[Homebrew] New elemental-bound armors

[nameless]

I created some new elemental-infused armor enchantments for my game (though they will probably only be in the hands of NPCs for a while yet). I hope you guys like them, I'm mostly interested in if you think the prices are balanced (They are mostly ad hoc, I looked at the cost of crafting something similar and went up or down depending on relative power.) What do y'all think?

Hardskin: A medium earth elemental is loosely bound to this suit of armor. It is still given a faint awareness of its surroundings, and it can produce simple reactions to that stimulus. The armor appears normal (except for a few crystalline runic etchings) until the wearer is attacked. Just before any blow lands, the armor automatically manifests a thick, stony skin over the wearer, and then retracts the skin immediately after the blow lands. This provides a +4 shield bonus to AC whenever the armor is worn. Alternately, the wearer can direct the armor himself. As a standard action (including a readied action), the wearer can gain total cover by covering himself completely in a layer of stone. Similar to a tower shield, however, this cover does not apply to targeted spells, and it counts as one-inch thick magical stone (hardness 10, 20 hp). The wearer cannot move or take any physical action while covered in stone, but the skin can be shed as a free action.

Moderate conjuration, CL 9th, lesser planar binding, Bind Elemental, +45,000 gp base price

Frenetic: A medium air elemental is bound to this suit of armor. At rest, the armor simply appears to be of fine make. During any kind of motion (whenever the wearer has his dex bonus to AC), however, the armor leaves a faint trail of double images, giving the wearer concealment (as the Blur spell). The frenetic air elemental also increases the wearer's rate of speed, granting the Haste spell continuously. The sudden nature of the wearer's movement also allows him to make charge attacks and running jumps with no minimum movement distance.

Moderate conjuration, CL 11th,planar binding, Bind Elemental, +100,000 gp base price

 

[Arkhandus]

I'm not sure if the prices are balanced or not, but Hardskin might suffocate the character when activated (encasing them in stone), and Frenetic is definately powerful. Checking the 3.0 DMG, it looks like Hardskin costs about as much as upgrading a magic weapon from +7 to +8 total enhancement (quite beyond the price of any armor enhancement), while Frenetic is similar to upgrading a magic weapon from +7 to +10 total enhancement. I suppose that's not likely to be too cheap, but I don't know if it's too expensive or not..... There might be some guidelines for this sort of thing in the 3.5 DMG, Tome & Blood, Complete Divine, or Complete Arcane, but I dunno.

 

[nameless]

I don't mind hardskin sufocating the character, since it can be dismissed as a free action. It's intended to be a short burst of invulnerability. Really, hardskin is just a fancy tower shield that doesn't take any hands to use (and has no check penalties). I almost think hardskin should cost less, because a tower shield is so cheap, but maybe a large part of the balance of tower shields is the big penalty to attacks and damage.

I took the price of frenetic down because of the limited haste that it grants. Haste normally affects the entire party when cast, but frenetic only affects the wearer, so I gave a 20% or so discount on account of that. As with any continuous spell effect item, it's better in a fast-paced game and mediocre in a slower-paced game (where boots of speed will grant all the haste a character needs). I just wish my Eberron game was slightly higher level, so I could play around with some of the new toys sooner. =]