Dastana

[schreier]

Dragon 318, the Oriental Adventures update to 3.5 on page 42, says:

"Both dastanas and chahar-ainas provide special armor bonuses to AC that stack with other armor bonuses granted by certain forms of light armor. However, it is still the case that only one enhancement bonus can apply to a character's armor bonus at any time. Thus. if a character wears +2 dastanas. a +1 chahar-ama, and +1 cloth armor, only the +2 bonus from the dastanas increases his AC. A character can still gain the benefit of special abilities attached to multiple pieces of armor, however, so a character wearing +2 balance dastanas and a +1 displacement chahar-aina has a +2 enhancement bonus to AC and can use the balance and displacement special abilities."

Basically it feels like a way to get cheap enhancements on armor while getting a free +1 AC