| BrunofanofK |
Hello Firengineer, I just finished with PfU and I undertand where you are coming with this.
I really loved automatic bonus progression because optimization is a natural instinct of all players that make the items that give permanent enhancement bonus so popular, after all to the players their character is a effigy of themsenves and they want to why even if it means puting praticality over flavorness.
there is no player that will chose a belt that ad str bonus to intimidation when he can use a belt of strenght, a veteran player who fall in a situation where his magic itens are stolen or lost is prone to ragequit, pcs will never take their equip off to sleep or rest to avoid any transtorn from temporary loss of bonus. At some point magic itens became crutches but the automatic bonus progression free all players from this stupid urges and allow them to focus on magic itens that are objects of wonder that don't need to offer any direct concret bonus to be valuable for the players so a loss of half of their wealth is a cheap price for the ressurection of novely in magic.
If you want to fuse automatic bonus progression with scaling items alternative rules together you must first remenber that the system of pathfinder is a revamp of old 3.5 who toke into consideration to its mechanic that the wealth of the pcs embody good size of their powers so over half of their powers is already taken.
It is easy to justify this with fluffy saying that a character level represent it's importancy of existency in the world; a warrior able to defeat one thousand enemies single-handed could be in another life a wizard able to reshape a country. So the magic improvement given to itens worn by them is the result of the magical energy their bodies release.
In this case a vanila magic weapon is just takin this energy to fuel a spell so reduce their price to half(vorpal blade=25k) but make a prerequirement to have a enchantment equal to the weapon. Considering that to a martial class their chosen weapon would normaly take a large sum of their money with a +10 weapon worth 200k, a weapon that give especial qualities that stack with your inherent enchantment of +5 that is priced as 50k will const 150k. So just use the price of the +2-1,+4-2,+6-3,+8-4,+10-5 and say for fluffy that weapons that have magic on their own are more rare and expensive, usually inteligent or artefacts.
Now considering that in the long run scaling itens automaticaly represent a increase in the pcs wealth as they gain levels it is oriented to the GMs to geve a even number of scaling itens to the pcs and reduce the rating of treasure looted per battle(5%,15%,30%). A good way to make this viable is by restricting the maximum amount of scaling magic itens that a character can have at once. Say, one wonder, one prized and one palper at once; 50% of a character total wealth, since they already lost another half to automatic bonus progression.
So every two character levels he will receive 1(one) bonding point that will allow to bonding with one palper scaling item but he will need 3 points(lvl6 min) to use a prized item properly and 6 points(lvl12) to bond with a wonder. If he lack enough points he treat the the bond with the item as if he was 2 levels lower for every point he lack. So a level 12 pc with the boots and cape of elvenkind will be treated by their faery queen vest as if she was a level 8 character.
Interesting side effect of this House hule is that pcs no longer parade around wearing gear expensive enough to feed a entire country for a year that realisticaly should be bound to call atention. A gold piece is worth 10 silver or 100 copper pieces that are more or less what a commoner earn in a week so normaly as a character grow stronger their reward for quest start to reach stupidly high prices. A big bussiness in a metropoles employing from 25 to 40 employs earn in a month one thousand gold coins, a potions of cure serious wound(heal 18hp) or wand of cure light(heal 275hp) wound cost 750gp at minimum, something that a alchemist can creat in less than a day, so one can see the price of magic in the world.
the pcs will still be able to use magical itens that function outside the scaling system as long as they have free slots but something like a ring of freedom of movements is a late game reward for sure. it simply isn't worth for most npcs to have 20k+ equipment so they will focus on scrolls if they can make them, wands if the can to trigger them and potions if out of options. In such world a magic item that depend of your own power to work, making them far cheaper than one whose power independ of its owner would be the natural choice. That a metropoles maximum single purchase is of 16,000 gp that is more or less the maximum value of a wonder class scaling item also help. So a vanila vorpal weapon would cost 25k, a scaling vorpal 150k and a awesome wonder class weapon that in the hands of a lvl20 pc give scaling vorpal plus 110k in extra powers would cost 8~14k.
I also sugest you to let the bonus of master work weapons and armor to stack with the magical bonus for immersion reasons - in LofR a elven blade is a far more valuable and powerful weapon than the slabs or iron that the orcs use so making your pcs walking around with 1,000gp or more in clothes or with weapons of exotic material will already flag the party as powerful and experience without worring overmuch for evetual loss of equipment as they can fund a country with their richs. You can keep a steady flow of consumible lesser magical itens and few hundreds gp as reward from level 1 to level 20.