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Have you ever looked at automatic bonus progression?
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I don't like that idea, personally. Some GMs have you roll your stats, which can hurt a character if a bunch of the rolls are bad. Those belts and headbands are sometimes the only way a character can have even decent stats.
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There's quite a few headbands especially for which most of the cost is the enhancement bonus, but there's a little tacked on for an extra property. I don't think this'd work the way you think it would.
I don't like that idea, personally. Some GMs have you roll your stats, which can hurt a character if a bunch of the rolls are bad. Those belts and headbands are sometimes the only way a character can have even decent stats.Well point buy is still worse since you have a severally limited amount of points to actually work with so while rolling can potentially make a character not have a very good time point buy does that 100% of the time.
Yeah, if the character needs too many different stats or the point buy is only 15. I always use a 20 point buy when I make a new character and have made some fairly decent stat spreads.
Iz funny, on reading the title, I thought at once of the belt of dwarvenkind (a character I play in 5e has one) and was most surprised to notice that the one in the UEquipmentG does not even give a stat bonus (the one in 5e gives a +2 to Con)...
I'm all for adding little things in addition to the stat bonus if you don't like such bonuses to be the item's sole function... but the game generally has a level of character optimisation that demands stat bonus items.
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I’m thinking of doing this for the next game I run, as there are so many wonderful headbands and belts that are always ignored for the ability score enhancement bonus ones, and this would force the players to either have no headband and/or belt, or choose something different.
Seriously, just use ABP, lowering the prices of belts and ehadbands with combined effects accordingly. I'm using ABP in my current campaign, and i really enjoy being able to give out cool amulets, cloaks etc. that would normally be traded away.
Your method not only makes you loose out on other item slots (cloak, amulet, one ring), it will probably result in your players picking similar items even if they don't care much about the additional effects. Mental stats have relatively cheap substitutes (Headband of Aerial Agility and Shifter's Headband), and there's an affordable +2 con belt with Plague Rat Belt, so you're basically punishing martial characters, who'se substitutes (e.g. Gorgon belt) are notably more expensive.
Starfinder replaces magical belts and headbands with more or less permanent enhancements to the character. I like this idea and wish that PF2 Playtest had copied it.
I have been toying with an in-between idea: Items that give Enhancement Bonuses (even if not doing anything else) would still exist, but Enhancement Bonuses would not qualify you for feats or extra skill ranks or for casting higher level spells, and would not give you extra spells per day (although they would still affect spell DC and the occasional other casting-stat-dependent spell effect, and still boost skill modifiers and Saving Throws and/or Hit Points when applicable). Then give somewhat higher point buy to compensate (20 point buy, since APs are balanced around 15 point buy), which would have the beneficial side effect of preferentially helping the more MAD builds. It would also have the beneficial side effect that if your Enhancement Bonus items are lost or disabled for more than 1 day, you wouldn't have to worry about suddenly losing feats, skill ranks, or spells (which itself has the beneficial side effect of somewhat simplifying bookkeeping). Another beneficial side effect: Caster-Martial Disparity would be somewhat lessened, since martials would still get most of the benefits they would get from Enhancement Bonus items according to Rules As Written, whereas casters would have to rely on their natural ability scores to do their casting.
If you want to remove the items that purely grant enhancement bonuses to ability scores, another option you can use is simply allowing your players to add additional properties to the belt/headband at 1.5X the cost as outlined under the custom magic item rules. That way players still get their stats, that are assumed by the game and they can still get cool and interesting magic items for those particular slots.
Alternatively you can just let the cost be purely additive instead of having it be charges as a 1.5X premium
Considering I and my group play like we are still using AD&D, this wouldn't bother us at all. I guess you could say we are somewhat magic light, or more to the point we do favor the non attribute enhancement items.
Maybe it's sacrilege to a "true" Pathfinder player, but we never have anyone with a stat higher than 24.
PF2 has a nearly identical ritual system to my homebrew. You could just bring over my ritual where you burn a stat item to get a permanent stat increase, and a cool brand.
ABP works fine too. I would rather have a book or wish that gives my character an actual point of charisma than a +5 cloak of charisma. I'm partial to cloaks of the manta ray or bat.