Magic items play an important role in fantasy RPGs. Usually too expensive to be included with starting equipment, they serve as short-term goals for player characters to strive toward while they adventure, and rewards for defeating difficult foes. Some magic items have obvious synergy for characters based on the choices they already made, but sometimes finding an interesting magic item can completely change the direction of a character's progression as it incorporates the new tool into its style. Realm of Runes includes several broad categories of magic items to add life and flavor to characters and campaigns, and also includes a universal system through which characters can empower their magic items, making them truly incredible.
MAGICAL RESONANCE
As a result of living in a world suffused with magic, all characters have a pool of latent magical energy. Magic items have additional or enhanced effects when allowed to resonate with this latent energy. This can be done in two distinct, but related ways: direct expenditure and investment. Sometimes items are able to function with both methods, and the effects of one can even influence the other. Magic items respond to their users' force of personality, and so the size of a character's Resonance Pool is determined by its Charisma modifier.
Direct expenditure of Resonance usually results in an immediate, potent effect. For some items, this might cause it to directly cast a spell on behalf of the wielder using Resonance as the power source. Other items might increase their area of effect when the user spends Resonance, or empower their effects in other ways. For example, if you spend Resonance while drinking a healing potion, which provides fast healing based on dice, the minimum result you can heal each time becomes the average result. If you are worried about rolling low results in a tight situation, this serves as insurance against bad results. If you're feeling lucky, you can still drink the potion without using Resonance. With the exception of items that directly convert Resonance into spells, you never have to spend Resonance to activate an item. That healing potion will always restore your Hit Points when you need it, even if you've already spent your entire pool for the day.
Investing Resonance in magic items provides a longer-term effect, which typically lasts for the rest of the day. One important category of magic items are skill-boosting Wondrous Items. Using these items always provides a bonus to checks involving the skill they were designed to augment, like safe-cracker's gloves for Legerdemain or an esoteric monocle for Occultism. If you Invest your Resonance in the item, though, it rewards you by increasing the size of the bonus by a factor of four. Other items that use a direct expenditure of Resonance have more efficient exchanges of effect for each Resonance spent when in Invested, like the potency crystal. While the crystal is attached to a weapon, the wielder can spend a Resonance Point to give the weapon the magic rune for 1 minute, which is always useful in a pinch. If you Invested the crystal first, activating it becomes a Free Action (instead of an action) and the rune persists for an hour (instead of a minute). This sort of interaction really helps out those that don't have great Charisma, letting them get the most bang for each point spent.
Some classes in Realm of Runes are naturally charismatic, and many of them are so focused on that ability that they often find themselves with more Resonance than they can spend. While this is a great problem to have, many of these classes find alternate ways to make their Resonance work for them. Sorcerers can learn to use a direct expenditure of Resonance instead of adding a casting action when using metamagic in combat, allowing them to use these tactics without taking up as much of their turn, or for spells that normally take so long to cast that it would otherwise be impossible to fit metamagic in the turn, too. Some less charismatic classes learn to use Resonance in alternate ways to extend it instead of spend more of it. Wizards, as consummate students of magic, can learn to use their Intelligence to determine the size of their pool instead of Charisma. Tricky Rogues, by contrast, can learn to simply defraud magic items, which gives them a chance of tricking items into acting as if Resonance was spent when it wasn't.
MAGIC RUNES
One of the most flexible categories of magic items, runes are portable enchantments that are affixed to weapons, armor or shields. Runes have widely varying effects. Some have different effects depending on the type of item they are etched onto, and some have an increased effect the more of the same rune are affixed to the same item. Better still, runes are transferable. Anyone can use the Crafting skill to move a rune from one item to another eligible item, or to a specially prepared runestone, which can hold it indefinitely. So if you find (or loot!) a weapon with a rune you really like, but on a weapon that doesn't work for you, you can transfer that rune to your preferred weapon instead, assuming that your weapon isn't already full of runes. As mentioned in the item quality post, the total runes an item can have is based on its level of quality. All runes are priced separately from the items they are attached to, so determining the price of an item with runes added, or removed, is as simple as adjusting the price by the cost of the rune that was moved.
POTIONS AND OILS
Potions are consumables that the user must drink in order for the effect to happen, while oils are consumables that are slathered on a target in order to affect that target. The most iconic potions and oils are bottled spells and spell oils, which contain the essence of a previously cast spell within them. When these items are used, the drinker or target is affected as if that spell had just been cast on them. Even though these are probably the items most frequently thought of when it comes to potions and oils, there are also more specialized potions and oils that provide effects not duplicated by spells. These are often created by taking an existing spell and brewing it in such a way that it takes on entirely new properties. The healing potion mentioned before is a good example. It takes the instantaneous heal spell and turns it into longer-lasting fast healing that activates each turn in combat, healing more and longer than the spell could achieve in the moment.
SCROLLS & RITUAL INSTRUCTIONS
Scrolls hold stored spellcasting potential. Unlike bottled spells, the potential is captured before the spell manifests instead of after. These items, when read properly, cause the user to complete the casting process, acting as the one that actually cast the spell for all purposes, including making important decisions for spells with a menu of different effects. This can allow even those that cannot normally cast magic to use scrolls to access it in a consumable fashion if they invested in skill with the scroll's magical tradition.
Ritual Instructions, by contrast, contain all of the processes and incantations required to cast a spell as a ritual. Any character in Realm of Runes can use these items to cast the spell as a ritual this way. While spells can be learned as rituals directly through feats or other investment, finding or buying these instructions makes this casting process even more accessible. Better still, Ritual Instructions are not consumed when used, and the same set of instructions can be used over and over again for utility or quality-of-life spells, like endure elements, that a character might want to use a lot without burning all of their spell slots to do so.
STAVES
Many iconic fantasy spellcasters carry a staff, and these items are particularly helpful in Realm of Runes. Each staff is a custom magic item that contains the spellcasting potential for any number of spells, of any spell level. If you have a staff, you can use it one (or both) of two ways. Resonant Casting uses the direct expenditure of Resonance to cause the staff to cast one of its spells for you, using the staff's statistics, which can let anyone with Resonance pick up a staff and do magic. Invested Casting, on the other hand, lets you use your own spell slots or Spell Points to cast the spells in the Staff. This lets you use your own statistics instead of the staff's, but also makes it possible to cast spells that are normally beyond the purview of your magical tradition, adding a great deal of versatility to any caster that gets its hands on one of these potent items.
WANDS
Wands are another tool of particular importance to spellcasters, though some wands can be used by anyone even if they don't cast spells. One type of wand, the spell-storing wand, is capable of converting the user's Resonance into the stored spell. It can do this for anyone, any number of times. Since it metabolizes the user's latent magic, it never runs out of charges or loses potency. If you have a spell-storing wand with a spell you like, it will always by there for you when you need it. And if you spent all your Resonance in a day and can't use it anymore, you friends can do it instead if you still need more from it.
Wands can do more than just cast stored spells, though, and these other effects tend to be even more important for spellcasters than spell-storing wands. Metamagic wands hold the essence of a metamagic ability instead of a stored spell. A caster using the wand can use that metamagic as if it possessed the ability itself, adding instant versatility to any caster. Other wands function for spells in much the same way that weapons do for other characters: providing bonuses to attacks, save DCs, or other potent effects when using the wand in combat or spell duels.
WONDROUS ITEMS
The broadest category of magic items, Wondrous Items are nifty enchanted items that can have many different effects, and this group serves as a catch-all for any magic items that don't fit into any of the other categories. From special musical instruments like the argent instrument or war drums, to gems that substitute a specific ability modifier as the key ability for any check, to fantasy staples like inter-dimensional equipment containers and rings that make you invisible, Wondrous items have something for everyone, whatever their focus.
Magic items can help shore up a character's weak areas, or make them truly exceptional in areas where they are already good. Inherent Resonance makes these items even better a limited number of times each day, but makes sure that it doesn't get in the way of using them at all. Whether you seek out the magic items that suit your style, or gleefully experiment with whatever magic trinkets you find as you go, magic items and Resonance keep things from being stale or predictable over a long campaign. Next time we continue our exploration of classes with the Paladin, the divine champion with the ability to cause certain magic items to seek them out, instead of the other way around.
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