Fencer's gloves

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A pair of gloves made of white silk. They have a natural affinity with the riposte, allowing their wielder to retaliate against some missed attacks with any weapon, or to retaliate against all attacks when using a long blade.

the +0 pair of fencer's gloves

+0 gloves
+3 dexterity
Allows riposte

Desirability

Thirty-three percent chance of a free hit with any melee weapon when a monster misses is quite novel, especially with highly enchanted or vampiric weapons. On the other hand, monster miss chance largely depends on EV, and blocking attacks doesn't count as a miss, so high-EV characters will find themselves landing free hits often while heavily armoured and/or shield-proficient characters will find that the riposte triggering very infrequently.

History

• Prior to 0.28, the fencer's gloves would stack with the riposte of Long Blades, for a total of 66% to activate per miss.
• Prior to 0.19, the fencer's gloves gave +4 boosts to Long Blades and Short Blades skills and increased EV by 3. They were also +2 gloves.
• Prior to 0.17, these gloves gave +2 slaying instead of the skill bonuses.
• Prior to 0.15, these gloves gave only +3 to dexterity, and added +8 to accuracy rather than +2 slaying.