From our table
House Rules
Optional rules we actually run, written out in full: what they cost, what you roll, and what happens when it goes wrong. Nothing here is official and nothing here is required. Take what you like, ignore the rest, change the numbers to fit your table. Written for 5th Edition where a worked example helps, but the maths carries over to most d20 games.
Enchantment Transfer
Move a magic item’s bonus onto the gear your character actually uses.
The party finds a +2 javelin, but nobody at the table throws javelins. If you can sell it at all, it goes for a fraction of what buying one would cost. This rule lets the magic move from one item to another.
How the ritual works
This is a ritual, not a shopping trip. The caster needs the donor item (the magic one), the recipient item (a masterwork piece, or another magic item they are willing to overwrite and risk damaging), an undisturbed place to work, and the components listed below. The ritual takes the donor apart.
Ritual time scales with the bonus being moved. A +1 is an hour’s work. Everything above that climbs steeply, and the caster has to work the whole stretch without a real interruption. Break off early and the components are spent anyway.
When the time is up, the caster makes an Arcana check against the DC in the table. In 5th Edition that is an Intelligence (Arcana) check. In other d20 games, use whatever your system calls the arcane knowledge skill.
On a success the recipient item gains the bonus, and the donor item is gone. Not drained, not left behind as an ordinary javelin. The ritual consumed it. On a failure the components are spent, the donor item survives, and the caster rolls 1d4 on the failure table.
The transfer table
| Bonus Moved | Ritual Time | Component Cost | Arcana DC | Failure (roll 1d4) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +1 | 1 hour | 250 gp | DC 13 | 1-2: No effect. 3-4: Caster takes 2d6 psychic damage. |
| +2 | 4 hours | 2,000 gp | DC 16 | 1-2: Caster gains 1 level of exhaustion. 3-4: Donor item is suppressed (non-magical) for 1d4 days. |
| +3 | 8 hours | 10,000 gp | DC 20 | 1-2: Caster is cursed, disadvantage on Arcana checks for 1 week. 3-4: Both items spark, dealing 6d6 force damage to everyone within 10 feet. |
| Artifact or +4 | 24 hours | 50,000 gp | DC 25 | 1-2: The magic warps, turning the recipient item into a random cursed item. 3-4: A rift opens, summoning a hostile extraplanar creature. |
Not just weapons
Nothing here is limited to weapons. Armor, shields, and wondrous items all work the same way, so long as the thing being moved is a plain numeric bonus. A cloak that grants a flat +1 can hand that +1 to a different cloak, or to a ring, or to a set of bracers.
Where an item’s magic is an effect rather than a number, there is no bonus for the ritual to take hold of and this rule does nothing. Those cases are a conversation with your GM, not a table lookup. Have it before anyone spends 10,000 gp finding out.
No stacking
You cannot chain this to build a bigger number. Transferring a +1 onto an existing +2 item does not produce a +3. The recipient has to be masterwork, or it accepts the new bonus in place of the old one. If a player wants a +3, they have to find a +3.
Why we run it this way
The cost curve is deliberately steep, and the failure table is deliberately nasty at the top end. A +1 transfer is a downtime errand any party can afford by third or fourth level. Moving an artifact is a full day of work and a decision the whole table talks about first, because a bad roll does not just waste the gold, it opens a rift in the workshop.
The point is not to hand out more magic. It is to stop the good magic from being wasted on gear nobody at the table will ever use.
More rules go up here as they get made into videos. If you run one of these and it breaks in a way I did not see coming, tell me on Patreon and I will fix the numbers.