Weapons draw from a pool of four major properties: 

• Parrying. Weapons such as short swords, rapiers and quarterstaves are particularly good at parrying incoming strikes. Although you may attempt to use the Parry skill without a Parrying weapon in-hand, it won't work as well. (Remember from our explanation of attacking and defending that an attack may be Dodged, Parried, or Deflected—the game automatically chooses the best defensive mode versus any given attack.)
• Penetrating. Axes, maces, spears, arrows, bolts and some polearms are designed to either cleave or pierce through armor or transfer momentum and energy through it. Armor is not as effective at absorbing damage from Penetrating weapons.
• Flexible. Flails are articulated and can wrap around obstructions. They are difficult to deflect or parry.
• Rapid. Because of their tremendous velocity, arrows and bolts cannot be easily dodged or parried.

Weapons may possess more than one quality—for instance, a bow is both Penetrating and Rapid.

 A special property of defensive equipment is Deflect. Shields have the Deflect property and enable a wielder to use the Deflect defense skill. Unlike the Dodge and Parry skill, you may only use Deflect if using a Deflect-enabled shield. Bigger, stronger shields grant bigger bonuses to the Deflect skill. Shields do not provide damage resistance as such.

All weapons have a Range, drawn from a list of five possible choices. A weapon may have only one range, although a weapon may be used to attack a target closer than its maximum range. We do not simulate a penalty for using a very long polearm against someone standing right next to you.

The applicable ranges in the game, from shortest (not much more than literally arm's length away) to furthest (a character's sight range) are:

• Close. Daggers, short swords, fists, claws.
• Normal. Most swords, clubs, maces, axes.
• Reach. Flails, greatswords, quarterstaves.
• Extended. Polearms.
• Ranged. Bows and spells are Ranged weapons. Ranged weapons may target any opponent within the user's sight radius.

An item may be imbued with properties that grant the wielder any number of statistical modifications. In addition, some magic weapons provide the wielder to cast spells or invoke a special spell-like ability. These "spellcounts" come in two major flavors: those which destroy the item when used, and those which have "uses per day." An item with use-per-day charges will recover half of those charges if the party rests but is interrupted (by an attack, etc.) and all of the charges if the party has an uninterrupted rest.

The mana to power the magical effect is provided by the item--this is unrelated to the mana cost the wielder must pay to equip many magical items. That commitment of magical resources simply reflects the amount of energy which must be dedicated to controlling the device. However, spells cast from items use the spell skill of the wielder to determine the strength of their effects—that is, the magic attack roll is made using the wielder's spell skill as a bonus. There is an exception—some items provide a "minimum spell skill." Items with this property allow anybody to cast the spell ability of the item, even if they have no innate proficiency with the magical element required to cast the spell. Such items, therefore, are universal and may be used by anybody, although a more proficient spellcaster will achieve better results than a layman.