The Quick Guide to Items

Magic items are items that allow the user to use magic or miracles without having to learn the spells or miracles. They can be everything from potions of healing, and scrolls to Raise the Dead to life, to flaming swords, wands of Ice Dart, and amulets of toughness.

In game terms they allow the user to cast the spell or miracle with some advantages which are listed below. They require the person who makes the item (or charges it) to have either the enchant item (for spells) or consecrate item (for miracles) to a level at least as good as the spell you’re putting in the item as well as knowing how to cast the spell/miracle.

As you learn more levels of the skill you can make items that contain more powerful spells, make them keyed to a specific race or guild or ensure that they can never be removed from you.

Advantages

Speed – using the activation phrase ‘item do thy work’ you can activate an item to cast a spell that would usually take 30 words.

You can use items when you can’t normally cast spells/miracles – for example when your arm or leg isn’t working you can use a magical item to heal yourself.

Since items are self powered they do not damage your life total when used unlike spells and miracles.

All items other than scrolls do not use any of the users standing/mana to cast the spell. So magic items can be easily used by non mages and miraculous items by non priests.

Items can be used to cast magical spells while wearing metal armour without the penalties that you usually get (increased mana use and additional damage to your current life total).

Disadvantages

In most cases you need to have the item in your possession for 24 hours to ‘attune’ to it and allow you to use it (scrolls and potions are the exception). There is a magical spell that will let you use an item instantly though..

Requires you to permanently use some mana/standing when you create the item, how much depends on exactly what type of item and how powerful the spell/miracle is. This mana/standing never returns unless the item is destroyed or single use items are used up.

Creating items takes time between missions although more expensive items reduce this.

Acquiring items can be expensive or, if picked up during missions, downright dangerous.

Different types of Item

There are 5 different types of magical item:

Potions: A magical liquid that casts the effect embedded in it on the drinker, even if it’s an offensive effect. You can also store more than one effect in a single potion. The mana/standing used to create the potion returns after the potion has been entirely used up.

Scrolls: A scroll is the knowledge of how to cast a specific spell/miracle, if you can read it and have access to the correct magical school/miraculous path then you can use the scroll to cast the spell immediately. For example the spell Raise Dead would allow someone who is Life Aligned and who could read the scroll to raise a dead person back to life, even if they do not know how to cast the Raise Dead miracle normally. However the scroll is only single use and the user need to have the mana or standing to power it…

One-shot items: An item created with a single use of a spell/miracle, they are cheap to make and cheap to buy but can only be used the once. It needs half the usual amount of mana/standing to create a one shot item and once they are used the mana/standing used to create it returns.

Charged items: Items that are created with a number of charge slots of a particular spell/miracle you can then charge the item with a bit of time and mana/standing to enable you to use the spell. The advantage of these items are you can hold quite a lot of charges in relatively cheap items but they do require more permanently used mana/standing when fully charged. Half the power used to normally cast the spell is used to create the ‘charge slot’, another half is permanently used to fill the slot with a charge so you can actually use it, however when you use the charge you can recover the mana/standing used to charge it.

Daily Items: Items that can cast a given spell/miracle once per day and can be used again 24 hours later effectively recharging themselves. These cost 2/3rds of the usual amount of mana/standing to cast the spell.

Permanent items: Permanent items can be really powerful items such as permanently flaming swords, shields that are extremely difficult to break and bracelets that make the user tougher or stronger. Any spell or miracle that lasts for 15 minutes can be made into a permanent item (which is basically all the buffing spells/miracles). By using the same amount of mana/standing that would normally take to cast the spell 4 times you can have the spell/miracle run for 24 hours, plus if it gets dispelled it will effectively turn off for 15 minutes and turn back on afterwards! (something no other type of item or spell will do). The downside of permanent items is that they require an expensive item to create, permanently magical swords, shields and armour needs to be of a superior quality which is expensive and even bracelet and rings can cost a lot depending on how powerful the item you’re trying to create is.

Identifying Items

Items can be spotted by their magical/miraculous aura (either from Magic Sight or Power Sight depending on which type of item they are) and then further identified by some spells in the general magic list or the discern path miracles. They are usually better than normal quality so could be spotted with the Evaluate skill or Recognise Magic/Miracle if they are currently working.
If it is a scroll and you can read the runes on it you can determine what spell/miracle the scroll contains.
Potions can be identified by small sips if you know how to create magical/miraculous items or occasionally by other means such as the smell.
An easier way to identify the item is to let someone attune to it for 24 hours, however that could backfire if it’s cursed or a dangerous effect (like the disease miracle for example).

by Peter