First of all, this is not criticism of a mod I love (though at times, from IA 3.x till V5, I wondered about madmen who devised such monsters and tactics ), just a point of vue;

In IA you can forge many great items for many classes, Warriors have many weapon and armor possibilities, rangers (especially Vagrants), no use to comment further, Druids, Bards (eternal melody!), and so on. Provided you gather the components, forging is 100% sure.
I like playing with a single-class mage, am trying right now a run-through on insane, but was very disapointed when I could not get robe of the apprenti forged by my students (thus of course, I have to forget about memory of the apprenti and the nice encounter in the docks).

To me there is no other mage item (though some very nice ones exist) which can compensate with this loss.

I agree with the principle that all magic user should not benefit of memory of the apprenti. More, I would say that sorceress Imoen with robe of the apprenti would be an unbalanced uber-character.

My idea would be (and whatever Sikret will do I will respect his point of vue as the designer of IA) to have 100% chance to forge robe of the apprenti provided you do it before spellhold, in order to avoid frustration of losing memory of the apprenti in the future, BUT:
- You could obtain robe of the apprenti only before going to spellhold (planar sphere is not that easy in chap 2 -3, but would be a piece ok cake in chap 6)
- If you're a single-class mage, you would forge "memory of the apprenti" as it is (with all bonuses)
- If you're a specialized mage, to replace memory of the apprenti by a toned down robe (for example: 3 extra spells level 1 to 5, 2 extra spells level 6 to 9 + other bonuses)
- if you're dual, multi, to replace memory of the apprenti by a toned down robe ( 3 extra spells level 1 to 3, 2 extra spells level 4 to 8, no extra 9th level spell, no AC bonus)
- If you're a sorcerer to replace it by another toned down robe (only 1 extra spell level 1 to 9, no AC bonus, spell casting reduced by 1)
- usable only by protagonist (don't know if this would be achievable)

Any feed back would be welcome

I quite support this. In fact, though it may sound silly, the chance of failure when forging the Robe has put me off playing a Necromancer for some time now.

So... why should specialists get a weaker version than a "simple" mage? A stronger version for specialists might be more interesting and arguably justified, imho. Maybe even a special robe for each specialist, giving a specific bonus which suits their kit.

Good point. Didn't really mean to agree with that (for what it's worth). I still think that replacing the chance mechanism by something else would be sensible.

I just say that having to meet requirements (others than components) to forge memory is ok for me, having penaltys depending on your class (mage, sorcere, specialist, dual,...) is ok (actual penalty is chance to forge), I just don't find it fair that once you reach those requirements, you still can miss this item

I reckon that the robe should be earned through an encounter with a powerful mage, perhaps to make this battle relevant it should part of some quest in the mage stronghold.

To Patrick_Hindman

In order to gain the robe you must first gain the planar sphere and in order to do that you must defeat two powerful mages in Tolgerias (+ friend) and Lavok himself!
The Robe of Vecna is more powerful than the Robe of the Apprenti and you can gain it in the regular game.