d20 Rifts - Gear, Durability, and Wear

One of the realities about any society on the ragged edge of civilization, is that things wear out. A laser shot here, a night left lying in the rain there, and just general wear and tear add up. Under this system, we track that with the stats of Durability and Wear.



Durability is a quality of the item based on its construction. It is, in many ways, analogous to Constitution for people. It measures how much of a licking it can take and keep on ticking.

Wear, on the other hand, is a measure of how much the item has degraded from use and abuse. It is not quite like damage is for people. Items also have MDC/SDC and hit points to track physical damage. It is closer to age.

 Most items suffer Wear in one of three ways: Damage, Lack of Maintenance, or Error.

Damage is the simplest form of Wear. Whack something, and you can break it down. Or, alternatively, whack something else with an item that is not intended for whacking, and the item may break. During any scene in which an item suffers damage, it also suffers one point of Wear. (Note that it is entirely possible for an item to run out of hit points, and hence be rendered useless, well before it runs out of Durability.)

Lack of Maintenance is simply a result of carrying more gear than you are able to adequately care for. If your readied gear exceeds your capacity based on your Wealth, all of the readied gear in that category suffers one point of Wear each day.  See the Gear Selection rules for more information. Wear points can also be applied to salvaged gear, based on age and exposure to the elements, at the discretion of the GM.

Error in usage can also put Wear on an item. Any time a character rolls an error when using an item, one of the options the GM has is to spend an action die to add one point of Wear to that item.

When the amount of Wear on an item equals its Durability, the item is considered faulty, and various status effects come into play. First and always, all of the Wear is removed from the item. The Durability rating is reduced by 1. If this reduces the Durability to 0, the item is rendered useless. Additionally, the GM may apply one of several effects to the item. These include, but are not limited to: increasing the error range of the item by 1, reducing the threat range by 1, reducing the DR by 1 (for armor or vehicles), increasing the ACP by 1 (for armor), reducing the range increment by 5 (for ranged weapons), or reducing the skill bonus by 1 (for kits). Effects specific to the item may also be applied, such as a rifle that can fire either lasers or grenades losing one of those modes.

Wear can be removed from an item in a number of ways. A 1-hour jury-rig check will remove 1 point of Wear for every 5 points of the result. A critical success will also repair one point of Durability. A critical failure will cause enough additional Wear to cause the item to lose one point of Durability. A 4-hour check can repair Durability, with a DC of 25. A critical success also repairs the additional damage effect of the Durability loss. A critical failure causes a loss of a point of Durability instead. Jury-rig repairs can not repair the last point of Durability (i.e., returning the item to a "like new" state).

Gear can also be fixed in a shop. This requires one day, and 1000 credits for each point of Durability to be repaired. It requires an additional day, and a variable amount of money, to repair each additional damage effect.