This is what everyone’s been waiting for, right? In the implied setting of DFRPG, “low-level” magic items are common enough that they can often be found in “magic shops” in cities or larger towns. The selection presented here represents those. There are many more, and more powerful items, but those are not for sale and are usually found in dungeons.

Potions

Potions follow the same basic rules as the non-magical concoctions from the previous post, but they’re magic items. This means they can be detected as such by someone with Magery, and their ongoing effects can be ended by Dispel Magic against the skill of the maker. That’s 15 for potions bought in town, but it could be higher or lower for found potions.

Multiple doses of the same potion usually aren’t cumulative, but different potions can affect someone at the same time.

This is where you have grenades that are more damaging versions of the alchemical ones, as well as one that puts people to sleep and another one that prevents wizardly casters from using magic for a while. Drinkable potions include a whole range of healing potions, attribute boosters for ST, DX, Basic Speed and Perception, stuff that gives you flight, invisibility or extra DR for a while, and Thieves’ Oil which makes you extra-slippery.

Scrolls

Each scroll contains a single use spell. There’s some rules about how long it takes to draw and unroll them in combat, and after that you take twice as long as normal to cast the spell.

To create a scroll, you decide what spell is inside (pick from any list!) and then whether the scroll is wizardly, clerical, druidic or universal. Universal scrolls can be used by anyone, even a “mundane”. The others can only be used by characters with the appropriate power trait.

Finally, a scroll can be charged or not. A charged scroll contains all the energy necessary to power the spell, and costs nothing from the reader. An uncharged one drains the reader’s FP. In any case the scroll’s monetary cost scales with its energy cost.

Delvers prefer universal charged scrolls, of course, but as you might imagine those are the most expensive of all. Further restrictions decrease the cost. Scrolls bought in town have a skill level of 15 both for casting the spell and for resisting dispelling attempts. Found scrolls will often have higher skill.

Magic Weapons and Armor

The stars of the show! Weapons and armor most often contain permanent, always-on enchantments, and this is the list of enchantments purchasable by PCs. To create a magic item, you first buy the base “mundane” weapon or armor with all its modifiers, and then apply the enchantments you want to it. These add directly to the final price.

When a PC buys a magic item in town, they get to decide whether the enchantment is wizardly, clerical, or druidic (which will matter for rules described in DF: Exploits). These purchases can happen either in play or as part of character creation, though few delvers will have the money to spare at that time.

Visits to Ye Olde Magic Shoppe are abstracted by default, just like all other shopping in the game, and the GM decides what’s available every time the PCs return to Town from adventuring.

The most noticeable class of enchantments here are your standard “plusses”: to-hit, damage and Parry for weapons, Defense Bonus and Block for shields, Defense Bonus and DR for armor. Each of these is a separate enchantment and has one or two levels available in the table.

Weapons can also benefit from one of a set of elemental damage adders (flaming, lightning, freezing), from a Penetrating enchantment that helps get past DR, and from being made magically unbreakable. Armor and shields can have their weight reduced, and anything can be made glowy so that it illuminates like a torch on command.

That’s it for purchasable magic gear. Want something more powerful or with a different effect? Go delve a dungeon and find something from the expanded GM-only list from Exploits.

Magic As a Service

The typical delver party arrives in town after a delve carrying a cartload of precious loot, and also a bevy of wounds, curses, severed limbs or even the dead bodies of their companions who didn’t make it. Fortunately, they can “generously donate” some of that treasure to the local temple in order to solve their other problems.

HP is super cheap to recover at $2/point. Mundane and supernatural afflictions cost $50 and $100 respectively, which is also pretty cheap assuming you managed to find any loot at all. Things get more expensive when it comes to repairing permanent crippled body parts ($750) or outright dismemberment ($1600). And bringing someone back from the dead costs $15000.

PC clerics who know the right spells can do almost all of these in the field, but the possibility of paying to have it done automatically in town is still nice. Presumably restoring or regrowing limbs and eyes can still be done this way even if the PC cleric tried and failed, which is nice.

The one exception here is resurrecting the dead, which only the town priest can do. I bet that’s why it costs so much more. No competition from PCs!

This is actually present as a very small text box in the character sheet at the very end of the book, and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. It’s quite possible I’ll run into the official explanation in some other book as I go through them.

Coming up Next

Sample characters!