We use two types of magic items:

True magic items: In our game, true magic items are amazing and rare. Permanent magic items aren’t for sale: they’re literally priceless, and only come into adventurers’ hands when they deserve them—as loot during adventures or rewards for success.

Every true magic item in 13th Age is alive, in a sense, and has a personality that is largely defined by its quirk. Nearly all magic items want to be used and used well. But the quirks that make them unique are all over the psych-profile sheets.

As an adventuring hero, you can handle a number of true magic items equal to or less than your level. Your magic items’ personality quirks will tug at you, giving you sudden urges and desires that will feel natural to give in to—but you’ll be in charge. However, if you get greedy and carry more true magical items than your level, your magic items are now in charge of you. Their quirks overwhelm your personality: if your magic armor wants you to drink dwarven ale till you puke, your sword wants you to challenge random strangers to duels, and your cloak is obsessed with bird-watching, you will spend all of your waking hours drinking, fighting, and studying egrets until you give up one of your items and return to normal. (So yes, there is such a thing as “too much treasure.”)

Sample true magic items: You’ll find a few items meant to be awarded in Crown of Axis. If you want to be more generous, see the last two pages of the 13th Age Convention Demo for a smattering of true magic items that work well in early games.

One-use items: We also want you to be able to spend hard-won gold on worthwhile magical treasure! There are three types of one-use items that supply that demand: potions, oils, and runes. In this Quick Start, we’ll cover healing potions, the most common one-use items, and leave the less common oils and runes and other potions as something you can dig into if you pick up the full rules.

Potions

You can generally buy potions that fall in the tier of the environment you’re in. For example, adventurer environment NPCs (level 1–4) aren’t likely to sell potions that fall in the champion tier (level 5–7), at least not without interesting consequences . . . .

You can carry as many potions as you wish, unless the GM thinks you’re abusing the privilege. It shouldn’t be a problem for a PC to carry twenty potions at a time; they’re small.

Drinking a potion takes a standard action. The standard action includes taking all the steps to get it ready if you don’t have it in hand already. Feeding a potion to an unconscious ally is also a standard action.

You can only be under the effect of a single potion at a time. If you’re using a potion that has a lingering effect, drinking another potion ends the first effect. Non-healing potions tend to have effects that last until the end of a battle, or around five minutes if you’re prepping for a battle and drinking potions beforehand. (Certain character abilities can change this equation, of course.) The typical way this comes up during play is when someone benefits from a potion that’s giving them an advantage and then needs to drink a healing potion. Getting the healing will come at the price of losing the other effect.

Healing Potions

A healing potion lets the creature drinking it heal using one of their recoveries. Potions provide bonus healing on top of what you’d generally get with a recovery, but there’s a hit point cap for the maximum healing you can get from a potion. No matter how well you roll your recovery, the healing the potion provides won’t exceed the cap—high level characters are going to want to use higher-cost healing potions instead of loading up on the cheap stuff.

Healing Potion Costs