Okay, the way I see it if you spend months or even years getting an uber named
set it really shouldn't have to deteriorate every time you get it
repaired/protted/fw'd by a merchant... possible suggestions for getting around
this so far have all been related to items not deteriorating when they change
hands/when a merchant holds them etc. The problem is all of these methods are
abuseable in some way or another, and an idea which got around the merchant
handling problem but didn't leave (at least obvious) room for abuse open seems
necessary... so here is my suggestion:

A new spell for merchants (or hell could even be a bitch and put it in bards
or alchemists to only give this ability to highbie merch's)... the spell would
be called something like Shared Knowledge and the merchant would have access
to the knowledge and memories of another player while the spell was active...
the stipulations would be that both players would have to be in a party
together and in the same room, if either player leaves the party, the room or
enters combat the merchant would lose the ability to focus on the other
player's knowledge and thus the effect would drop...

The effect had by the spell is that for the duration of the spell (which lasts
until one of the players leaves the room/party or enters combat or any other
special circumstances that might need to be thought up) the merchant
will handle all eq as if he were actually the other player, thus preventing it
from taking maxcond damage if it has the other player's name... in
concentrating so hard on the other player's previous knowledge and experience
the merchant would also be unable to focus on handling his own eq properly, so
as long as this spell is active any items which the merchant has which have
his name, but not the other player's COULD take maxcond damage...

I can't see too many ways in which this type of spell could be abused.. about
the only thing i could really even think of is perhaps some higbhie giving a
merchie-bard his uber-named dex eq to cast buffs on his party or something
like that... but I can't see that type of thing being a huge problem...
anyway, I'm sure I'll hear some flames, etc... but hopefully some kind of
solution (mine or someone else's) can be implemented to allow people to get
repairs/prots/fws to their top end named eq (btw, i have absolutely none
of|this, so it's not aimed at me ) without having to worry about it taking
maxcond damage...

Val