Hi Hawkwind!
Yes equipment can be modified in the character equipment list, and the items in the reference manual are locked so you would have to write your own items from the start. Perhaps I can add a clone-functionality? The drag-and-drop for equipment and improving the item/equipment system is in the backlog, as well as writing abilities and traits in-game. Currently the only way you can add abilities and traits is by writing the xml manually, although within a few weeks that should be possible to do inside the ruleset. However, there might need to be some lua-code (although fairly simple) in order to get some of the effects working correctly. The effects of the abilities and traits are unfortunately not well suited for text-parsing, so the actual modifications to damage/defense/etc needs some sort of definition. Perhaps further down the line I can move some of that into the actual xml and get it into editing as well, but that is further down the line.
Cheers,
Simon