Non-Combat Utility Items

[svensson]

Lately, I've been thinking about giving out 'utility' items as rewards to players in my faux-Atlantis game. These are items or spells that have no specific combat function [unless the player is being REALLY clever] but make an adventurer's life a little easier. These are not designed to utterly remove problems or skill check opportunities, just to be a tool for help with them. The items ought to have little combat use and should not prevent the players from being clever... they should be tools not solutions for problems.

Some examples include:

- Well fitting boots or sandals that reduce fatigue from marching

- A cloak that magically keeps the occupant in a comfortable temperature range; it won't help against Fire or Cold combat magic, but the occupant won't get heatstroke or frostbite

- A 'heat rock' that warms food or drink without the need of an open flame

Any other suggestions for such items? The items could be alchemical, or master-crafted, or magical [of a very low level 'cantrip' type] in nature. They should be hard to acquire and of enough assistance to be a reward but not powerful enough to be quest goal in and of themselves.

[JRE]

Some items we have seen in our games.

Self-heating pot (requires MPs, one per minute). They also got a cooling pot. The idea was to make food last longer but due to the short duration the real benefit was introducing Glorantha to the pleasure of cold beer.

Durable boots. Walktapus hide that lasts for thousands of key miles. Clearly a Plunder derivative.

Ever clean dwarven clothes. There is a Nilmerg in them that cleans and repairs them. Could do other things when ordered by its dwarven masters...

The troll towel. A devouring rag they got from some trolls. It is a rag, but it devours anything you absorb or clean. So you can use it to clean yourself up of water, blood, dust, and in a few minutes it can be used again. It devoured only liquids and very fine solids. 

Adamant point. A small piece of adamant (around 2 mm cube) in a bronze support. Used to mark crystal, metals or just anything. Mostly used for messages and petty vandalism. A misused mostali tool. 

Several water repellent clothes, secret clan technique weaving a bit of air with the wool. Did not work if fully submerged. 

Bird call whistles. Why rely on mimicry? Take three different ones and you can develop fairly complex codes. Do not correspond to actual birds, but foreigners cannot be sure.

 

[Squaredeal Sten]

From the back of the W&E book: Walktapus hide gloves.  Long lasting and heat resistant, useful to smiths and other Gustbran cultists.  Magically stabilized so the walktapus will not regenerate.

[Darius West]

This is a great idea for a topic.  I received W&E for my birthday yesterday, and I was much taken with the low end magic items included at the end.  They are 'flavorsome', and I like them a lot.  I had a couple of ideas along similar lines:

A black clay troll's head tea kettle that yells abuse at you in Darkspeech when the water is boiled.

A bone sewing needle that will sew the same stitch as the last ten stitches performed with it, in a straight line for 5 minutes for 1mp.

A spirit possessed bucket that actively dodges being filled with any fluid other than clean water.  (Its great for keeping water clean, but amusing if someone tries to piss in it)

A bronze grappling hook in the form of a comical three legged dwarf.  It will collapse and jump down towards you if you say "Return please" in Mostali.

A white clay funnel covered in water runes.  It removes diseases from any fluid poured through it.

[Godlearner]

Waha table 😉

[Beoferret]

Ear cleaning tools that provide a +10% to your next Listen roll after you use them.

[svensson]

2 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

Ear cleaning tools that provide a +10% to your next Listen roll after you use them.

A specialty of the Donadar cult 😉

[Shiningbrow]

On 9/26/2022 at 7:23 PM, JRE said:

Ever clean dwarven clothes.

Clean and dwarf in the same sentence.... Well, I never!

On 9/26/2022 at 7:23 PM, JRE said:

troll towel

Troll and cleaning material in the same sentence......

[Shiningbrow]

Bronze cuirass, greaves or vambraces that are self-lacing, reducing the time required to don and doff.

Some semi-random object with a sorcerous "Call Light" spell with a very long duration cast upon it.

A small crystal or stone (or sword) that glows (blue?) in the presence of... (spirits, undead, Chaos, giant spiders, orcs.....)

One ring that binds them all...... And in the Darkness, trolls them.

Depending on your technological level, a telescope (or similar object with a Farsee enchantment).

[JRE]

34 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Clean and dwarf in the same sentence.... Well, I never!

Our Glorantha may vary, but many of my dwarves are actually cleanliness freaks and it is one of their concerns with the Outer world and its dirt, organic matter and bodily fluids. Bring rubber suits, antiseptic baths, gas maks... And ever clean clothes.

34 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Troll and cleaning material in the same sentence......

In this case it was a blood soaking rag for a temple, so trolkin did not spend their time lapping the floor and walls at inappropiate times. A holy ZZ item, turned into a character cleanliness complement, courtesy of an AA entrepeneur.

[Robert S.]

Lhankor Mhy goodies:

A quill pen that translates text in any language while transcribing it. About one MP per "page" sounds like a reasonable cost. What language it translates to could be set by the gamemaster (er, I mean the person who originally enchanted it), or perhaps the user could "tune" the quill to a desired language with a POW point sacrifice. 

A fake beard that allows the wearer to spend one MP to speak a sentence in any language. Does NOT translate any responses they get!

General stuff (roll 1D12): 

A yoke (for a plow or wagon) that gives a benefit of some kind to horses or oxen fastened to it, like boosted strength, endurance, or speed.

A glass eye that grants something like Farsee/Second Sight/Rivereyes/Detect once per day. Must be worn in an empty eye socket.

An anvil that makes weapons fashioned upon it faster, reducing their SR by one. Benefit for the person who crafted the weapon only.

A small stone that is always warm, good for holding in your hands to avoid frostbite. (variant of the hot cooking rock)

A pouch that keeps duckweed fresh and potent. 

A "pissing jar" that converts urine to pure water.

A cup that increases potency of alcohol. Or, a cup that decreases potency of alcohol. 

A lantern that Ignites its wick on command. 

A dowsing rod that finds fresh water once per day.

An oriole feather that boosts Sing.

A comb or pick that changes hair color once per day. 

A fish hook that always catches a fish, without requiring bait.

 

[Ali the Helering]

On 9/27/2022 at 2:00 PM, JRE said:

Our Glorantha may vary, but many of my dwarves are actually cleanliness freaks and it is one of their concerns with the Outer world and its dirt, organic matter and bodily fluids. Bring rubber suits, antiseptic baths, gas maks... And ever clean clothes.

IMG they have been played as Borg.  Which is fine.  Until you get to 7 of 9......

[Shiningbrow]

13 hours ago, Robert S. said:

A quill pen that translates text in any language while transcribing it. About one MP per "page" sounds like a reasonable cost. What language it translates to could be set by the gamemaster (er, I mean the person who originally enchanted it), or perhaps the user could "tune" the quill to a desired language with a POW point sacrifice. 

Welcome to the forum!

I just thought I'd point out that the Translate Rune spell is 1RP per casting for 15 mins and about 3000 words. So, your quill is a little over-powered here. Thus, the limit of being  tuned to only 1 language would be necessary to keep it balanced and aligned (otherwise, everyone would have one!!!) I'd make the languages set at creation, to stop abuse (ie, rare or extinct languages). So, there'd be an Esrolian -> Heortling quill, a New Pelorian -> Dara Happan quill, etc etc.

[Agentorange]

The home stone:

A small stone held in your hand wherever you are in Glorantha if you turn in a circle when you face your home you get a sense of how far away it is ( 20 days or whatever )

Could also work well a a temple stone - indicates where the temple you were initiated is. maybe an Issaries cult secret ?

 

[Robert S.]

9 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Welcome to the forum!

I just thought I'd point out that the Translate Rune spell is 1RP per casting for 15 mins and about 3000 words. So, your quill is a little over-powered here. Thus, the limit of being  tuned to only 1 language would be necessary to keep it balanced and aligned (otherwise, everyone would have one!!!) I'd make the languages set at creation, to stop abuse (ie, rare or extinct languages). So, there'd be an Esrolian -> Heortling quill, a New Pelorian -> Dara Happan quill, etc etc.

Good point, and good way to dial it back. Perhaps add that you must sacrifice a permanent POW point to it to be able to use it at all, or even for each use. Or water it down so it only translates a sentence or two per day. Or, it requires the use of special ink to work, like walktapus ink or some such. 

[Baron Wulfraed]

13 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

. So, there'd be an Esrolian -> Heortling quill

Not needed. While spoken language translation runs at 50% of own language skill, they both use the same Theyalan scripts: page 181 of RQ:RiG

Quote

Theyalan Scripts
All Theyalan languages (including Esrolian, Heortling, and Tarshite) are written using the three Theyalan Scripts. These scripts are written the same regardless of whether the writer speaks Esrolian or Tarshite. Adventurers learn all three scripts as part of the Read/Write Theyalan skill.

I had a somewhat long thread about a year ago where it was clarified (?) that (while the book uses the term "syllabary" for the script forms) the scripts behaved more like Chinese logograms, wherein both Cantonese and Mandarin speakers could read the same logograms with the same meanings. (Japanese Katakana & Hirigana are syllabary, where each glyph represents a, well, syllable in the language -- so the written languages could be "sounded" phonetically, but not understood).

This meant that, for example, an Esrolian scribe could take dictation from a non-read/write Esrolian, give the scroll to a Heortling scribe, and that scribe to read the script to some non-read/write Heortling personage, with no 50% penalty.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Baron Wulfraed

[Shiningbrow]

11 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Not needed. While spoken language translation runs at 50% of own language skill, they both use the same Theyalan scripts: page 181 of RQ:RiG

This assumes the same grammar and sentence structure. At the individual character level, it may work, but across longer pieces, perhaps not. So, when it's written that the spoken languages are 50% similar, that may not simply mean in lexis and pronunciation. It also may not take into account count words, or genders, or conjugations. (ie, same 'script', but different usages).

I would also presume that there are changes made to the scripts, and have unique characters. Some are in favour in one place, while falling out of favour in another. I'd also imagine regional variations to characters.

Lastly, and related, I haven't seen a discussion on the actual languages themselves, but when it comes to ideographic writing, you tend to end up in the thousands or tens of thousands of symbols... I do get amused when I ask one of my colleagues or students about a Chinese character, and they simply say they don't know it. Or can't read the way it's been written on a stone.

 

Besides which, you've pointed out a similar but different usage - translation between cat and dog scratchings!

[Bill the barbarian]

On 10/4/2022 at 9:03 AM, Ali the Helering said:

On 9/27/2022 at 7:00 AM, JRE said:

Our Glorantha may vary, but many of my dwarves are actually cleanliness freaks and it is one of their concerns with the Outer world and its dirt, organic matter and bodily fluids. Bring rubber suits, antiseptic baths, gas maks... And ever clean clothes.

IMG they have been played as Borg.  Which is fine.  Until you get to 7 of 9......

Let's see, dwarves, rubber suits, gas masks and 7 of 9... Sounds like a great party! What could go wrong, go wrong, go wrong?

Edited October 6, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Shiningbrow]

2 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

 

She doesn't have a beard!

[HreshtIronBorne]

An ornately engraved Lead Box enchanted to hold a Shade, fill it with stuff and it gets cold, Gloranthan Refrigeration!

[Baron Wulfraed]

11 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

This assumes the same grammar and sentence structure. At the individual character level, it may work, but across longer pieces, perhaps not. So, when it's written that the spoken languages are 50% similar, that may not simply mean in lexis and pronunciation. It also may not take into account count words, or genders, or conjugations. (ie, same 'script', but different usages).

Well of Daliath (sp?) https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-qa-by-chapter/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-chapter-07-skills/#ib-toc-anchor-36
 

Quote

If an Esrolian speaking scribe writes a text, can a Heortling speaking scribe read it with no penalties (say both have 75% “read/write Theyalan”)? Without invoking a Translate spell.

yes.

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Baron Wulfraed

[Shiningbrow]

12 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Well of Daliath (sp?) https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-qa-by-chapter/cha4028-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-chapter-07-skills/#ib-toc-anchor-36
 

 

Ok. I wouldn't, but hey....

(not a huge penalty, but still a penalty).