i made an item in ieep, and i didnt want to make it too powerful but pretty good, this is it

AC base set to 3
-3 to spell casting speed
usable by fighter/mages
studded leather

not to epic but very useful for my fighter mage character

:1drowndead:

mage cannot cast spells with leather of any kind

only robs

DM is right you cant, the casting time removal is too much anyway, the AC is OK though.

just compare it to other items in the game.

base: studded leather +4. that's fairly powerful, on par with shadow armor minus the paltry stealth bonuses.

-3 to casting speed. the -4 of the robe of vecna is considered by most to be its most important attribute, and this is an expensive and unique item. this combined with the AC requires you to sacrifice some other useful items to make it, imo.

as far as "too powerful", it depends. are you soloing or using a full party? in either case you'd be better off with the robe of vecna anyway as it's only 1 AC higher with better abilities otherwise and it's already legitimately in the game.

on the other hand, you could just pretend that the robe of vecna doesn't exist and use this instead. i much prefer a weaker magic item for my main character if it fits his style rather than some superitem that doesn't (e.g. i don't care how great crom faeyr is, i'll never have my elf F/T dual wield with it; it makes no sense.)

I would make it chain, to adhere to the elven chain\magic rules... You could keep the leather graphic and make the armor something exotic instead of studded leather. As for the casting, I'd make it a little less strong, something like -1 or max -2 off.