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 many 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. (Gnolls in particular have difficulty with tower shields due to their inability to specialize their skills). 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 the shield 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 more mundane bucklers and kite shields.
However, this shield provides a terrific boost to the survivability of any character willing to make use of it. A tower shield's penalties to melee or ranged combat are generally less severe than its penalties to spellcasting, and the inherent +10 enchantment allows you to put all your enchant armor scrolls on your remaining armour slots. If you combine it with an amulet of reflection, not only will you block a lot of attacks, but you'll reflect any projectile-based attacks back at your attackers.
In summary: not a great find for a mage or a gnoll, but definitely worth considering for any bruiser that doesn't plan to use magic.
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 the *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.
