Legends: some NIC stuff

From: lache@convex.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de (Stefan Lache)

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 1994 10:32:50 +0000

Hi!

Here are two more NIC items giving you a status but no insanity. They do
not quite reach the quality of Darkling/Black Water but at least one of
them looks interesting (if only because I did not previously encounter
the status). Again both of them are evil. Aren't there any good items with
a status?

#938 Vile in a vial  (or whatever. Dean's list offers two or three choices
     for the English name)
     => upon activation morph to Dark Warrior, convert to religion #9 (Sarn)
     As I successfully used it on a Human Barbarian Gemidiahist there should
     be no severe restrictions

Dark Warrior is +2 STR, +2 DEX, +9 PC (or +10), +2 TAC, -1 INF, 2 INV,
+25% AV, -5 SV, SA 150, probably +2 MAR and +2 SAR, DAM unknown

#785 Unholy Oil
     => upon activtion morph to "Bevorzugter Schatten". In English this
     may be something like "Favoured Shade". Regarding the not too high
     power of the status and the way you get it I would guess that this is
     the blessed status of the Temple of the Dead.
     The item can only be used by priests of religion #10.

Bevorzugter Schatten has almost more negative modifiers than positive ones.
The worst thing for my Troll Barbarian was the -1 at DEX; she is now at 5
and I fear there are no more weapons left she can use. All in all you get:
+3 STR, -1 DEX, +2 PC, -2 TAC, -2 INF, +30% AF, +3 MAR, +1 SAR, -2 MV
(first status I know with negative movement modifier) and -38.5 SV (!!).
The last figure is most probably a bug but this is what I got.

And now for something completely different:
Some time ago Dean complained about loss of CF in combat. I checked my
characters equipped with a Charging Griffon and found similar effects:
A character with no status and no other interesting items lost 40 CF. This
seemed to mean that the bless given by the Ch.Gr. just does not cover the
+8 PC you get from the item. But now I gave the Ch.Gr. to a Holder of the
Blade equipped with an additional Holy Symbol and he was 150 CF short.
Obviously the 100% bless from the item does not work as it should in battle.
It is not quite like an ordinary bless anyway; the character is not described
as being blessed in the character report even though he shows all the
effects of a full bless.
I think that the loss of CF is just due to the fact that the program uses
different formulae for the calculation of CF in combat and on character
reports. So CF given by items is never included in blesses in combat as I
could observe with a priest of Sarn. His +6 PC from two Holy Symbols were
were not increased (in combat) by normal (= druid/bard) blesses either.
Luckily there are other formulae which are more beneficial in combat than
on character reports: In the case of TAC points given by the warlock spell
Raise Tactics (or whatever it is called in English) are not included in a
bless on the character report, but they are in combat. A character with a
TAC of 20 given +10 by the spell has an effective Tactics of 50 on the
character report but he fights with TAC 60.
Are there any other effects of the same kind?

Ciao       Stefan