Custom Magic Items

While we present a fairly robust collection of magic items, you can never have too many implements for driving your enemies before you. To this end, the system below presents a workshop full of arcane secrets for creating and upgrading magical weapons, armor and shields... from your garden-variety flaming, freezing, electrical, acid swords to hideously spiked, almost-sentient walls on your arm and suits of shapeshifting platemail. This system also provides a toolbox for characters looking to enchant or upgrade their natural weapons, so long as they are willing to spend magic item slots on these enchantments as is normal.

Creating Custom Magic Items

Customized arms and armor, like other magic items of their type, have a normal set of mundane statistics, and a bonus to attack rolls or AC based on their Item Tier. Like any other magic item, a custom item’s Tier ranges from Lesser item to Artifact. For customized arms and armor, its Tier determines the number of points that may be spent on enchantments in creating the item.

• Lesser items: 1 point
• Greater items: 2 points
• Relic: 3 points
• Artifact: 4 points

Enchantments are magical enhancements and powers a custom item possesses. There are several important limitations on the use of enchantments: An enchantment may only be added to a given item once unless stated otherwise.

Each enchantment has a point cost which must be spent to add the enchantment to a magic item. Thus, for example, a custom Relic weapon could consist of three 1-point enchantments, a 2-point enchantment and a 1-point enchantment, or a single 3-point enchantment.

Each enchantment is labeled with one or more of the [Armor], [Shield, and [Weapon] tags to determine to which types of items it can be applied. For example, only an [Armor] enchantment can be added to a suit of armor, and if that enchantment also possesses the [Shield] tag, it could be applied to a shield instead.

Many enchantments are more powerful on equipment of higher tiers, listing different or additional effects for higher tiers of items. Other enchantments only list effects for high-tier items despite a lower point value. No enchantment may be added to an item of a lower tier than the lowest for which it lists effects. If multiple tiers are listed before a single effect – for example, "Lesser/Greater" – then the effect is the same for each of those tiers.

Even if a creature possesses more than one item with the same enchantment, they only gain the benefits of that enchantment once. However, if an enchantment has a limited number of uses per [Encounter] or [Scene], possessing multiple items with that enchantment grants an appropriate number of additional uses.

Upgrading Unique Items

As characters level up, they may find that their old items are less effective than they used to be. Using your old Blaze Bolter next to a party member who just moved up to an Oxidized Slab can be disappointing. The rules for customized equipment allow you to address this issue by upgrading magic weapons, armor, and shields – custom-generated or otherwise – by raising their item tier and adding enchantments.

To upgrade a piece of equipment, simply increase its Tier, increasing its attack or AC bonus appropriately, and add a number of points worth of enchantments equal to the allotment for its new tier, minus the allotment for its old tier. For example, to upgrade the aforementioned Blaze Bolter, a Greater item, to an Artifact, you would add 2 points' worth of enchantments since Artifacts gain 4 points of enchantments and Greater Items gain 2. The new abilities granted by these enchantments are in addition to all of the item's old abilities. Like most aspects of item acquisition, we leave the in-game process of upgrading items in this fashion to you.

Bear in mind that the abilities of existing magic items may not be as effective at higher tiers as similar low-value enchantments. Upgrading a unique weapon, suit of armor, or shield is an excellent way to keep your favorite toys relevant, but it has the potential to result in items that are weaker than expected for their Tier. Players should work closely with their GMs when upgrading an item to avoid shooting themselves in the foot.