Equipment Guide

Overview

Equipment represents the items a character owns which mechanically aid them in some fashion. Equipment is not meant to represent every item of a character's belongings, just as Resources are not meant to represent every bit of a character's wealth.

• Equipment provides a mechanical advantage.
• Resources represent ready access to dots of Availability.

Even without equipment or resources, a character may have all basic necessities, or even a limited amount of upscale goods, foods, fashions, or even housing. However, they do not provide any mechanical advantage and cannot be used in any fashion to aid in rolls or social impressions. They have no mechanical effect without investment in the appropriate merits or equipment.

Players can acquire equipment through crafting or buying from vendors. All equipment has an Availability rating. All items have Structure (basically a health bar), have proper and improper usage in rolls (applies improvised weaponry penalties), can break, become fragile or volatile, and be repaired.

Starter Equipment

Newly created characters receive a Starter Equipment Pool based on their Resources merit rating. This pool provides availability points that can be used to purchase or craft equipment without using Resources cooldowns or suspensions. You can view the status of your pool with the inventory command.

Starter Equipment Pool by Resources Merit:

How Starter Equipment Works

1. Automatic Usage: When you buy or craft items, the system automatically uses your starter equipment pool FIRST before checking regular Resources mechanics
2. One-Time Pool: The starter equipment pool is available as part of your character from creation - once exhausted, all future purchases use regular Resources mechanics
3. Availability Based: The item's availability rating is deducted from your pool (e.g., buying an Availability 2 item costs 2 points from your pool)

Example

A character with Resources 3 gets a starter pool of 9 availability points:
- They craft a sword (Availability 2) → Pool: 7 remaining
- They buy a leather jacket (Availability 1) → Pool: 6 remaining
- They craft a pistol (Availability 3) → Pool: 3 remaining
- They buy a smartphone (Availability 2) → Pool: 1 remaining
- Their next purchase (Availability 2) will use regular Resources mechanics since the pool only has 1 point left

Checking Your Pool

Use the inventory command to see your current starter equipment pool status:

Starter Equipment Pool (5/9): 5 remaining

Once the pool is exhausted, this line disappears from your inventory display.

Crafting Equipment

Crafting follows the Build Equipment Action rules from Chronicles of Darkness (page 101). Players roll a custom dicepool to determine success.

Key Features:
- Choose your own dicepool with craft/pool <formula> (e.g., wits+crafts, intelligence+science)
- 2-week cooldown between crafting attempts
- Even failures produce items (they may be Fragile or Volatile)
- Customize name, description, and add elemental properties
- Items show crafted by your character

Naming Your Crafted Items:

When you set a custom name for crafted items, the system automatically adds articles (a/an) for diegetic display. This happens when the item is referenced in room descriptions, combat messages, and other in-world text.

Important: If your item name includes a proper noun or title (e.g., "Excalibur", "The Vorpal Blade"), the automatic article addition may create awkward phrasings like "an Excalibur" or "a The Vorpal Blade". To avoid this, include the article in your custom name when you set it (e.g., use craft/name The Vorpal Blade instead of craft/name Vorpal Blade).

Crafting Cost:
- Uses starter equipment pool first (if available)
- Falls back to Resources mechanics once starter pool is exhausted

Materials and Durability

All equipment has a material type that determines its base durability rating. Durability acts as armor that protects the item from structural damage. Higher durability means better protection before the item starts taking structure damage.

Important: Material and durability are not customizable during crafting. They are determined by the asset and tier you choose to craft. When you select an asset (e.g., "sword") and tier (e.g., Availability 3), the material type is defined by that asset's tier data.

Material Durability Table:

Default Material: If no material is specified, the system defaults to durability 3.

How Durability Works:
- Durability soaks damage before it reaches the item's structure
- Items with higher durability are harder to damage or break
- Structure damage occurs when damage exceeds the item's durability rating
- Once structure is depleted, items become impaired or broken

Armor Piercing Interaction:
- Weapons with the Armor Piercing quality reduce effective durability
- Each point of Armor Piercing subtracts 1 from the target's durability
- Example: A Steel sword (Durability 5) hit by Armor Piercing 2 ammunition has effective durability of 3
- Transparent items (like glass) have durability reduced by half before Armor Piercing is applied

Use help craft in-game for complete syntax and examples.

Buying from Vendors

Players can purchase pre-built items from vendors located throughout the grid.

Finding Vendors:
- directory/list vendors - See all vendors
- asset/vendors <item name> - Find vendors selling a specific item
- vendor - Browse inventory when in a vendor room
- buy <item> - Purchase an item

Vendor Item Types:
1. Generic Items: Standard stock from sourcebooks at base availability
2. Designer Items: Custom designs with unique names, elements, and properties (may have higher availability)

Purchase Cost:
- Uses starter equipment pool first (if available)
- Falls back to Resources mechanics once starter pool is exhausted

Use help buy in-game for complete syntax and examples.

Resources Mechanics

Once your starter equipment pool is exhausted, all purchases and crafting use the standard Chronicles of Darkness Resources merit rules:

Purchase Types:
- Unlimited Resource: Items 2+ Availability below your Resources (no cost)
- Chapter Resource: Items at or 1 below your Resources (once per chapter/week)
- Reduced Rating Resource: Items 1 above your Resources (suspends 1 dot of Resources for a full month)
- Special Purchase: Resources 0 can purchase Availability 1 items (no suspension)
- Restricted Purchase: Items 2+ Availability above your Resources (cannot purchase)

Check your inventory command to see availability breakdowns and active cooldowns.

Use help resources in-game for complete details on Resources mechanics, cooldowns, and suspensions.

Containers

Containers are items that can hold other items. They have capacity limits based on the size of items they can hold, and certain containers can be rooted to prevent movement.

Container Types

Portable Containers (Backpacks, Cob Sacks)
- Can be carried and moved freely
- Use a volume-based capacity system - the total size of all items cannot exceed the container's capacity
- You can mix and match items freely as long as total size ≤ capacity
- Example: Backpack (Capacity 6) can hold:
- 6 items of size 1, OR
- 3 items of size 2, OR
- 2 items of size 3, OR
- 1 size-4 item + 2 size-1 items, OR
- Any combination of items where total size ≤ 6

Caches (Storage Containers)
- Furniture-like storage containers (chests, safes, filing cabinets, etc.)
- Use special cache capacity rules: Can hold 2 items of the cache's own size plus unlimited smaller items
- Cannot hold items larger than the cache's size
- Can be rooted to prevent movement (portable containers cannot be rooted)

Using Containers

Putting Items In:
- put <item> in <container> - Place an item into a container
- Check capacity automatically; container must have room or the action will fail

Getting Items Out:
- get <item> from <container> - Retrieve an item from a container
- look in <container> - See what's inside a container

Rooting Caches

Rooting a cache makes it immovable, useful for furniture containers that should stay in place.

Commands:
- root <cache> - Make a cache immovable
- unroot <cache> - Make a cache movable again

Access Requirements:
To root or unroot a container, you must have access to the room where it's located:
- Room owner (location asset owner, organization owner, or keyholder)
- Organization member (if the organization has room access)
- Builder (always allowed)

If the container is not in a room, only Builders can root it.

How It Works:
- Rooted containers cannot be moved by normal characters
- Only Builders can move rooted containers
- If a rooted container is moved by a Builder, it automatically becomes unrooted (prevents containers from being locked in place and moved elsewhere)

Note: Only caches can be rooted. Portable containers like backpacks cannot be rooted.

Use help containers in-game for complete command syntax.

Communication Items

Smartphones: Enable text messaging between characters using the txt command. Works in the Material layer of Miami.

Alternate Layer Behavior:
- If you're in the Material layer and text someone in Shadow/Hedge, they receive a garbled notification. The message is stored and delivered when they return to Miami.
- If you're in Shadow/Hedge and try to send a text, the command is blocked (unless the location has a Phantom Phone Booth enhancement). The send attempt fails with an error message.

Whisper Lilies: Goblin fruit that enable communication within the Hedge region using the wl command. Both sender and recipient must be in the Hedge region and possess whisper lilies. Can only be purchased from Hedge vendors.

Phantom Phone Booth: A Hollow enhancement that allows text messaging to work across regions (Miami <-> Hedge) in all rooms linked to that Hollow.

Use help txt and help wl in-game for full syntax and examples.

Equipment Management

Equipment can be worn, readied, damaged, repaired, renamed, reloaded, and destroyed. Check help equipment management in-game for complete details on equipment state management.

Non-weapon equipment like fashion items and accessories can be used to create saved outfits. Use help outfit in-game for outfit customization and management.

Equipment Browse

Browse available equipment with the equipment command or on the website at Equipment Assets.

You can attempt to use the browse command in-game. God help you.

Most equipment can be crafted or purchased from vendors, with some exceptions for special items like Goblin Fruit that require specific acquisition methods like Hedgespinning.