Dungeon Master Forum

increases your armour, so you take less damage - noticeable on golems and knights

I never figured why there is a potion variant of this spell.
too much hazzle to cast it into a flask, sure can be used later, but only with a bit of a fiddling *(open inventory and drink flask, maybe search for the thing in the first place).
Another negative aspect about the flask version is that it does only work on one champion. No real benefit mana ratio or duration wise compared to the shield party / shield all spell...
just checked :
according to the ency, both spells got the same casting difficulty but party shielding last longer 30 compared to 25!Same mana costs
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/195
The only way to put it to some use (flask version) is to provide it
as a bonus to an empty flask , somewhere in the beginning of a custom dungeon to help the party...

I cannot stress enough that the "spellshield" is something different.
It is also highly limited in DM, being only available via the Theowand or, with some of the wands.. so you can cast it only 4 or 5 times in total.
protects against ghost-attacks, but how much you'll never know

The party shield you cast is the fireball/fireshield you cannot cast, and usually you don't care about physical damage for the back row. There is probably some balance issue where the potion is lacking, but it is still useful to be able to sleep to full mana, then fully shield your front row fighters (or the whole party).

yeah that's probably the best thing about the potion usage, to keep mana for fireballs or heal / whatever later on

But I really do not get the beginning part of your first sentence, beo!

i was just saying that if each partyshield you cast stops you casting a fireball instead, I was just saying it in a fancy way

Ah, now I understand the sentence! cheers

usually you don't care about physical damage for the back row

this made me laugh.

beowuuf wrote:The party shield you cast is the fireball/fireshield you cannot cast, and usually you don't care about physical damage for the back row. There is probably some balance issue where the potion is lacking, but it is still useful to be able to sleep to full mana, then fully shield your front row fighters (or the whole party).

Say what? I don't understand this

If you have spare flasks, it's probably a good use of mana to create party shields in potionform. It gives you more mana
during a fight for fireshields to protect your weaker back members from missiles, and of course the ability to cast more fireballs.

You only really care about the front fighters taking physical damage, so the full party shield in potion form to only two people is not such a bad idea

I wonder how much damage it stops? Perhaps no need for me as all my chars have 999 hps and 3/4 have 999 stamina too, lol.

It makes survival certainly easier. Never venture out without a shield or two if you can avoid it..

Hm. I will see.
Speaking of shields - I know it was discussed to death - holding a shield in your offhand does or does not make ANY difference?

I don't think anyone's found anything new since the last time, if you do a search you'll see the conclusions. There is certainly an armour factor associated and also an 'equiped in left hand' flag seen in ADGE, but i have a funny feelign a bug in the code made this useless...

at least it looks cool to equip a shield and you cannot dual
wield weapons(attack with 2 weapons) anywaym, so it does
not hurt that much that shields are useless somehow.
I often hold a flask in hand instead of shields next to weapons though.

I never do anything other than flasks in the off-hand...ok, I don't hold flasks with gigglers around I guess

And at the beginning without any flasks around yet I put keys or the like there, everything I find, because I am too lazy to open
the backpack. Strange indeed that the beginning feels like that,
whereas in the middle of the game you don't care about putting
items into the backpack anymore.

Beowuuf wrote:

There is certainly an armour factor associated and also an 'equiped in left hand' flag seen in ADGE, but i have a funny feelign a bug in the code made this useless...

so you say the shield is useless (= it doesn`t increase your armor factor) when holded in left hand because of internal game bug?

I just made a super strenght shield (shield factor = 255, piercing resistance= 7), and it seems that there were literally no difference in harms when fighting with the monster when character was wearing the shield in the left hand and when he wasn`t. Either in left or right hand. But I might be wrong!

Can anybody confirm or deny it? Does the shield work (gives you defence) when equippped in left hand? In right hand? Does it work when you use a "block" option when wearing in right hand? Is that bug reparable? If it`s a bug, was it repaired in later game versions?

If it`s thrue, that would make a lot of game items (shields) completely useless.

I am afraid I have the feeling that this is the case, shields are a red herring

In the CSBwin code, shields do something -- I just couldn't figure out what, and the net result didn't seem to be anything.

So, for DSB, I treated shields more or less like armor in other locations. It's not "authentic" but it seems to work...

The description of items is rather poor anyway - when you inspect a shield it says it's a shield (whoa, no shit sherlock ) and how much it weights.
I remember back then when I first started to play DM, I was absolutely confused and there was no way to determine what to use or not, because you couldn't tell a difference. Common sense doesn't work all that well in such cases... I even remember wearing that cursed armor because I couldn't see any difference, lol.

edit: I wear shield because... well because it looks natural.
I use them only to train fighter and ninja (actually no ninja anymore) levels

It is good that you do not know exactly what each item does.
Kept people awake for several years(hidden skills etc)
with csbuild you can add some description to items, so
it is possible to get more info in custom dungeons.
I just don't know whether in dm rules cursed armour is effective
or not(csb rules affects incarnation and curesed armor works)

I have to partially disagree.
If there was no CSBwin, people would still not know ANYTHING about hidden skills today.
There is plenty of space between knowing nothing and everything

Shield spell protects against physical attacks (I have confirmed through playing).
Spell Shield protects against non-fire based spells (I have not confirmed through playing).

Sophia wrote:

Anti-magic and anti-fire should theoretically have protected you against fireballs/magic attacks, but a bug in the DM engine (at least the version used in CSBwin) makes them almost worthless for this purpose.

well, at least Anti-magic and Anti-fire values aren`t THAT useless.. they`re usefull when a certain monster attacks you on a short distance either in second or fifht way.