Personal Artifacts, Creatures, and Shadows

Table of Contents

Introduction

Point items and creatures are an important asset to most characters, and often their trademark. After all, everyone in the family may have Pattern, but only you have the Singing Blade of Ghenesh...

Items and creatures are built in the exact same way: simply choose a basic form and slap Item Qualities and Item Powers on it. The basic form can be anything you want. A dagger, a greataxe, a gecko, an elephant, a ten-mile-long starship. Just remember that ten-mile-long starships don't work in most Shadows, so keeping your ambitions in check will give you a more broadly useful item.

What's the difference between Qualities and Powers? Not much. From the player's point of view, they work exactly the same except that Powers cost more to Confer or Implant on yourself. If you don't plan on Conferring or Implanting, and most people don't, then the two work exactly the same.

In most campaigns, you can buy items and Shadows with up to 4-point qualities and powers.

In my throne wars, you can buy items and Shadows with up to 8 point properties freely.

The cost of an item or Shadow in points is simply the sum of all of its properties.  If you want to buy many of a single kind of object, you can use the quantity multipliers to calculate the appropriate cost.

Examples of Item Construction:

Ryo wants a powerful gun.  He spends 4 points and buys the 'Deadly Damage' property for it.

Heidi wants a weapon she can take anywhere, which can change shape to match the shadow she's in and the technology of that shadow.  She buys the following properties for her weapon:
 

Her weapon can change shape into many sorts of weapons, and manufacture its own ammunition when it's a gun (mold shadow stuff).  It does double damge and only cost her seven points.

Fred spent too many points and can't afford full regular Pattern.  He decides he wants a van he can cruise around shadow in.  He also wants it to shapeshift so it can take on an appropriate form in shadows where cars don't work--a horse.  That works just about everywhere.
 

The total cost is 21 points.  Fairly hefty, but now he doesn't have to hitch rides with people.

Quincy decides to create a squad of 12 guardian golems for his fortress.

The total cost is 28.  He has 12, so that costs *2 on the quantity multiplier table, which means a total cost of 56.  If he wanted a horde of them, he could spend 84 points.

Seeking Items in Shadow:

In addition to buying items with points, you can also seek them in shadow using Pattern or Logrus.  It takes about one day per point using the Pattern, and about 4 hours per point using Logrus tendrils. Note that these items are not Real, which means they're more fragile and subject to manipulation by people with the appropriate power, and also can't just be retrieved by turning a corner and deciding to find them.

Conjuring Items:

In addition to buying items with points or seeking them in shadow, you can conjure or empower them if you have the Conjuration power.  Conjured items are fragile, however.

Normal conjuration can imbue up to 4 point properties, advanced does 8, and exalted does 16. Please see the Magic page for a detailed discussion of Conjuration.


Item Qualities

Vitality


Mobility
 


Stamina
 

Combat/Martial Arts
 

Combat/Tactical Skills
 


Combat/Weapon Skills
 

Resistance To Damage

These are, it should be noted, enhancement qualities.  One can get perfectly mundane, 0 point armor, which will stop non-enhanced weapons, and even slow down 1 and 2 point enhanced damage weapons.  Weapon and armor qualities are roughly equivalent, a four point weapon will nullify most to all of the benefit of four point armor...at the same time, the armor is effectively knocking down the amount of damage the four point weapon inflicts to that of a more normal weapon of that type.  A weapon one step weaker than the armor it faces will require a serious warfare advantage, a weapon two steps weaker will take a severe one to get through, and if it's three steps weaker, you'll probably never hurt them.  [For example, trying to use a mundane, 0 point weapon to get through 4 point armor, you can probably forget about it.  Or a 1 point weapon vs 8 point armor.]  Weapons higher ranked than armor will simply slice through armor as if it wasn't there.

Offensive magic (fireballs, lightning, etc) will be reduced or stopped entirely by armor, dependent on the psyche of the user and the nature of the attack vs. the nature of the armor (Metal armor won't stop lightning very well, for example)


Weapon Damage
 

Weapon Stun Damage


Intelligence / Communication
 


Psychic Quality
 


Psychic Defense

Psychic Defense items can be built with a special modifier:  Automatic On/Off Switch.  This costs 4 extra points, and can be added by anyone who has any level of Conjuration at all.  Items with Automatic On/Off Switches click on automatically as soon as a Psychic Attack starts to brush your defenses.  However, such items are vulnerable to being hacked by a Psyche expert if he has time to study the defenses, enabling him to suddenly just turn the item off if he succeeds.


 

Item Powers

Item Movement Through Shadow

Item Shadow Senses


Item Control Over Shadow
 


Healing
 


Shape Shifting


Item Trump Images
These can only be conjured by people possessing both Trump Artistry and Conjuration, although anyone can buy this attribute for an item with character points.  Items with Trump images cannot be sought in shadow.
 


Power Words
One must know the Power Words power to create items that contain Power Words with conjuration.  One can only put Power Words known by the creator in an item.  One can however, seek such items in shadow, or have such an item at char creation, or use such an item without knowing squat about Power Words.

If sentient, the item uses the Power Word backed by its own psyche and endurance.  In non-sentient items, the Power Word is backed by the psyche and endurance of the person using the item, unless the item has its own Endurance pool.  (Which means that if you have a repeating crossbow that fires power word bolts, you can exhaust yourself eventually)

Magic Defense

Magic Sensing


Magic Use
These items can only be made by characters who know Sorcery, or who are assisted by a Sorceror.  They can, however, be sought in shadow, purchased at character creation, turned into point items if found later, etc.


Quantity Multipliers

Quantity Multipliers can also be applied to shadows if you really desperately need a lot of shadows.


Transferrals and Implants:
Anyone with even the most basic of Conjuration can use these tricks.  Conferral grants an item's power to its wielder.  Implant is used for items which become part of the owner's BODY.

Shadows

All Shadows MUST have at least a point in Class. The other qualities are optional.

Class

This is the sort of Shadow you have, from a metaphysical and locational perspective.

Defences

Each upward degree of Defence includes all the properties of the previous one.

Control of Shadow

Each upward degree of Control of Shadow includes all the properties of the previous one.

Resistance

Each upward degree of Resistance includes all the properties of the previous one.



Last Update May 20, 2003