As we've mentioned before, items are just skills that can be added or dropped. They are not limited by skill points or the character's mana reserves. That's not to say, however, that there are no limitations on items, that they can be purchased at a whim and hundreds of them can be used indefinitely to make a character into some ultra-powerful immortal. Instead, items are just as limited as a character's skills and perhaps even more so.

Items are limited by what the GM has placed in their environment for the characters to attain. Whereas a character can choose from any number of skills using their skill points, not every shop has every imaginable item with any and every imaginable skill known to exist. Indeed it is generally frowned upon for characters to attain skills from items by purchasing them except as pre-ordained by the GM as part of the campaign. The only exception to this is that a character can have a non-magical version of any of the items in the Items section including items like backpacks which increase the encumbrance limit.

Characters can collect money during campaigns, be it gold pieces, dollars and cents, cut or uncut gemstones, or federated credits, but Dice Mob really doesn't have much of a way of spending that money unless the GM creates ways of doing so. If a GM wishes to do so, they can assign money amounts to everything in the items section, but it isn't necessary and doesn't generally help any campaign to be better and is thus generally discouraged.

Items are limited by the encumbrance limits of the character collecting them. Unlike a character's skills which all require either no mana, one mana, or some mana based on the degree required to use the skill, mana in items is handled differently, even though it is based on a standard skill which requires mana. We'll cover that shortly.

Items themselves do they have the ability to perform some skill non-proficiently even if the skill is a non-proficient skill. A sword doesn't get “two for trying” though a character wielding a sword would. A sword wouldn't be able to do first aid or climbing either nor would it aid in such unless it specifically had the power to do so. And even if it did have the power to do so, items don't generally move on their own and thus only combine their skills with those of the character using them.

This is purely up to the GM, but it can be nice to refer to items using words rather than a skill degree. A GM could indicate to a player that his character has obtained a Potion of First Degree Healing or Second Degree Healing. Instead, however, the following list of skill degree nomenclature is generally preferred when speaking about items.

• First Degree - Lesser
• Second Degree - This is the default or standard version of the item, so no adjective is listed.
• Third Degree - Extra
• Fourth Degree - Greater
• Fifth Degree - Super
• Sixth Degree - Ultra

A potion of ultra healing, in other words, would have imbue the imbiber with healing at a degree of sixth degree, or in other words thirty dice.

Items don't have an experience level. They haven't necessarily been adventuring before and even if they have been adventuring, they don't level-up in any sense of the term. So how do we handle experience levels in those skills that have effects based on them? Experience levels aren't generally as important as the degree of a skill, but they can be important in determining area of effect, distance, and duration of a skill. In such cases, we will assign an experience level based on the skill degree of the item.

In the case of skills that required some level for the determination of distance, duration, or size, the following is used as a general rule of thumb:

• Lesser (First Degree): As if performed by a second level character
• Standard (Second Degree): As if performed by a fifth level character
• Extra (Third Degree): As if performed by an eight level character
• Greater (Fourth Degree): As if performed by a twelfth level character
• Super (Fifth Degree): As if performed by a twentieth level character

When it comes to items, they are generally either considered to have one use, like a potion or a scroll, or they have infinite uses, like a magical sword.

At the GM's discretion, items like wands, staves, or articles of jewelry could have a limited number of “charges” places on them. It's often easiest to just assign mana to the item itself (which is listed separately on a character sheet, usually right next to the item.) The reason for assigning them mana as opposed to “charges” is that this allows for a Ring of Greater Burning to perform any of the burning abilities and simply reduce the mana appropriately.

Recharging items with mana can be done at the GMs discretion, but it is generally good to do this with difficulty as part of a campaign and not simply allow a character with the skill to recharge an item whenever and however they want.

In the case of attack or defense, the use of an item generally affects the number of dice rolled in the usual way including how it combines with the character's own non-proficiency, e.g two for trying plus two per degree of the item. If the character is already proficient in this skill it adds onto an attack or defense in the same way as described in the compounding skill effects section. That is to say, the dice of the item's degree are added to the other dice the character already has. The “two for trying” would never be added more than once.

Example: A first degree fire magician drinking a potion of extra fire would roll two dice (for trying) plus two dice for their degree of proficiency plus six dice for the potion being “extra” or third degree. Or ten dice total.

If this isn’t an attack, defense, or skill, but rather a healing roll, as is the case with a potion of healing or mana, the number of dice rolled is five dice per degree, as we mention in the skill section for healing. Healing potions are never generally combined with a character's own healing skill because that wouldn't really combine in any way that increases what they do separately.