[RPG] Can players use crafting to improve beloved magic items instead of churning gear

dnd-4eeconomymagic-items

I'm all about the story, and as such, I've always been a fan of long-term attachment between players/characters and their special (usually magic) items. But with D&D 4th edition, it seems the default assumption is that magic-items will be churned-out in favor of items that have the next higher set of capabilities every 4 or 5 levels or so, completely discouraging a story-like relationship between a character and their favorite item(s).

Are there alternatives – such as official rules to allow crafting an item to add level appropriate bonuses and/or powers? Are there other solutions I'm missing?

If there are no official solutions, what house rules have you seen/used to solve this problem?

One approach I'm considering is to simply reveal new capabilities for the items as the character matures, in effect adding capabilities whenever they would have had to replace the gear for something with enough pluses.

Best Answer

In Adventurer's Vault pg 198 it describe uses for the Enchant Magic Item ritual:

... the ritual can also be used to place a property in a magic item that has no property, or to upgrade a magic item to a more powerful version 5 levels higher. This use of the ritual follows the same rules for enchanting a magic item from a mundane item but reduces the cost. The ritual caster must still be high enough level to create the final item, but the caster pays only the difference in cost between the final version and the item in its current form.

Also, the next page has the new level 4 ritual Transfer Enchantment,which does just what it says for a material cost of 25gp. That would let the rogue snag the property off of the ogre's bloodcut +2 hide armor and put it on her leather armor.

Both have restrictions, though. You can't put a property onto an item of a different slot (i.e. put a property from a foot slot item on a pair of gloves). And you have to respect any restrictions of the property, so you can't put an armor property that is only cloth onto chainmail. So the rogue above couldn't snag barkskin +1 since that is only Hide, Scale. As always in 4e, you can't have more than one property on an item, the new one replaces the old one.

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