Pain (brand)

This page is about the weapon brand. For the spell, see Pain (spell).

The pain brand allows melee weapons to inflict magically painful injuries (increased damage) on victims who lack negative energy resistance. This additional damage increases with the wielder's Necromancy skill.

Attacks have a (12.5*(Necromancy+1))% chance (100% at 7 Necromancy) to add 1d(Necromancy) damage. Defenders with any level of negative energy resistance are immune to the additional effect. Weapons with this brand are considered unholy, and some gods forbid their use.

The pain brand is Kikubaaqudgha's special brand. At max piety, you can have him add the brand to a weapon of your choosing. Do not try to make this brand permanent using the Excruciating Wounds spell and a scroll of vorpalise weapon; it will fail and torment the player.

Monster Version

For the purposes of this brand, a monster's Necromancy skill is determined as follows:

• Default: HD/2
• Undead or Demonic: HD
• Animal Intelligence or Lower: 0

Tips & Tricks

• Since the brand inflicts a flat rate of damage independent of the damage your weapon does, pain brands work best on fast weapons with low base delay (demon whips, quick blades, spears, whips, etc.)
• The unholy nature of this brand is rarely an issue. In practice, gods who forbid pain brands also forbid Necromancy, and thus their worshipers are unlikely to have the skill to exploit pain-branded weapons in the first place.
• Note that Trog objects to even training Necromancy, making this brand more or less useless to his followers unless they acquired the skill before converting.
• If you're going to use Kikubaaqudgha's final ability to affix the pain brand on a weapon instead of receiving the Necronomicon, keep in mind that waiting for the perfect weapon to apply it to can be wasteful; the farther into the game you get, the fewer enemies are susceptible to its effect. Applying it earlier on offers more benefit. Later on, you can find a better base weapon to use against resistant enemies; against non-resistant enemies, you won't need it.