Magic item stats (brackets)

A question for you fine folk -- an an embarassingly basic one, but then, the game documentation is horribly disorganized and incomplete...

When viewing magic items, what precisely do the statistics in brackets represent? And what does magic power available mean? I realize it increases as your magic affinity improves, and I assume that's a GOOD thing... even still, I'd like to know in detail what this sort of thing does.

Incidentally, Arcanum is a great game... I played the demo and was somewhat unimpressed, and didn't buy for quite some time... then I found it for quite the bargain (some $30 Canadian), and figured "What the hell"... once you get over the low resolution and the thoroughly uninteresting combat, the game becomes quite impressive in its depth and general funkiness.

 

Look through the manual. Its stated there.

 

You wouldn't happen to have a page reference, would you?

 

Well, if you have an armor that has ac of 10 and then in the brackets there is a (10), it means the potential bomus. Depending on your magiacal aptitude, you get a different percentage of the bonus. At the start with a human you have a magical aptitude of 0. That gives you 50% of the number in the bracket. Which would be exactly 5. I leave the rest of the math to you.

 

Ah.. thanks. That's never actually explained in the manual, at least not that I've found... all I see in here is that a high magical aptitude makes magic items more powerful... which is pretty clear/.