The spellcasting speed changes come from this spellcasting-in-armor component from Item Revisions and the cleric/mage issue is known.
Spellcasting in Armor with Casting Speed Penalties for Arcane Casters (Option 2)
This component allows those arcane spellcasters who can equip armor (namely multiclass mages) to be able to cast spells in them, albeit at a slower rate than normal. To give a little overview, a spellcaster can cast only 1 spell per round (in most circumstances), but those spells have a casting time that denotes how much of the round it takes between starting to cast the spell and witnessing its effect. The default spells usually have a casting time between 1 and 10. 10 is a full round, while 1 is near-instantaneous. This component will increase the casting time of all spells while equipping armor and shields by the values indicated in the table below. Due to implementation limitations, this component causes cleric/mages and fighter/mage/clerics to suffer slower casting speed on both their divine and arcane spells. Other divine casters are unaffected. Feedback on balancing this component would be appreciated.
Unlike the spell failure effect, the effect to change casting speeds has no way to differentiate between arcane and divine spells. So, this component adds casting speed penalties to armor, limited to mage multiclasses. This means cleric/mages have both their arcane and divine spells slowed instead of just their arcane spells. The alternative would have been to have cleric/mages cast both arcane and divine spells in armor without penalty (which would make them stick out from other mage multiclasses).
The ideal solution would be an engine modification that would allow the component to restrict casting speed changes to arcane spells. This modification would require the expertise of someone like Ascension64.
Without that, the options are to add spellcasting speed penalties in armor to divine casters (an unnecessary penalty) or to remove them from arcane casters (making them able to cast spells in armor for free). Or you can stick with the traditional components that add a chance of arcane spellcasting failure to armor (sometimes spells will work, sometimes they will fizzle).
Edited by Mike1072, 19 February 2013 - 06:20 PM.
