Base Items as Treasure, a story telling adjunct to Residuum

[AbdulAlhazred]

I like the flavor of questing for specific components and specific item... but for those who wish to create specific things for themselves how about an ability which will disolve any magic item in to residuum... a disenchant.

Ummm, you mean the Disenchant ritual? Admittedly you have to be a Ritual Caster and learn the ritual, but you can always hire an NPC to do that on the off chance your party doesn't contain a wizard or someone who's invested in the feat slot.

Admittedly the whole 'residuum' thing to some extent bothers me. But remember, it is not really a completely necessary mechanic of the game either. PCs can just sell an item for 1/5 of the cost and use gold to buy whatever components they need. You could always rule that instead of ending up with 'grey magical dust' when you disenchant something instead you end up with a 'coupon' to make that type of item (you disenchant the magical +1 sword and the resulting item is still worth 1/5 of the normal magic item cost due to its fine make). The only difference is portability. Residuum in essence is just 'concentrated gold' from a game mechanics standpoint. Kind of negates the utility of disenchant, but if you think about it there is really NO incentive to disenchant items now anyway. Better to just sell them and instead buy some portable form of wealth, like gems.