Equipment, Skills & Quality

Sometimes equipment is of a higher quality. Such items are more expensive, but grant the user bonuses to attribute checks made while using them. Equipment contributes to a dice pool if it is of high quality or greater. Performing the action already assumes you are using appropriate basic tools.

Standard equipment doesn’t contribute to the dice pool; it merely allows you to perform the action without suffering any penalties for improvised equipment. For example, a rifle allows you to shoot somebody, a lockpick allows you to pick a lock, and a healing pouch allows you to perform emergency medical aid.

To gain an equipment bonus, you need high quality equipment or better. A high quality sword gives you +1d6 to your attack dice pool, a high quality lockpick gives you +1d6 to your AGI dice pool when picking a lock, and so on.

You can also improvise equipment if you don’t have the right tools available. This inflicts a -2d6 penalty to your dice pool. You can use a hairpin to pick a lock, but that’s an improvised item.

This same rule applies in combat. When trying to attack somebody, the character rolls a dice pool made up of an attribute, a skill, and sometimes equipment bonuses.

An item cannot change quality, or be upgraded to a higher quality.

The table below details the various quality levels.

Dice Pool. This indicates the contribution to a dice pool that high quality equipment grants (subject to minimum skill limits).

Rarity. This is an indication of how common high quality equipment is.

Min. Skill. Effective equipment quality is limited by skill level – you cannot gain more dice in your dice pool from equipment than you have from skills. If you have 2d6 in your dice pool from your lockpicking skill, you cannot gain an additional 3d6 from mastercraft lockpicks.

This applies to all equipment, including gear, weapons, and armor. If the user does not have the minimum skill level required to benefit from equipment’s quality, then the quality of the equipment is effectively reduced to match the user’s skill level. For example, a character with 3 ranks (2d6; skilled) in light armor treats artisanal light armor as exceptional, and only gains the benefits of exceptional light armor.

Upgrades. Weapons and armor can be upgraded, adding new features. The upgrade capacity is given by its size (for weapons) or type (for armor). Higher quality weapons and armor gain additional upgrade slots.

Armor. High quality armor gains a SOAK bonus.

Vehicle. High quality vehicles gain a SPEED bonus.

Quality Price Rarity Dice Pool Min. Skill Upgrades Armor Vehicles

Improvised - - -2d6 - - - -

Standard Normal Common - - - - -

High x3 then +100 Uncommon +1d6 1 (1d6; proficient) +1 +2 SOAK +1 SPEED

Exceptional x5 then +250 Rare +2d6 3 (2d6; skilled) +1 +4 SOAK +2 SPEED

Mastercraft x 10 then +500 Very rare +3d6 6 (3d6; expert) +2 +6 SOAK +3 SPEED

Artisanal x100 then +1,000 Very rare +4d6 10 (4d6; mastery) +2 +8 SOAK +5 SPEED

Legendary x1,000 then +2,500 Unique +5d6 15 )5d6; authority) +3 +10 SOAK +10 SPEED