Artifacts.
Magic gear, bought with backgrounds or looted from enemies. In theory I suppose that you could craft it yourself, but that’s a bother and then you probably wouldn’t be out having adventures, would you?

It goes on about how there are different ways to handle artifacts in the game. A gear, where your magic sword is just a better sword. As ‘legacies’, where the artifacts are important to the characters on a more emotional level and don’t just get waved around like normal equipment. As objectives or MacGuffins, “find five plot coupons to redeem for one world saving”. It also mentions not overusing that one too much, it can get old when it’s on repeat. As “companions”, which is apparently like the ‘legacies’ one but different? Apparently they’re supposed to affect how the character acts in some way? Supposedly most games do a bit of mix and match, and you should supposedly think about it.

Script immunity. Someone noticed that players get upset when they lose their stuff. Kill their family, assassinate their allies, blow up the house, sink the barge, everything is OK until you steal that freaking +1 dagger, +3 vs. toe fungus. So A) don’t immediately swipe their magic stuff right off the bat at the beginning of the game, and B) make it reversable. Repairable, recoverable, revenge-able, whatever. Work an undo button into the story/game/quest. You should probably make it pretty quick and immediate too, don’t make them wait around for it.

Game impact. You can screw how useful an artifact is. Don’t. Player/DM communication is important. Players tell DMs what your character has and what you want to be doing. DMs warn the player if your entire game is set on a space station with no animals and they’re talking about a magic stone that repels animals. Also a possibility is that the player could be knowingly taking an artifact that they won’t use. If it’s part of the character or a story hook for some reason. Treasure these players and reward them by making the artifact important even if it’s never used. If an artifact is too useful then either the artifact is too powerful (probably not actually the problem, the ones in the book are almost all pretty narrow in utility), or the character isn’t facing a variety of challenges. Quote “A soul-eating sword can’t make a space pirate princess fall in love with you or repair a hull breach before the air runs out.”

Common traits of artifacts. They’re magical (duh?), don’t wear our or break on accident, are generally hard to break, and shouldn’t be easy to buy or sell. Even the low end artifacts should only be able to be bought or sold by wealth 4 & 5 characters and then with much difficulty. Given that 4k4 & 5k5 run at almost 50% success on DCs 25 & 30 that means that artifact 1 (very common) should probably be DC 35s, which is… one step past mythic rare, if I recall correctly.

We have the rating able. For a background of artifact 1 you can have a very common artifact or the artifact version of a very common weapon or armor. Artifact 5 gets you a very rare. Armor & weapons are made out of one of 5 magic metals, ammo for weapons that use solid ammo (no, no artifact flamer or lascannon ammo, ask your DM about artifact webber ammo) is at one rarity less than the weapon itself (minimum artifact 1 of course) and you get 1 clip, 2 clips for pistols. The ammo follows our usual rule for ammo, you have a supply and/or source, but the clip limit is what you’re talking on a mission. All artifact weapons and armor (and ammo) are considered best quality but don’t get the quality bonuses, they get the artifact bonuses instead. Artifact bionics are made out of the magic metals too. Like armor and weapons you get the base thing, the +2 (or not) armor for the limb/gizzards, and the artifact qualities overwrite the ‘best’ quality. In addition the death/dismemberment/limb explodes into gore type criticals just sever the artifact instead of blowing it up. Then you have to go through the whole reattachment process again (regeneration doesn’t help). There aren’t any rules for artifact bionics beyond the arm, leg, and heart replacements.

Magic metals.
Oricalcmcmcucmcucum: Gold colored. Shiny. Melee, +1k0 attack & parry, +3 damage, 1/scene reroll attack. Ranged, 1/scene reroll attack. Ammo, +1k0 attack, +10m range, never jams or overheats. Armor, +2 AP. Arm, as best quality but you get +1k1 instead of +1k0. Leg, +2m speed, +2k1 athletics. Heart, +2 armor & +2 hp. Sort of all around bonuses to stuff.

Mithril: Silver colored. Shiny. Melee, +2 static defense, +2 damage. Ranged, no penalties for using heavy weapons without bracing, no penalties for using basic weapons in one hand, no bonuses for pistols. Ammo, double range. Armor, +2 max dex. Arm, +1k1 to general dexterity checks and parrying with that arm, also make one ready action as a free action each round (not quite sure how that works out). Legs, +2m speed, +1k0 athletics checks, +2k0 acrobatics checks. Heart, +1 armor (additional to the base +2 or instead of the usual +2?), immune to toxic weapons, get the Fleet of Foot feat. More sort of general boosts, more dexterity/movement oriented. Some questions about how things ought to work. That arm could be really strong. The heart could be kind of naff.

Darksteel: Black to dark gray. Glowing orangey magic motes orbiting it. Completely and totally indestructible. Melee & ammo, +4 penetration. Ranged, does double damage to cover. Armor, halve the penetration of weapons hitting you (nice). Arm, +2k0 strength checks with the arm and ignore all criticals unless they would kill the user or destroy the arm, those just sever the arm (apparently without killing the owner?). Legs, +2k0 to checks to say on your feet and the same critical ignoring as the arms. Heart, +3 armor (again, instead of or in addition to the usual?) and ignore all gizzard criticals. Weapons try to ignore armor, armor tries to ignore weapons, ranged weapons trash the scenery, bionics are hard to hurt. There are reasons that promethians can’t get bionic hearts, this is one of them. Absolute immunity to 1/10 of all crits for… artifact 4 I believe.

Wraithbone: Solid, crystalized, magic from the warp. Ceramic/porcelain. Repairs itself and lots of curves instead of angles. Melee, deliver melee range spells with the weapon, if it has a casting time of a ½ action or more you can… I interpret it as adding the spell as a rider onto the regular weapon attack. Plus, I don’t think there are any free action or reaction melee attack spells. Well, you can always home-brew. Ranged, 1/day generate a clip of ammo (or 3 shots for stuff with 1 shot). Weak-sauce. Ammo, counts as a magical attack, bypasses armor, damage is reduced by Aura instead. Armor, +4 aura. Arm, may parry touch and ranged touch spells. They’re just absorbed into the arm with no effect. Legs, 1/scene walk on air for a round at full speed in any/all directions. Heart, when rolling for warp crap you roll twice and choose. Combo with the Atlantean exalt for making spellcasting much, much, safer.

Necrodermis: Dull gray. Cold. Living metal. In my game, harvested from modrons and extensively purified to prevent “I’ll be back”. Melee & ranged weapons, -2k0 to dodge & parry, +1k0 damage. Ammo, toxic (weak). Armor, opponents -2k0 to hit. Arm, +1k0 to strength checks with the arm and heals all critical damage at the start of the round. Legs, stands you up from prone as a free action without opportunity attacks, plus the critical damage regeneration thing. Heart, if you would burn a hero point to survive something rill a d10, on a 1-5 lose a point of wisdom instead as the heart revives you. The heart should probably also heal gizzard criticals like the arms and legs do.

Looking through all this I’m becoming torn as to how to handle cyber-legs. Arms definitely come as singles, but that doesn’t make as much sense for legs. It’s like one good quality leg would be just as good as two, and maybe the artifact legs plus a good quality leg could stack bonuses. You can’t actually get two artifact limbs through the backgrounds. Although I suppose that it could be done in play. Actually in my game it was done in play, once on purpose and once they let a loot opportunity slide. Weirdly those were both necrodermis legs. And one wasn’t properly purified (the PC checked out and became an NPC before it became an issue, although now that he’s been in a vampire no-blood coma there’s nothing stopping it from absorbing other stuff and turning that into necrodermis, and eventually into a modron). Neh, I guess it doesn’t matter too much. I’d let a player run it either way, two legs at once or two different legs. You just couldn’t swap back and forth.

So that’s arms (all), armor, and body bits. Oh, I missed something. All of these except ammo comes with a “hearthstone slot”. The hearthstones are little add-on artifacts that you stick onto other stuff. Ok, some aren’t so little but they’re normally less impressive than other stuff. Next time we’ll cover the miscellaneous artifact type stuff.

Note to self: take microsoft products out behind the barn and put them out of their misery.