I want to improve an existing Monkey Belt to have +4 Dex. Can I just pay the difference between a +2 (4,000 gp) and +4 (16,000 gp)?
What are my options without using home-group rules?
By the magic item creation rules, specifically the section Adding New Abilities, you pay the difference in market price/creation cost between the original item and the item with the new/upgraded ability. The only concern is that the market price calculation of a monkey belt's abilities (like many specific magic items) isn't 100% clear, which can make calculating improvements more difficult.
However, attempting to reverse-engineer the pricing of a monkey belt reveals a breakdown of 4,000 gp for the +2 Dex (as a belt of incredible Dexterity +2) and 5,400 gp total for the other abilities (3,600 gp x 1.5 using the Multiple Different Abilities rule); assuming the x 1.5 to the 4,000 gp doesn't make sense (6,000 gp for the +2 Dex would mean the other abilities are 3,400 gp total, less than the 4,000 gp "base" market price for the +2 Dex). So, upgrading the +2 Dex monkey belt to +4 Dex (and no other improvement) is fairly straightforward: final market price would be 16,000 gp (+4 Dex) + 5,400 gp (other abilities) = 21,400 gp; upgrade for 12,000 gp market price (6,000 gp creation cost).
Note that adding/upgrading abilities can get tricky when it's not clear which ability is the "primary" (most expensive) and which are "additional." Or, in the case of armor and weapons, whether or not the ability is a fixed cost or "+X equivalent." Many GMs just ban creation of magic items other than those documented in the rulebooks.
It's actually the greater Monkey Belt, which is 10k worth of Stat Belt and 8k worth of "other". Grafting the same "other" on to a +4 Str belt lands you at 24K.
Just so that you are aware - what I am about to say comes from the Magic Item Compendium from D&D 3.5 so you may or may not be able to use it, but according to a variant that book:
Adding ability bonuses, armor bonuses, save bonuses and a few other special abilities to items is at the x1 rate rather than the x1.5 rate. The reasoning was that people shouldn't have to choose between +X bonuses that make their characters stronger in combat vs. the cool abilities that are situational.
My table still uses those rules. They are pretty cool in my opinion.
Still requires a GM to make a new item.
Not really.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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Still requires a GM to make a new item.Not really.
Core p460:
"The following guidelines are presented to help GMs determine what items are available in a given community."The rules for item prices is on 549 (after all the items) and is for the GM not the players.
Your assertion is a player gets the right to say "this item exists, I can buy it, and this it it's price" for an item that combines multiple abilities.
That simply isn't true.