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Let's Read DFRPG Adventurers: Misc. Gear
If you’re like me, your eyes tend to sorta skip over the equipment section that comes after armor and weapons. Today, I’m going to have to stop and read it with more attention, as it’s still fairly important here. As I’ve said before, every last pound of gear matters in the DFRPG.
The section of Chapter 7 that covers Miscellaneous Gear is split into three subsections, and we’ll cover all three here.
Some pieces of gear in this chapter are described as “basic equipment” for a certain skill. This means you need them to use that skill normally, and if you’re forced to improvise or go without you’ll face a daunting -5 or -10 penalty. Items that are high-quality might give a +1 or +2 instead.
Unlike weapons and armor, each item here gets at most one or two lines about its function and rules, followed by a cost and weight. They each have their uses, though.
Basics
This is the kind of stuff that’s relatively inexpensive and available at any town worthy of the name. There are many small sections here that I will discuss in summary instead of reprinting the contents of the book.
Camping and Survival Gear contains tents, canteens, blankets, backpacks, and all that good stuff that often gets overlooked. Of note here are the Personal and Group Basics items, which are an abstract ball of knicknacks that are basic equipment for Survival. The first one is for a single person, containing stuff like utensils and some basic fire-making items. The group version has cookpots, a rope, a utility hatchet, and other things you need to help set up camp for 3-8 people. It weights 20 lbs but you can distribute its weight among several PCs. These don’t include shelter, so you might also want tents and bedrolls or sleeping furs. This is also where you find trail rations.
Combat Accessories has a selection of different quivers, but also a sturdy belt that can support 2 or 3 melee weapons hanging from it, lanyards to mitigate those pesky “weapon dropped” rolls, and hobnailed boots that let you ignore poor footing but make a lot of noise. If you need more than 2-3 weapons ready to draw at all times, wear more belts! I think that’s how D&D 3e’s fashion came about.
Containers are your chests, barrels and buckets. In my experience you tend to find those in dungeons more often than you need to buy them. There are also stats for an empty crystal vial of the sort that usually contains potions, and which you could use to collect samples of corrosive goo and the like.
Light Sources covers expensive beeswax and stinky tallow candles, as well as lanterns and torches. Detailed rules for lighting are in Exploits.
Medical Gear has bandages which are basic equipment for First Aid, a proper first-aid kit which gives +1, a liter for carrying the wounded, and surgical equipment that can be used for field Surgery or to remove valuable dead monster bits without ruining them.
Miscellaneous Hardware is, yes, the miscellanea among the miscellanea. Various ropes, chains, a ladder, and poles in both six- and ten-foot varieties.
Musical Instruments are for bards and for anyone else who wants to make noise, which requires no skill. There’s a “baseline” two-handed stringed instrument which can be anything from an ancient lyre to a modern acoustic guitar. Woodwinds are lighter but you can’t speak while using them. A harp or zither is more expensive but can be played quietly enough to not be heard through a door. And if you’re more of a bard-barian type horns, drums, and bagpipes can be heard for miles!
Tools is a large category that has your crowbars, hammers, saws, pickaxes and shovels. It also has a utility machete that’s crappy as a weapon but useful for cutting foliage, and more specialized things like tongs, scales, and even a backpack toolkit for field armorers.
Writing Equipment has somewhat anachronistic sheets of paper in bundles of 20, a scribe’s kit with quill, inkwell and penknife, and a humble piece of chalk for writing on dungeon walls.
Special Orders
You can start with these when creating a character, but acquiring them in play requires finding a specialist vendor that deals with them (alchemist, eccentric artificer, smuggler, etc.).
Adventure-Wear covers a large set of specialized and somewhat anachronistic fashion, like the Delver’s Webbing that works like a modern tactical harness full of pouches and pockets, or helmet lamps.
Camping Gear has alchemical matches, a compass, a timed candle that burns at a precise fixed rate, and special rations. Elven rations are very expensive but three times lighter. Dwarven ones weight twice as much as the standard human stuff but give you poison resistance after eating them for a month or more.
Combat Accessories here cover bandoleers for those people who absolutely must carry 24 throwing daggers on them, a variety of crossbow accessories, and even lamps and lecterns that you can bolt onto your shield.
Covert Ops and Security is known as “thief gear” in other games. A very large section that includes everything from your classic set of lockpicks and trap-disarming tools to dungeon camouflage and both smoke and flash bombs for those who love a good ninja vanish move. It’s also where you find stats for padlocks, which again are something you will run into in the dungeon more than you’ll need to buy.
Esoteric Supplies includes the healing kits for the cleric’s and druid’s special skills, and your usual selection of holy symbols and holy water.
Optics has a bull’s eye lantern that projects a long beam instead of a small circular light, periscopes, telescopes, and mirrors.
Scholarly Gear includes professional cartography kits, waterproof scroll cases, self-righting hourglasses, as well as manuals and tomes that can let you roll at default for knowledge skills you don’t have, or give a bonus to those you do.
Concoctions
These aren’t magical, but they follow the same rules as Special Order gear, and so might not be easily available after character creation.
Chemicals are mostly throwable grenades that burst on impact. They can be filled with acid, alchemist’s fire, glue, or visibility dust. There are also glow vials which illuminate as much as a torch when activated but don’t use fire.
Natural Preparations include a selection of drinkable druidic anti-toxins, and bundles of garlic and wolfsbane for use against vampires and werewolves.
Poisons are fantasy poisons that act fast enough to affect combat, dealing some amount of damage at once when the victim fails a resistance roll. They’re too fast for anti-toxins, which only help against stuff with ongoing effects. Some are utility compounds that you spread on your bladed weapons, others are grenades. They range from the very weak to the terrifyingly deadly.
Impressions
I ended up reading this section more closely than I had in years, which is a good thing! A lot of the basic items here are stuff that remains useful throughout a whole campaign, as they can’t easily be replaced with spells or magic items.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Arcturus Pankrator after Adventure 1
An update to one of the player characters for my solo Hell’s Rebels campaign. This is Art after the end of Adventure 01, with all advancements in stats and gear included.
His description and backstory remain the same and can be seen in the post for his starting version.
Art is our second-best combatant in terms of sheer effectiveness, a small distance behind Jade. She can just stab fools, while he usually has to get in close and wrestle with them for a bit before doing damage. While doing this he’s vulnerable to stuff like damaging auras, poisonous or caustic skin, spiked armor and other similar effects. And, of course, to other foes deciding to strike at him mid-grapple.
But he’s also tough enough to take the hits, at least for a while, and he’s been extremely fun to play. When I’m stuck thinking about optimal tactics or in-character motivations for choosing this plan over the other, I can always count on the little Arcturus in my head to go “forget all this! CHAAAARGE!”. And even if he takes a couple more turns to dispatch an opponent, that opponent is doing nothing else but grappling with him during all that time.
His backstory as the Knight of the Deep hasn’t mattered much yet, but him being an Atlantean and thus unhindered by water has come in handy in a couple of spots already.
Arcturus started out with the default 250 points for DFRPG PCs, and at the end of Adventure 01 he’s currently at 271 points plus 18 unspent ones for a total of 289. He’s saving up for one of Extra Attack or Unarmed Master and should get it early in adventure 02.
Points-wise, he’s the character who benefitted the most from our combat skill house rules, and he also boasts increased Lifting ST to make him an even more terrifying wrestler.
Gear-wise, he now has a very nice suit of magic armor that was looted from a boss and properly purified, and an amulet that makes him very resistant to magic, so some of his biggest weaknesses are now nicely shored up.
Character Sheet
ST 14 {40}; DX 15 {100}; IQ 10 {0}; HT 12 {20};
Damage 1d/2d; Basic Lift 28.9kg; HP 14; Will 10; Per 10; FP 12; Basic Speed 7 {5}; Basic Move 8 {5};
Advantages
- Amphibious {10}
- Combat Reflexes {15}
- Enhanced Parry (Unarmed) 3 {15}
- Gills {10}
- Lifting ST 3 {9}
- Trained by a Master {30}
- Wrestling Master {10}
- Reputation (All the time, everyone but Thrune supporters): +1 {3}
Disadvantages
- Code of Honor (Chivalry) {-15}
- Impulsiveness (12) {-10}
- Obsession (Find Shensen) (12) {-5}
- Overconfidence (12) {-5}
- Sense of Duty (Companions) {-5}
- Wealth (Struggling) {-10}
Skills
- Carousing (E) HT {1} - 12
- Grappling (A) DX+5 {20} - 20
- Hiking (A) HT-1 {1} - 11
- Knife (A) DX+1 {4} - 16
- Knot-Tying (E) DX {1} - 15
- Stealth (A) DX-1 {1} - 14
- Swimming (E) HT {1} - 12
- Unarmed Striking (A) DX+2 {8} - 17
Chi Skills
- Immovable Stance (H) DX {4} - 15
- Push (H) DX {4} - 15
- Throwing Art (H) DX {4} - 15
Loadout
- Large Knife: $40, 0.5kg.
- Clothing: $0, 1kg.
- Moly Amulet: $23600, 0.25kg.
- Pouch: Carries 1.5kg of small items. $10, 0.1kg.
- Visibility Dust: $50, 0.5kg.
- 2 x Silver Coin $20, 0.01kg.
- 12 x copper coin: $1, 0.01kg
- 1 x Healing Potion, Minor: Heals 1d HP. $120, 0.25kg.
- Nox’s Armor: DR 7 to the front of the body, 4/2 everywhere else except the head. $5425, 13.5kg.
Combat
- Defenses
- Dodge: 11
- Parry (Knife): 12F
- Parry (Grappling): 17F
- DR:
- Body: 7 (front) or 4/2 (back)
- Face: 0
- Skull: 2
- Elsewhere: 4/2
- HP: 14
- FP 12
- Control Maximum: 19
- 1 to 8: -2
- 9 to 18: -4
- 19 to 27: -6
- 28 to 37: -8
- 38 or more: -12
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Attacks
- Large Knife (16): 2d-2 cut, Reach C-1; or 1d imp, Reach C.
- Karate Punch (17): 1d+2 cr, Reach C.
- Karate Kick (15): 1d+4 cr, Reach C-1.
- Wrestling Grab (20): 2d+3 control, Reach C.
- One-handed grab (20): 2d+1 control, Reach C.
Unspent Points: 18
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Let's Read DFRPG Adventurers: Armor and Shields
Continuing our read through of Chapter 7, we now go through shields and armor.
Shields
D&D shields are just an extra bit of armor you can tack onto the one you’re wearing, but DFRPG shields are weapons that have a few extra defensive rules specific to them.
With the Shield skill you can use a shield to feint, bash people’s faces in, and block incoming melee or ranged attacks. Just holding a shield also makes it easier to defend yourself in other ways, too. Shield bashes are back on the weapon tables, so this section focuses on the rest of their stats.
The most important stat here is the Defense Bonus, which goes from 1 to 3 depending on the size of the shield. This gets added directly to all of your active defense scores, including Block. Then come the usual price and weight. Compared to the stuff on the melee weapons table, shields are pretty cheap but extremely heavy.
The table starts with cloaks, which are popular with fencers. To use a cloak in combat, you hold it in your hand instead of wearing it around your neck. You can feint and block with it, and even grapple by entangling foes since it’s flexible. For the same reason, though, you can’t bash people with a cloak and a failed block endangers your arm. A light cloak reaches your waist when worn, a heavy one reaches your ankles. Even the heavy cloak is lighter than a small shield.
Proper shields come in Small, Medium, and Large varieties. All of them are made from wood with a few metal bits and possibly a leather covering on the outside. They let you block and bash as described above, make shield rushes, and are of course a lot sturdier than a piece of cloth with delusions of grandeur. DFRPG doesn’t really deal with shield breakage, so the biggest game effect of this sturdiness is that shields can take all of the modifiers we’ll list below, while cloaks can only take Ornate.
Light and Medium shields are available as either traditional shields or bucklers. A buckler is held by a handle instead of strapped to your arm, so you can’t use that hand to hold anything else but can drop the buckler as a free action if you need it. DFRPG makes you use different skills for shields and bucklers, but I tend to collapse them into a single skill instead.
Large shields offer excellent DB but get in the way of your attacks unless you have the Shield-Wall Training advantage (available only to Knights).
Shield Modifiers
Like with weapons, these relate to how the shield is constructed and are independent from magic enchantments.
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Balanced gives +1 to Shield skill.
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Dwarven shields are 100% metal! They do more damage with bashes and rushes, are fireproof, and have double the weight.
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Fine shields do more with less material, and weight only 3/4 the usual amount.
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Meteoric shields are also 100% metal, so they have the same bonuses as Dwarven ones and are impervious to magic like meteoric weapons. Super expensive, though.
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Mirrored shields can reflect gaze attacks to someone else on a successful block. Perseus loves them, Mumm-Ra hates them. It’s cheaper to apply the treatment to a shield that’s already made of metal.
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Orichalcum shields are 100% made of that metal. They’re only 2/3 the weight, fireproof, and have an easier time breaking other weapons, though they don’t do increased damage.
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Ornate lets you impress the gullible as per the weapon modifier, and is the only one on the list that can also be applied to cloaks.
The three “material” modifiers (Dwarven, Meteoric, Orichalcum) are mutually exclusive, but they do stack with Fine, and the weight modifiers multiply together. A Fine Dwarven or Meteoric shield is only 1.5 times as heavy, and a Fine Orichalcum one is half the weight of the standard wooden version.
Armor
In DFRPG, armor provides you with Damage Resistance, which directly subtracts from rolled damage. This means it enters into play after you’ve failed your active defense rolls, as the last line of defense before your HP. There are no such things as armor skills or armor proficiencies here. PCs of any profession can wear any armor. The barriers here are cost and weight: armor is both heavy and expensive.
Money will be much less of a problem once your delver has a few adventures under their belt, but the weight requires either a lot of ST or magic to mitigate. I have seen a wizard who went around in full plate and used constant levitation for locomotion, though, so even that is not an insurmountable obstacle.
The armor list on the DFRPG is the final step on a long evolutionary road. You see, core GURPS had a low-tech armor list that was simple but kind of unrealistic. Stuff like leather and cloth was too light and too expensive, mail was way too cheap, and plate armor was both too cheap and too heavy.
Then came GURPS Low-Tech, which had an extremely detailed armor system that added more hit locations than there were in core GURPS and restrictions of the “you can’t put rigid armor on your waist because it needs to bend” kind.
DFRPG takes that and re-simplifies it a bit. The combat rules still have the same hit locations as core GURPS, but you don’t have to buy a separate piece of armor for every one, and the list of different materials has been pared down considerably. Every line on the table is a different material with a specific DR, and the columns have the price and weight for a full suit of that material and also for smaller pieces covering the head, arms, legs, hands, feet, and body (everything from groin to neck).
If you’re looking for simplicity you can just look at the “Full Suit” column and call it a day. Min-maxers can shop for piecewise armor and cut some corners for the parts they don’t think will be hit often. One-sleeved jackets and backless breastplates are all the rage these days! And who needs helmets anyway, amirite?
The detailed items on the armor table can be divided into these general types:
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Cloth or Leather armor comes in both Light and Heavy varieties (DR 1 or 2). It’s the only type of armor that doesn’t count as being made of metal, which is important for certain environmental hazards.
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Mail armor comes in Light, “standard” and Heavy varieties (DR 3/1, 4/2 or 5/3). Since it’s flexible, it uses the lower value against crushing attacks.
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Scale is cheaper and less vulnerable to crushing attacks than mail, but considerably heavier. It also comes in Light, Standard, and Heavy (DR 3/2, 4/3, and 5). The lighter varieties use the lower number against crushing attacks, but I guess the heavy one is too sturdy for that.
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Segmented Plate (DR 3, 4, or 5) includes “lamellar” armor and sits between mail and scale in terms of cost and weight, and doesn’t have the vulnerability to crushing damage.
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Brigandine (DR 5) is the thing that confused Gygax into inventing studded leather, because it’s metal plates sandwiched between two leather or cloth layers, with the rivets that keep them in place peeking out. About the same price of heavy mail, at half the weight. It counts as plate for modifier purposes.
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Plate armor is the high-end stuff, very expensive and surprisingly light for the amount of protection it provides. Comes in Standard, Heavy, Extra-Heavy and Epic (DR 6 to 9).
You probably won’t be affording anything heavier than light mail or scale out of character creation, and even then you can’t afford a full suit of it without expending some character points on starting money.
You can layer armor, with some restrictions on type. Their DR more or less adds together, but layered armor anywhere other than your head imposes a -1 penalty to DX.
Whether you decide to go for the fiddly rules or not, you have pretty much total freedom to describe your armor as anything you can imagine, as long as it has the right stats.
Armor Modifiers
These have the same base rules as weapon modifiers, adding a Cost Factor to the item’s final price and not counting as magic enchantments. Since the price of armor is so high, a lot of the modifiers that increase DR or reduce weight often end up more expensive than an enchantment that does the same. But the modifier works even without mana, and it stacks with the enchantment, so there’s that.
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Dragonhide is for heavy leather, and can add from +1 to +4 DR depending on the dragon “donor”. This bonus is doubled against fire, and the larger it is the heavier the armor becomes. Even sturdier dragonhide suits exist, as well as ones that resist different elements, but those aren’t for sale and aren’t detailed here.
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Dwarven material science lets DR 6-9 plate armor become sturdier (+1 DR) at no increase in weight.
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Elven mail doesn’t reduce its DR against crushing attacks!
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Fine armor has 3/4 the usual weight, but only fit wearers with the same height and weight as the original owner.
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Giant Spider Silk improves light cloth armor to DR 2 without a weight increase, and can be layered under other armor without a DX penalty.
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Meteoric metal armor resists magic as per the rules for shields and weapons.
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Orichalcum plate armor gives its usual DR at only 1/3 the weight!
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Ornate is the same as for weapons and shields, but you’ll be paying a lot more to bedazzle your armor.
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Spiked plate armor makes people who grapple you regret it.
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Thieves’ mail is blackened and woven for maximum flexibility and minimum noise. Its weight doesn’t count as encumbrance for “thiefy” and parkour skills.
Thieves’ armor cannot also be Ornate, of course, and the two material modifiers are mutually exclusive. They do stack with everything else, though, and the weights are multiplied together as with shields.
Impressions
These armor rules fall right into my “Goldilocks” zone. The Basic Set ones are too simple, the Low-Tech ones too complicated, these are Just Right.
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Some error fixes for past posts
It has come to my attention that I’ve been less than fastidious about proper linking and formatting of my posts. Or, in other words, I’ve been mostly moving them from my “drafts” folder to the “public posts” one and then forgetting all about them without checking for bugs.
This post here is a notice that a bunch of these bugs have been fixed.
Every post in both my Let’s Read and Let’s Play of Hell’s Rebels that contained a broken link to their respective project page now has the correct link.
The very long loot ledger from Adventure 01, Scene 15 contained some characters that Markdown interpreted as a table, and as a result looked all wonky. These characters have been removed.
The post for Adventure 01, Scene 16 wasn’t showing up at all because its filename was incorrect. This has been fixed.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Time for shopping!
As I said in the previous post, it’s time to buy some new gear for our heroes. We have $38045 in our communal treasure for this purpose. I don’t want to spend it all, but some upgrades are still needed.
Arcturus got a cool suit of armor, Urist got the same plus a better weapon, and Jade got out of that with a couple of fairly powerful utility items. So we’ll focus on Jania and Rosalia here for the most part.
I’m also going to abstract things here. Weapons and armor are bought through this tengu weapons dealer Laria introduces, a guy named Chuko. He owns an above-board weapon shop but is also very interested in selling to resistance movements. Arcane and thiefy gear comes from Lady Docur’s school. The PCs pay list price for everything.
Chuko is an important NPC in the later part of the campaign, but I think I actually missed his introduction in my original read-through.
Some of this stuff will certainly consist of special orders, but we can say there’s, uh, three weeks between this adventure and the start of the next one. Nox was supposed to be one of Barzilai’s top lieutenants so I’m sure he’s going to spend some time reorganizing.
Rosalia’s New Equipment
I gave her Heroic Archer with XP, so now we need a proper bow. And since she’s a bard it’s gotta be a Bow-Harp.
Let’s splurge a bit and make it a Balanced Elven Short Bow-Harp for a total of +25 CF. That’s $1300, 1.5kg. She’s gonna name it Allegretto and use it as her Power Item.
We’ll also spend the money for a Cornucopia Quiver that produces Fine arrows. $6010, 0.25kg.
Here’s a formatted list of her new stuff:
- Allegretto: Balanced Elven Short Bow-Harp. thr imp, Acc 2, Range x10/x15. ST 10 but user fires as ST 12. 9 FP as a power item. $1300, 1.5kg.
- Fine Cornucopia Quiver: Produces Fine arrows. $6010, 0.5kg.
Jania’s new Equipment
We’ll replace Jania’s cane with a real smallsword. It’s going to be Fine and Balanced for +7 CF, which means it’s going to be $3200, 0.75kg. This also makes it an excellent power item. Since Jania has Weapon Channeling, we can pay an extra $30 to add the Staff enchantment to this sword. We then also add a Penetrating Weapon enchantment to this one, for $5000.
- The Needle: Fine, Balanced smallsword enchanted with Puissance 1. 14 FP as a Power Item. $8200, 0.75kg.
Urist’s new Equipment
Yes, Urist got plenty of new fighty gear, but let’s also get a High Holy Symbol for him to act as a Power Item.
- High Holy Symbol: +2 to Exorcism, Turning, and other appropriate rolls. 8 FP as a Power Item. $1000, 0.5kg.
Total Expenditure
With this, we spent $16510 on new gear for our PCs, which I think it’s enough. That’s 41 gold coins, 5 silvers, and 10 coppers. It leaves us with $21535 left, or 53 gold, 16 silver, 15 copper. Our previous number of coins didn’t make this a clean subtraction, but we can assume the merchants gave some change back.
And that’s it for our organizational bits between adventures 1 and 2.
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