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.