Item Qualities Overview

Some equipment features special qualities that add variety and depth to the weapons, armor, and items your character may encounter. In our game, item qualities are special rules that can change how the item acts. They let us add more variety to an item than we could by only manipulating its raw characteristics. They also make the items more interesting for you, since many qualities may require you to think about your character using that item differently.

Special qualities are generally either passive or active. Passive qualities are always “on” and require no activation on the part of the user. Active qualities must be triggered by the user, often by spending one or more a to activate the effect.

Item qualities usually have a number associated with them. This is their rating. Ratings affect qualities in different ways, depending on the quality in question.

Active qualities require a a to activate unless otherwise stated in their description. Active item qualities on weapons can only trigger on a successful attack, unless specified otherwise.

Finally, we should note that not all of these qualities are appropriate for all settings. However, we have included the complete list of item qualities here, partially because it’s not all that long, and partially because most of the qualities are general enough that with the right tweaks to their flavor, you could actually justify them in more settings than you would expect.

Base Damage: What is It?

Some qualities talk about a weapon’s or attack’s base damage. What we mean by that is the damage listed in the weapon’s profile, without any modifiers added from talents or successes.

If the weapon is a weapon that has a damage that is added to one of the user’s characteristics (usually Brawn), then the base damage is the weapon’s damage plus the user’s characteristic.