Possibly uninteresting background
OK, while making up treasures for some adventures I was thinking more about how the DM is supposed to usually give items that the players want.
However, it seems like that is just a bit too convenient to the point where it is unbelievable. "Wow! Another super magical glaive! Just what I always wanted!"
Now it isn't actually like they get a new perfect weapon every level or so; it can be spread out over several levels. However, it isn't hard to notice when everything you find is directly an upgrade to one of the members of your party's chosen gear type. It becomes hard to have the boss Orc wielding a massive magical greataxe if nobody in the party would find that useful. Suddenly he needs to be using a Greatsword or something else.
With weapons this is pronounced because of the sheer variety of weapons that ostensibly exist, but never end up being magical when the PCs roll through a dungeon. Enemy boss fighters coincidentally use one of the weapons a party member uses, or the enemy wizard happens to use a staff, just like the party's wizard does.
However, it seems like that is just a bit too convenient to the point where it is unbelievable. "Wow! Another super magical glaive! Just what I always wanted!"
Now it isn't actually like they get a new perfect weapon every level or so; it can be spread out over several levels. However, it isn't hard to notice when everything you find is directly an upgrade to one of the members of your party's chosen gear type. It becomes hard to have the boss Orc wielding a massive magical greataxe if nobody in the party would find that useful. Suddenly he needs to be using a Greatsword or something else.
With weapons this is pronounced because of the sheer variety of weapons that ostensibly exist, but never end up being magical when the PCs roll through a dungeon. Enemy boss fighters coincidentally use one of the weapons a party member uses, or the enemy wizard happens to use a staff, just like the party's wizard does.
If you already have a paragon tier campaign running, make it so that they can only enchant the masterwork armors, and let them find them. Or include the bonus of the masterwork item (which is only there to let the AC scale) in the new magic item the players made.
I myself will be using Armor and Weapon Crystals, that bear an enchantment (enhancment, property and powers). When attached to a weapon, they override the existing enchantment, and you can place only one on a weapon. I'd say it takes a standard action to replace crystals (haven't given that much thought yet). That way you can carry different properties, can still use only one of them at a time, and you don't have a problem with finding the right weapons.
The characters in my campaign all have signature weapons and armor, and I want them to scale, not to be given away. They're named. *g*
In doing this, your magic sword often has no magic at all, minus the embedded dragonshard found in its hilt, or helmet, armor, etc.
This wasn't done for any financial issue, or cool new way to look at it. My cousin has done this since day 1, 20+ years ago, and I took the idea when I switched to Eberron.
This simply allows us to say, you find a cool flaming longsword, but you're prefer to use an axe, and so an Artificer carefully removes the dragonshard from the sword, and puts it into the axe. We also then had the ability to offer dragonshards as rewards, instead of equipment, and even broken equipment with dragonshards in them. These were cool because we could give away a cool magic item, that could not be used to imbalance the current quest until the shard was removed and put into a new weapon.
it also always allowed my cousin to have more flexibiltiy to break items, without killing the magic. My axe could shatter, leaving a broken hilt and shard, to be saved and transfered.
Any way, not 100% connected to your questions, but similar...