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Gear

The best marksman in the world can't hit a target without a rifle or crossbow, and there's only so much a skilled electronics technician can do to repair a war robot if all they have for a soldering iron is a rusty nail and a cigarette lighter. Gear is important in that it allows the use of a skill.

Weapons are gear used to increase offensive ability, and allow use of a damage-dealing skill.

Tools are gear used to allow use of a utility skill.

Armor and shields are gear used to increase defensive ability.

Gear is defined by a modifier and zero or more descriptors; modifiers start at -1 and can generally be used to group gear into quality categories.

Improvised gear is generally considered substandard, although particularly crafty characters may be able to treat it as common through a trait.

Gear with a modifier of 3 or more is either extremely specialized or extremely rare, or even unique -- it could be a legendary sword, for example, but it could also be a repair kit tailored to a specific piece of equipment that cannot be used on anything else -- in this case, it would carry a descriptor indicating such.

Gear, much like skills, can be specialized: an electrical engineer's toolbox may give a bonus of 1 for general maintenance task but increase it to 2 for wiring up a solar panel to an oxygen filter, for example (Many single-purpose tools such as a socket driver can be statted as being substandard tools with specialization, so that they give a modifier of -1(0) for general use and their intended use, specifically).

Often, the descriptors are the most important part of a piece of gear: for example, Sir Terry Pratchett's meteoric-iron sword may not be a particularly good sword from the standpoint of edge and balancing (modifier 0) but its unique history makes it the bane of any entity that operates on narrative causality, preventing its use against its wielder entirely!

Ordinarily, a weapon will add its modifier to the Success/attack roll of an action, a piece of armor will add to the Caution/defense roll, and a tool may be used for either, at the player's discretion. The modifier may not be split.

Ranged-combat weapons will generally include "short range" or "long range" as part of their descriptor, and are assumed to be "medium range" if not.

Single-use gear (such as a demolition charge, for example) is likely to have a higher modifier than continuous-use gear, but will indicate in its descriptor that it is consumed upon use.

Gear does not normally have health, but may be damaged or destroyed during use if a caution roll fails. Damaged gear cannot be used, but can be repaired during downtime; destroyed gear is generally only worth keeping for the scrap value.

The price for any given piece of gear is, of course, whatever the market will bear (or what the local government will impose, in case of collectivist societies).

A character who uses a piece of gear for a significant amount of time, or to accomplish significant deeds, can become attuned to it. In this case, the custom-tailored modifier is added to it, to indicate familiarity.

Example gear (more or less setting independent)