Geno: armor proficiency doesn't work like weapon proficiency. With weapon proficiency, you can wield a weapon you are not proficient at, you just are MUCH more likely to miss so it is almost never worth it. With armor proficiency, you CANNOT even wear an armor you are not proficient with, or rather you can, but your armor bonus would be ZERO and you would still incur and check or speed penalties (in other words, it would be even worse than wearing no armor or cloth armor). Why do you think wizards and rogues don't run around in plate? :-P (BTW, check and speed penalties occur when wearing armor even when you are proficient; it's one of the cons of wearing heavy armor) If you wish to wear an armor, you must take the armor proficiency feat in order to do so, and in order to do that, you must meet all the prerequisites. For instance, berserkers only have proficiency up to hide armor. Therefore you would need to take a feat that grants chain prof, then another feat that grants scale prof, and finally the feat that grants plate proficiency (all feats are in PHB1 for reference). Barbarians are strikers (which first off, you should not be making as your alt MUST be a different type than your main, who is also a striker), and therefore are expected to be fast-moving, be very lightly armored, and do a heck of a lot of damage; if they could to a ton of damage and be virtually invincible, there would be no point to defenders (who generally are much tougher but do much less damage). It looked like you were trying to build a defender but just started with the wrong class. Check out paladins, the different kinds of fighters, swordmages, wardens, and others if you're actually looking to build a defender. Don't start with a barbarian.
