Ye Olde Inn

So - I'm curious how other people would handle this:
In my own versions of HQ house rules, I include rules for enchanting items. However,
the base rules offer no chance for characters to do this at any time - in fact, they
do not even offer an explanation as to how the magical items offered through the
game and expansions were originally enchanted.

Any thoughts on this?

Can't remember where I saw enchanting rules (might even be yours perhaps) but my thinking is that enchanting would of course require the components, time to spend in seclusion creating the item, and a powerful enough spellcaster.

Lets say you wanted to make a wizard staff that would allow you an extra casting of rock skin every adventure. You would first need to get the components, at a premium since the shops don't always stock weapons/materials that are of high enough quality to not be ripped apart by the magical energy being forced into them. So maybe 2-3x more expensive per component, so a player would have to either find or buy a staff and scroll of rock skin of enchanting quality.

Since the desire is to create a permanently enchanted item the process takes 2-3 quests to complete either in absence from adventuring party or via invested(more in a second). The caster would of course have to meet a mind point requirement to even know the arcane process to bind these two particular types together (staff & spell scroll, more types can be added as GM sees fit), and may even require a perm investment of their power to keep the magic working.

Investment has two different types, perm and temp. Perm investments are requirements of certain enchantments that draw on the enchanters power reserve to actually work, so the enchanter must offer a portion of their power to the enchanted item or else it will fail when used. Temp investment is for when an enchanter has an item crafted but does not want to miss any adventuring time. Since enchanting requires concentration a percentage of their Mind Points(or whatever spell casting system is being used) MUST be allocated to the enchantment for the duration of X quests. The enchanter regains use of the allocated aspect once the enchantment is complete (can be at the GMs discretion if PC makes an achievement or other reward that would give spell casting type bonuses).

As for the explanation, I like how no official response is given. It gives the freedom to build your own answer on top of it. In my campaign there is a now vile and powerful wizard who ended up that way because as a great and powerful consular to the Emperor he began to create magic items to help the Empire. Doing so require that he invest pieces of his own power and soul into the items matching the aspect of the enchanted item, and since he was not creating cursed or dangerous items, eventually all the "good" aspects had been removed from himself as he tried to help the Empire and created a great threat to it thru his benevolent actions.

As you can see there's a lot of exploration available in that set up, particularly that it allows me to prod the players to give magical items and artifacts back to their creators AS long as there is a decent enough pay off. Always gotta have that pay off

I've allowed the spell caster in my group to have a spell book where they keep rituals that they have found. Rituals are not things that can be cast on the fly. One of the Hero's in the group is a necromancer so some quests he can have a ritual to summon undead to protect his crypt. Maybe you can use that idea. I've had the same thoughts before but decided that the Hero's are to busy adventuring to sit around and imbue magical quslities in there weapons. So they must rely on the wizards that are to scared to fight to enchant weapons for them.

In my system - enchanting is usually something done between quests, if there is enough time.
(for the time between quests - I use this: roll of 1 red die x 5 = the number of days between quests....
if it hasn't been stated by the quest before or after the rest time, and there doesn't seem to be any
immediate need to hurry off).

I will need to finish this later - have a 1 month old asleep on me now.

Since HQ advancement is basically built on gold, if I were to use an enchancement system, I would likely just try to make sure there were appropriate gold costs.

I am more a fan of not having enchanting (or bought magic items) so that magic items are found artifacts, since it leaves the magic in the hands of the GM and prevents more min-maxing.

I too have noticed that HQ advancement seems gold based in the original designs. Have you been able to figure out what gold thresholds are for say comparing a fresh character to one who would be considered advanced?