# Magic Items
There are two types of magic item. True magic items are permanent magic items used as loot during adventures and rewards for success. One-use items (mainly potions, oils, and runes) are magical treasure on which to spend hard-won gold. (See Loot for notes on the wealth successful characters earn each adventure.)
# One-Use Items
The common types of one-use items include potions, oils, and runes.
# True Magic Items
Magic items are permanently enchanted objects. You can find them during an adventure or receive them as gifts and rewards from NPCs, but you’ll seldom find anyone willing to sell one.
# Magic Item Personalities & Quirks
Every magic item in is alive, in a sense, and possesses a personality you have to interact with when you start using the item, establishing and maintaining a rapport with it. What that rapport means varies from item to item and is usually controlled by the GM. Some items talk with their user. Others communicate in bursts of emotion or slight motion.
Each item has a personality that is largely defined by its quirk. What you can count on as a default is that nearly all magic items want to be used and used well.
As an adventuring hero, you can handle a number of true magic items equal to your level. Items one tier above you count as two items, and epic items count as three items if you are an adventurer tier character.
If you are carrying and wielding a number of items that is equal to or lower than your current level, the magic item personality quirks will tug at you, giving you sudden urges and desires that will feel natural to give in to. But you’ll be in charge.
If you are carrying and wielding a number of items that is greater than your current level, the magic item personality quirks are going to have more power over you. You’re no longer running the show; instead, the magic items are, to some extent, running you. Herein lies a roleplaying challenge for the player and the GM.
# Minor items
Minor items don’t require attunement and they don’t occupy a slot. They’re often expressions of the fact that magic is everywhere in this world, and are generally more useful for telling interesting stories and setting the scene than as functional parts of heroic arsenals. Minor items don’t have quirks, but a few come equipped with story hooks!
# Types
You can only have one of each type of magic item (or one pair, for boots and gloves). Rings are one for each hand. You can have as many wondrous items as your overall capacity for magic items allows.
| Type of Magic Item | Default Bonus (often +1 adv, +2 champ, +3 epic) |
|---|---|
| Armor, robe, shirt, tunic | Armor Class |
| Arrow, crossbow bolt, slingstone | No default bonus. The most common type of magic ammunition expands crit range by 1 |
| Belt, swordbelt, kilt, girdle | Recoveries per full recovery |
| Book, scroll, manual, grimoire | No default bonus. These items commonly confer knowledge or skill |
| Boots, sandals, slippers, shoes | Disengage checks and other footwork |
| Cloak, mantle, cape | Physical Defense |
| Glove, gauntlet, mitt | No default bonus |
| Helmet, circlet, crown, cap | Mental Defense |
| Necklace, pendant | Save bonus |
| Ring x 2 | No default bonus. Anything goes |
| Shield | Hit points |
| Staff (implement) | Operates as both a wand and a symbol; champion and epic tier only |
| Symbol, holy relic, sacred sickle (implement) | Attack and damage (divine spell or attack); adventurer and champion tier only |
| Wand (implement) | Attack and damage (arcane spell or attack); adventurer and champion tier only |
| Weapon, melee | Attack and damage (using the weapon) |
| Weapon, ranged | Attack and damage (using the weapon) |
| Wondrous item | No default. Anything goes |
# Attunement
To make use of an item’s bonuses and powers you must attune to it. The method of attunement depends on the specific item. Within five minutes you can usually figure out how to attune to an item, except for books, scrolls, tomes, and grimoires, which take hours to read through.
A character can attune to a number of items equal to their level.
# One Size Fits
Magic items shape themselves to suit the person who created them.
# Magic Item Basics
Some magic items are available at any level, with greater bonuses or other effects for champion- and epic-tier versions. Others can be found only at champion or epic levels.
# Default Bonuses
Default Bonuses are on unless they specify otherwise. Magic necklaces have the only default bonus that is defined as provisional, a save bonus that kicks in when your hit points are low.
# Magic Item Powers
Unless otherwise specified, magic item powers with a recharge chance have to be activated and require a free action to use. They will also have a trigger condition that you must meet to use the item.
Magic item powers that do not specify a recharge chance or a specific usage pattern have powers that are always available.
The majority of magic item powers list a recharge number (6+, 11+, or 16+). You can count on using a recharge power once a full recovery, but subsequent uses depend on successful recharge rolls. After the battle in which you’ve used an item’s power, roll a d20. If your roll equals or exceeds the recharge number for that item, you can use that item power again that full recovery. If the roll fails, the item power is expended until you take a full heal-up.
# No Stacking Bonuses
You can’t stack magic item bonuses. When two items give the same sort of bonus, take the better bonus of the two rather than adding them together.
For example: you have an amulet that gives +2 AC while you’re in water, and armor that gives +1 AC. You have +1 AC until you go into water and then you have +2 AC (not +3 AC).
Some rare magic items break the no-stacking rule, but each such item description specifically says so. Note, however, that an item that has a default bonus and a power that gives the wearer a short-term bonus of the same type stacks with itself just fine.
Magic item bonuses do stack with other bonuses granted by spells, class features, etc.
# Useful Magic Items by Class
| Class | Magic Items of Particular Use |
|---|---|
| Barbarian | two-handed weapon, light armor |
| Bard | light weapon, light armor, wand/staff |
| Cleric | symbol/staff, heavy armor, simple one-handed weapon, shield |
| Druid | symbol/staff, light armor, simple one-handed weapon, shield |
| Fighter | one-handed martial weapon, heavy armor, shield |
| Monk | bracers, shirt/gi/harness (armor) |
| Necromancer | wand/staff, shirt (armor) |
| Occultist | wand/staff, shirt (armor) |
| Paladin | one-handed martial weapon, heavy armor, shield |
| Psion | wand/staff, shirt (armor) |
| Ranger | one-handed martial weapons, bow, arrows, possibly other ranged weapons, light armor |
| Rogue | light weapon, light armor |
| Sorcerer | wand/staff, shirt (armor) |
| Warlord | light weapon, light armor, shield |
| Wizard | wand/staff, shirt (armor) |
# Artifacts
Artifacts are a special type of unique magic item that have their own story. They’re capable of providing multiple powers and benefits to their bearer, although that power comes at a cost.
Each artifact functions like a normal true magic item of its type, possessing the same default bonus.
Unlike other true magic items, artifacts have more than one power, each with its associated quirk. When you first attune an artifact, choose one of its powers from your tier or lower. Each time you gain a level after that, you can choose to learn another of the artifact’s powers from your tier or lower.
The artifact’s default bonus depends on the highest tier power you have chosen from the artifact. If you have an artifact magic weapon but have only attuned one of its adventurer-tier powers, it functions as an adventurer-tier weapon, granting only a +1 bonus to attack and damage. Attune one of its champion-tier powers and the weapon will blossom into its champion-tier potential, granting a +2 bonus to attack and damage.
On the other hand, you don’t have to attune all of an artifact’s powers and you don’t have to take them in order.
Only one artifact may be carried at a time. In addition, each power you choose from an artifact counts as an additional magic item for the number of true magic items you are allowed to use before your item’s quirks overpower you.
Since acquiring an artifact is a major campaign event and such a big deal, even deific relationships will take notice. Each artifact should have a section on relationships that the artifact more or less requires. If you attune an artifact and don’t have the required relationships, you will soon, as fate and destiny reshape around you! Otherwise the artifact will eventually disappear on you, finding a bearer more to its taste.