Blade talisman

Version 0.34: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

A jagged cluster of blades, almost impossible to grasp without injury. Causes long, needle-thin blades to grow from the wearer's body, allowing them to perform rapid auxiliary melee attacks and even parry blows. Having so many fragments of metal inside one's body reduces the effectiveness of body armour, but Shapeshifting skill mitigates this effect as well as increases the damage dealt.

A blade talisman is a talisman that gives you Blade Hands, greatly increasing your Auxiliary attacks.

Useful Info

When eVoked, a blade talisman grants Blade Form, which lasts until you end the form. Entering or exiting a form takes 5 turns.

Blade Hands has the following effects:

Combat Bonuses

• Unarmed Combat: 3 base damage (no bonus)
• Blade Auxiliary attack: Gain two aux attacks which have a 60% chance to attack independently with each melee attack you perform. Has a base damage of 10 (17 skill) to 16 (25 skill).
• Parrying: Gain temporary SH on turns you perform a melee attack. Scales with shapeshifting skill, from 6 SH at 17 skill to 12 SH at 25 skill. Also scales with Slaying.
• Reduces base AC of body armour; multiplies body armour AC by -50% to -20%
  • Does not impact enchantment, but does impact AC gained from Armour skill. Stacks multiplicatively with Deformed / Pseudopods.

Restrictions

• Melded Gear: Blade Form melds no equipment and suppresses no mutations, unlike most other forms.

It has a minimum Shapeshifting skill of 17, below which you get an HP penalty, your armor is reduced further, and your blade auxes do less damage. It has a maximum skill of 25, where skill has no further impact.

Strategy

Blade form benefits greatly from slaying bonuses, as it applies to both of the Aux attacks, along with improving shielding from Parry in a 1-to-1 ratio. This makes slay bonuses from Fugue of the Fallen and Wu Jian Council's Heavenly Storm both offensive and defensive.

Although Wu Jian is the most obvious god choice, anything that increases attack speed will increase the damage output of this form. Okawaru is another natural choice, but Trog's Berserk can also do the trick.

This form is especially great for characters who don't care about the AC from body armor. Dex-based characters, Felids, and characters with large amounts of slaying (which provides SH) can effectively negate or ignore the lost AC. This is a game-winning form when all the synergies are considered, and often a natural progression for a character previously using Maw Form or Eel Form.

History

• Prior to 0.34, Blade Form was a 12-skill form which replaced the user's hands with long needles, greatly increasing unarmed damage (and enabling stabbing) but melding weapons and the offhand slot, as well as suppressing the claws mutation.
• Prior to 0.33, the initial AC penalty at lower shapeshifting levels was 100% of base AC.
• Introduced in 0.31 in the transformation overhaul. Previously implemented as a spell, Blade Hands. The previous spell had 22 base damage, cut hydra heads, had a spellcasting penalty, and didn't have an AC penalty. (However, since it was a spell, heavy armour made it harder to cast).