When making use of equipment in Realm of Runes, that equipment's properties are as important as your skill with it. There are three critically important aspects that influence all equipment, Item Quality, Rarity and Special Materials. Each category impacts equipment differently, and understanding each of them can help ensure that your character gets the most out of its gear over the course of an adventuring career.
ITEM QUALITY
Items in Realm of Runes fall into one of five categories of quality. These categories are, in ascending order of value: Poor, Standard, Fine, Superior and Exquisite. The better quality the item, the easier it is to use, but the more expensive it is and the more difficult it can be to create and maintain. Each category imparts a bonus (or penalty) to all checks made using that item, which includes attacks (for weapons) or skills (for tools and other skill-boosting items). Item quality also impacts how much magic an item can hold. The better the quality, the more magic runes can be etched on it to empower its function.
Poor Quality is the worst quality possible. Most characters that aren't Goblins will probably prefer to avoid this level of quality wherever possible. Poor items can never be enchanted, and actually impose a penalty on checks involving their use. The most frequent reasons a character might use a Poor Quality item are for a check that requires tools they don't have, or if a better quality item is broken. Any check in Realm of Runes that requires tools can be attempted with improvised tools instead, but improvised tools are always of Poor Quality. Similarly, the broken condition causes an item to function as Poor Quality until it is either repaired or destroyed. Poor Quality items are easy to make and repair, and cost half as much as Standard items to make, making these tools of last resort widely accessible if necessary. Even so, Goblins (and those adopted by them) can learn the ability to make Poor Items even further discounted, or even free, and then treat those items as having better quality based on their Crafting proficiency. If you see a Goblin with a junk weapon, there's a good chance its effectiveness will surprise you!
Standard Quality is the baseline assumption. All prices for mundane gear in Realm of Runes assume this level of quality, and it provides no bonuses or penalties when used. These items are reasonably easy to make and repair, and usually quite affordable. You can't go wrong with Standard Quality, but this level of quality is still not good enough to make enchanted items, so you'll probably be looking to upgrade as soon as you can.
Fine Quality is where things start to get interesting. Fine items provide a +1 item bonus to all checks using them. They also have enhanced durability, making them harder to break. Better still, Fine items can be enchanted. Weapons, armor and shields can hold one magic rune, which add special functionality like additional fire damage with each attack, damage resistance, or other powerful effects. Other fine items can be turned into Wondrous Items, which can have numerous and varied special effects. The downside is that Fine Quality multiplies the base cost of a Standard item by 5, and they are similarly more difficult to make and maintain.
Superior Quality provides a +2 item bonus to checks using them, and has further enhanced durability compared to Fine Quality. Superior weapons, armor and shields can hold up to three magic runes, making them truly potent instruments. This level of quality costs 15 times as much as Standard, though, and is even harder to make and maintain than Fine.
Exquisite Quality is the best an item can ever hope to achieve. These items provide a +3 bonus to all checks using them, and Exquisite weapons, armor and shields can hold an impressive 5 property runes. These items are difficult to come by at low levels, though, since they cost 30 times as much as Standard, and are the hardest to make and maintain of all items.
SPECIAL MATERIALS
All items in Realm of Runes have a default material, such as steel or wood, and these properties determine important characteristics like hardness (a resistance to all physical and energy damage) and the number of dents it can take before breaking. These default materials are not the only ones available. There are many more exotic materials to choose from, including fantasy staples like silver, cold iron, adamantine, and more. Each special material has its own special properties, which can influence how an item functions if made from that material. These materials can also typically be used to create special runic circles, which enhance different spells or debilitate certain types of enemies when inside. For example, a weapon made of blood crystal always causes bleed damage, while a runic circle made from it empowers Necromancy spells. A runic circle made of cold iron, on the other hand, applies a debilitating set of conditions to creatures inside the circle that are weak to the material, like most fey and other unnatural beings.
Each special material has a cost multiplier associated with it. For example, silver costs 3 times as much as a default material, while adamantine costs 100 times the base price. As a cost multiplier, special materials and item quality are constantly in a tug of war for your wallet, because a superior silver item results in a price tag 45 times Standard. If you can't afford both right away, which one is more important depends on the situation. A superior weapon is great in most circumstances, but silver is less expensive and might be more important if you have to deal with a clan of werewolves. As you grow in level, you can expect to be able to afford these especially expensive items, find them while adventuring, or make them at significant discounts through the Crafting skill.
RARITY
Rarity in Realm of Runes is not just for items. Things like spells also have an associated rarity. There are four tiers of rarity: common, uncommon, rare and unique. Each tier is progressively harder to find in the world, but also has other mechanical implications that make them worth seeking out simply for their rarity. For example, in the case of spells, an uncommon spell is harder to identify as it's cast than a common spell, and thus less likely to be successfully Counterspelled. Rare is even harder than uncommon, and unique is hardest of all.
Rarity is assigned for one of three reasons, or some combination of all of them. Items and spells might be less common if they are intentionally more powerful than their peers, making them intended to be seeded as rewards for accomplishments or looted from powerful enemies. Increased rarity might also be for story considerations. Certain spells, like teleport and locate for example, have the potential for easily bypassing whole categories of challenges. Keeping these options less common in the world helps make those challenges more relevant for groups that enjoy them, and makes them feel more special if they finally become available. The last reason a spell or item might be less common is for flavor that falls somewhat outside of the typical fantasy milieu. Firearms are a good example, as a category of weapons that are all uncommon by default. Having everyone in the world running around with guns, even flintlock ones, can stretch the feel of a fantasy setting beyond the comfort zone, and so they are made harder to come by to compensate. You can still use one if it excites you, though, and can expect to feel strange and interesting if you do.
Common options are expected to be easily available, both as starting equipment and in basically every settlement. If your character is shopping for any reason, you can expect that each and every common item is at your disposal. Uncommon items are harder to come by. If you're shopping, there's a decent chance that you won't be able to find them, but there are ways. Many options in Realm of Runes grant special access to certain categories of uncommon options. Many ancestries, for example, can treat items with their ancestry trait as common instead of uncommon. You won't find everyone running around the world with firearms, but you'll find a larger proportion of gnomes doing so than anyone else.
Rare options are extremely hard to come by. You're very unlikely to find these while shopping, and they're likely to either be the centerpiece of a campaign arc, or granted by particularly high-level feats, as in the case of the fabled Philosopher's Stone. Unique items are literally one-of-a-kind. You won't find these shopping, as they can only be obtained from the one person that has it. This rarity is typically assigned to options that are made custom, as is the case with alchemical cocktails - special composite elixirs of more than one component elixir mixed together. Since there is a vast array of potential combinations, and these items are not available by default, each one has unique rarity.
Rarity is also the most malleable of the topics discussed in this post. Since in most cases the assigned rarity is based on a value judgement, groups are encouraged to tinker with the rarity if it suits their play expectations. If you want to play a campaign of star-hopping gunslingers, firearms and teleportation might be less rare for you, while different options might be less common instead. When tinkering with rarity, it's important to consider the mechanical implications and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Nobody likes discovering they can't make use of an option expected to be available at the last minute, so open communication is key, not just with rarity, but whenever adjusting rules for your group.
Equipment in Realm of Runes is an integral part of each character's capability, and quality, rarity and materials ensure that there's always something new and better to strive for. Yet, even so, difficulty levels are tailored with an expectation that most characters won't have the best equipment for every possible situation. So if you've got excellent gear for a situation, you can expect things to be easier for you in that area. But if you don't have excellent gear, you won't feel like you're falling impossibly far behind the longer you go without it. Next time we'll continue our exploration of classes with the Monk, the class which looks at everyone else spending all their cash on weapons and armor and laughs.
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