Tower shield of Ignorance
| A shield unearthed from the remains of a ruined city. It bears an inscription written in an ancient language. Scholars and wise men laboured for countless hours to decipher it, and in time, a translation was finally settled on:
"With a shield like this, who needs to think?" |
the +10 tower shield of Ignorance
+10 tower shield
-4 INT
rN+
Desirability
For most characters, the tower shield of Ignorance is ruled out simply by virtue of it being a tower shield; smaller characters can't wield it, and medium-sized characters need to invest a tremendous amount of experience into their Shields skill to mitigate the severe penalties large shields apply. Large characters and formicids have a significantly easier time of it, but the arguments against the shield continue. -4 intelligence is a huge penalty for any spellcaster, and since any non-Trog character can benefit from learning at least a little magic, this is significant in almost all cases. Finally, while it does offer an impressive amount of shielding plus a rank of occasionally-helpful negative energy resistance, it's often more tempting to take advantage of the fire, cold, or poison resistances you can find on non-artefact bucklers and kite shields.
However, for the fighters and non-Gnolls among you: this shield is a terrific boost to your survivability. Swinging a melee weapon, you do not have to wait until you have reached 25 in Shields to offset its penalty. The inherent +10 enchantment allows you to put all your enchant armor scrolls on your remaining armor slots. And if you have found an amulet of scarf offering reflection properties, not only will you block a lot of the projectiles fired at you by Yaktaurs and Giants, but you will send them right back to where they came from.
In summary: not a great find for a mage or a Gnoll, but definitely one for any bruiser.
History
- Prior to 0.25, this was known as the large shield of Ignorance.
- Prior to 0.20, this shield gave +4 AC, reduced intelligence by 6, and only had a +6 enchantment. Also, it had *Curse property (33% chance to recurse itself on equip).
- Prior to 0.19, this shield had +2 EV and only a +2 AC bonus.
- Prior to 0.15, this shield had a +8 enchantment level.
