I've been thinking.....the leather system is already in, the ability to harvest it and craft it and all place so no work needs to be done there, it is just not used because it is useless (AC blows). I figured it would be a good idea to tweak it so it can be actually used and will add some variation and style to armor.

Was shuffling thoughts, and I figured leather AC should not be nearly as high AC as mineral. So base AC stays low but leather can potentially react to magical reinforcements (ie fort... maybe runes) a lot better. The magical effect can be a lot more potent (simply raise what fort does to leather, maybe base it on the over level of the leather skin that was harvested) raising the overall AC, in turn making it useful stuff for new/lowbies to mid range level.

What would also be interesting is that if amour degradation goes into place leather would degrade faster than regular armor, since it is made of skin. This would add some balance to the cheap to make, but decent to wear leather.

Let me know what you guys think.