Holy Avenger Question

[Moriwen]

So I'm fairly new to Angband (in a sense--I played an older version way back when, but I was never really good at it.)

Anyway, I've been enjoying my dwarf priest, and I found myself a Bastard Sword (Holy Avenger). But imagine my dismay, when wielding it jumps all my failure chances to 15% from 0%!

I know about the "no edged weapons" rule, but at least in the old version, Holy Avengers (and Blesseds) were exempt from that; are they not anymore? Why not?

Thanks for the help, and sorry if this is an obvious question, it's been a while. :P

[fizzix]

This is odd. The holy avenger ego class has the BLESSED flag so it should not give the pointy penalty.

The only thing I can think of is that it pushed you over some encumbrance limit which raised your fail rate, but I didn't think it worked like that.

Can you attach a save file?

[Moriwen]

Grr, no, I can't, I leveled up/enhanced stats since then and they're all at zero even with it. Could have been user error, and I was doing something else; but I swear I tried putting the thing on and taking it off several times, and it was toggling.

Problem solved I guess anyhow. Sorry for the unnecessary posting. (Though I do still think it was weird...)

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by fizzix

The only thing I can think of is that it pushed you over some encumbrance limit which raised your fail rate, but I didn't think it worked like that.

It doesn't. Armor encumbrance is only for armor, and I'm pretty sure it only affects arcane casters, not holy casters. Anyway encumbrance only affects your max SP, not your failure rate.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Moriwen

Anyway, I've been enjoying my dwarf priest, and I found myself a Bastard Sword (Holy Avenger). But imagine my dismay, when wielding it jumps all my failure chances to 15% from 0%!

I know about the "no edged weapons" rule, but at least in the old version, Holy Avengers (and Blesseds) were exempt from that; are they not anymore? Why not?

All of them? That doesn't sound like edged penalty, you have zero failure for your low level spells even with edged weapons with high enough WIS and level.

Maybe you got stunned? Or your WIS dropped significantly below 18/200 at that point of game?

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Maybe you got stunned? Or your WIS dropped significantly below 18/200 at that point of game?

In retrospect this may be the likeliest explanation. The WIS bonus on the holy avenger may have been less than the WIS bonus on whatever you were swapping with.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Also Berserk Strength increases fail rates. (At least in Mist.)

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Mikko Lehtinen

Also Berserk Strength increases fail rates. (At least in Mist.)

Not in vanilla. IIRC 15% failure is what you get with single stunning (to all spells). I think that is the most likely reason for failure increase if that was to all spells.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Not in vanilla.

Thanks for pointing this out. Sneaky Eytan, making tons of little changes like this that I haven't even noticed.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Not in vanilla. IIRC 15% failure is what you get with single stunning (to all spells). I think that is the most likely reason for failure increase if that was to all spells.

Digging into the code, here are the failure rate penalties:

* stun adds 15% and heavy stun 25%
* the pointy penalty adds 25%, if applicable
* being frightened adds 20%
* being amnesiac doubles the failure rate
* you take a 5% failure rate penalty for every point of mana you are short to cast the spell.

Stun looks like the most likely contender here.