple Ranged Weapons

Martial Melee Weapons

Martial Ranged Weapons

Weapon property glossary: Finesse (use Str or Dex, whichever is higher), Light (usable for two-weapon fighting), Heavy (Small creatures have disadvantage), Reach (adds 5 feet to your melee range), Thrown (can be thrown for a ranged attack using its melee stats), Versatile (larger damage die when wielded two-handed), Ammunition (requires the listed ammo type and a free hand to reload), Loading (only one attack per action regardless of extra attacks), Two-handed (requires both hands to use).

The Hoopak (Dragonlance)

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen adds one martial weapon that doesn't fit cleanly into either table above, since it works both ways: the hoopak (1 gp, 2 lb.) deals 1d6 piercing as a melee weapon (finesse, two-handed, and it ignores its own ammunition property in melee), or 1d4 bludgeoning as a martial ranged weapon using sling bullets (ammunition 40/160). It's the signature weapon of the kender - see the Kender race guide for how it fits a build.

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Choosing Armor and Weapons by Build

High Dexterity, low Strength: stay in light armor (leather or studded leather) and lean on Finesse weapons (rapier, shortsword, scimitar) or ranged weapons. You get your full Dex bonus to AC and don't need a Strength score you don't have.

High Strength, willing to invest in heavy armor: chain mail or plate gives you the highest flat AC in the game once you meet the Strength requirement, freeing your Dexterity score for other priorities. Pair with a Heavy martial weapon (greatsword, greataxe, maul) for maximum damage output, since Heavy weapons have no Small-creature penalty on a Medium character.

Balanced Str/Dex, or a Stealth-focused build: medium armor (hide or chain shirt specifically, since they carry no Stealth disadvantage) plus a Versatile weapon gives you a strong AC-to-mobility tradeoff without locking you into one grip style.

Ranged builds: a longbow (martial, best range and damage) or shortbow (simple, no proficiency requirement) covers most concepts; a hand crossbow adds Light so it pairs with a dagger for two-weapon fighting, at the cost of the Loading property limiting you to one shot per action outside of Extra Attack.

For which armor and weapon proficiencies your specific class already has, see the D&D 5e 2014 Class Guides. For tool and adventuring gear coverage, return to the Equipment Guide hub.

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Mounts and Carrying Capacity

A mount's value is mostly about what it can carry, not raw speed. The Mounts and Other Animals table lists a speed and a base carrying capacity for each option.

Pulling a vehicle multiplies capacity. An animal pulling a carriage, cart, chariot, sled, or wagon can move weight up to five times its base carrying capacity, including the vehicle itself. Multiple animals pulling the same vehicle add their carrying capacities together before that multiplier applies.

Mounts beyond this list, flying mounts like pegasi and griffons, or aquatic mounts like giant seahorses, exist in the game world but aren't normally available for purchase. Acquiring one usually means securing an egg, striking a bargain with a powerful entity, or negotiating with the creature directly.

A Ranger who takes the Drakewarden subclass skips this market entirely: their drake companion becomes a rideable, eventually flying mount as a class feature at 7th and 15th level, requiring no gold and no exotic saddle.

Barding

Barding is armor built for a mount instead of a rider. Any armor type on the Armor table can be purchased as barding, but it costs four times the equivalent player armor and weighs twice as much. A Plate-barded warhorse is a serious investment in both gold and weight; reserve it for a mount your party actually plans to keep alive through repeated combats.

Saddles

• Military Saddle (20 gp) — grants advantage on any check you make to remain mounted. The standard choice for a combat-oriented mount.
• Exotic Saddle (60 gp) — required to ride an aquatic or a flying mount. A standard saddle won't work on a griffon or a giant seahorse.
• Riding Saddle (10 gp) — covers everything else and is the cheapest of the three, plus a Pack Saddle (5 gp) for a mount carrying gear rather than a rider.

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Tack, Harness, and Drawn Vehicles

For overland hauling, the drawn-vehicle options are Carriage, Cart, Chariot, Sled, and Wagon, each with its own cost and weight, and each needing a compatible saddle plus a draft animal to actually move it.

Match the vehicle to the terrain: a Sled is useless without snow or ice, a Chariot wants open, even ground, and a Cart or Wagon is the flexible default for a party hauling loot or supplies down a road.

Vehicle proficiency (land or water) lets you add your proficiency bonus to any check you make to control that vehicle type in difficult circumstances.

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Waterborne Vehicles

Rowed vessels (keelboats and rowboats) add the current's speed, typically 3 miles per hour, when traveling downstream, but can't be rowed against any significant current. They can still be towed upstream by draft animals working from the shore. A rowboat weighs about 100 pounds, light enough that a party can realistically carry it overland when the water route runs out.

This table covers Chapter 5's mundane, terrestrial vehicles only. For spacefaring vessels that fly Wildspace and the Astral Sea, see the Spelljammer guide's ships section - a different rules subsystem entirely, built around a spelljamming helm rather than oars or sails.

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Lifestyle Expenses

Lifestyle Expenses cover the ongoing cost of lodging, food, and upkeep between adventures. At the start of each week or month (the DM's choice), you pick one lifestyle tier and pay the associated daily rate: Wretched, Squalid, Poor, Modest, Comfortable, Wealthy, or Aristocratic, with the price scaling up the list.

There's no hard mechanical bonus or penalty tied to a given tier, but the DM can weigh your choice when deciding how NPCs treat your character or what risks apply while you rest between sessions.

For tools and the rest of the Equipment chapter, return to the Equipment Guide hub.

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Final Verdict

The gear chapter reduces to a short list of real questions. For armor and weapons: what is your Strength score, what is your Dexterity score, do you need Stealth, and do you want one-handed flexibility or maximum two-handed damage. Answer those four and the right row on each table falls out on its own.

For mounts and vehicles the question is different, because it is a campaign-logistics question rather than a build one: how much does the party need to haul, how fast does it need to cross this terrain, and what does keeping the animal alive cost. A Military Saddle is close to mandatory for any mount that will see a fight, an Exotic Saddle is non-negotiable the moment your mount leaves solid ground, and past that it comes down to matching the vehicle to the ground your table actually travels.

For the tools and adventuring gear that round out the chapter, see the Tool Proficiencies guide, and return to the Equipment Guide hub for the rest of the cluster.