DMG II Bonded Magic Items

[Calimehter]

How come I don't hear much about these?

The rituals are a bit of a pain to set up and execute, but the tradeoff seems nice:

You get featless magic item creation for any character class. Its one item only, but you still benefit from all the flexibility and/or wealth savings that item creation entails. I can't imagine it doing anything other than narrowing the Tier imbalance, even if it does not do so enough to actually bump tiers.

The Bonded item also resists being stolen, if only by virtue of it not working for anyone else.

A DM could give an NPC a nifty bit of gear w/o having to fear the PCs getting a hold of it after the battle and abusing the campaign with it. This could be abused, I suppose, but if the DM wasn't using it as an excuse to screw over party WBL by *constantly* using Bonded Items with NPCs, all it really does is add to the fun.

You can use it as a straight-up replacement for Weapons of Legacy with much less complication.

What's not to love?

[DR27]

Not much wrong with it. I'm sure that it just comes up less often than you would think because many DMs are loath to allow character control over their items - but at a table where item creation was common normally? I'm sure it would fit right in.

[Averis Vol]

Most likely because spending gold is easier than meeting prerequisites and jumping through hoops to get your weapon. It also means that while you are spending money to make it, you can't sell it off if need be. You're basically stick with it forever (not necessarily a bad thing for some people)