4E Rituals Options (resizing Magic Items)

I'm really reading over my 4E books. When I first got them I read just enough to learn how to play and we jumped right in. I ran a few games, and every one seemed to have a lot of fun.

Now with my little break right now I'm going back and reading some of the sections I just skimmed before. Like rituals. While I can see a lot of promise in most of them the rules for Disenchanting and enchanting Magic Items really seem interesting.

I had an idea. What if you could re-size magical items. Not physical size but level of an item.

If you had an item you really liked, say a level 3 thundering weapon. And you start to out grow it. by hitting level 8. But you really like your thundering weapon. Instead of disenchanting it or selling it you could use enchant weapon to re-size it.

The cost would be enough residuum to pay the difference between the previous cost of the item and the new cost of the item.  A level 4 thundering weapon costs 840g and a level 8 costs 3400g. So to re-size the weapon from levels 4 to 8 the cost would be 175g for the ritual plus 2560g worth of residuum for the difference in cost.

The usual restrictions apply. You cant raise the level of an item higher than your own level.

4E D&D Revisit

I really want to give 4E another go. As I've stated We really enjoyed it. But I just didn't feel it was a game we would continue to play. I have really been focusing on rules-lite games. And has nothing to do with most criticism
against it.

Most of the criticisms again 4E really doesn't matter to us. Yes its tactical and uses minis. Yes it has elements in common with online MMORPGs. My players love strategic mini games and all have or do play Online MMORPGs. Most of those elements are just common elements between the two. It just uses the MMORPG terminology for it. Who doesn't have the fighter first in marching order rather than the wizard. Now it is called a defender or tank. But the job is the same, Meat shield.

I just felt the system was far from rules lite. But to be fair I'm coming into it years after the release with tons of material out for it. Tons of material, Tons of options and abilities. With the release of the essentials and articles like this one by Greywulf I have really been thinking it over. Much of this is my perspective. I really don't need all three players hand books for every game. Or even every ability from players hand book one.

Before I permanently shelf my 4E books I really need to scale a game back a bit and play the game with out trying to include every bit of material I can find. I'm debating getting some essentials books.

Limited Advancement (looking at E6)

Limiting advancement is something I have been thinking about for a while. One decision I made in my C&C game was to end advancement at level 10. I want to add talents (renamed Feats) but at a much slower pace. Since I find Feat bloat a major turn off for me in 3rd edition.

Another bloat I really hated is Hit points. Although It doesn't bothers me as much as it used to. But I used to hate that a fall from a roof could kill a level one character. And a level 10 could take crazy amounts damage.
I think its one of the reasons I prefer to run low level adventures and rarely like to continue a campaign past level 6 or 8.

The other day I stumbled across E6 (Epic 6). It is basically the Idea of ending progression at level 6. At every 5000 exp you give out a feat. The basics of it is to make a gritty and more tolken'esq style of game.

Here is some info on it from: Epic_6 Wiki

Q: Where did E6 come from? A: E6 was inspired by the article Gandalf was a Fifth-Level Magic User by Bill Seligman. The article was published in The Dragon (which became Dragon magazine) in issue #5, March 1977. When I first had the concept of E6, where we used the first six levels for the whole game, my very first step was pitching it to my players. Some thought it was a great idea, and the rest were willing to give it a try, so I gave it a shot. E6 worked really well for our tastes, and we've done lots of playing inside E6 since then. Back then E6 was a lot more convoluted than it is now: there were intricate quasi-gestalt rules and several other little things that weren’t so much about the cap as they were about my group’s thoughts on D&D class balance. Over time, we found that the only rules we were really using (on both sides of the screen) were the feat rules, and that was producing a great play experience. So when I returned to E6 just recently, that’s how I wrote it up: As it was actually played.

Q: Why 6th level for the cap? Why not 12th, or 20th? A: My experience in D&D is that at around 6th level the characters are really nicely balanced, both in terms of balance against other classes, and against the CR system. Also, there was an element of setting assumptions; each class is strong enough that they're well defined in their role, but not so strong that lower-level characters don't matter to them any more.

While I'm not sure if I want to go to the extremes of only going to level 6 in my games. Although I may just try it. What if i was to cap some things at lower levels though? Like maybe hit point progression.