Staff skill

Skill 'staff'.

• Group: 'weaponsmaster'.
• Execution delay: 3 seconds.
• Costs: moves 20.
• This is a passive skill, it works automatically.
• Available to classes: cleric 1, druid 1, necromancer 1, ranger 1, warlock 1, witch 1
• Bonus for races: kender

This skill allows you to fight with staves: shafts of wood or bone, sometimes shod with metal. Most staves take both hands, but some are light enough for one. A staff strikes blunt and never cuts. Druids and rangers carry one from their first day, and kender of any class know the staff from birth: their beloved hoopak is a forked staff.

A staff is a defender's weapon. Wield it with nothing on your shield arm, nothing held and no second weapon, and you hold the staff in both hands. With both hands on the staff you parry noticeably better, parrying tires you less, a botched parry knocks the staff out of your hands less often, a foe has a harder time disarming you, and quakes and similar magic throw you off your feet a little less often. A rare critical parry with both hands on the staff can sweep the attacker off their feet, if they can fall at all. Now and then a staff in both hands also strikes with its other end, a full extra blow, but not when the staff is one-handed and you can fight with a second weapon.

With both hands on the staff you can turn blows even if you never learned to parry: necromancers, warlocks and witches, kender of any class, and young clerics, druids and rangers guard with the staff skill itself, almost as well as with a shield. If you know parry as well, whichever of the two serves you better is used.

Randomly generated staves hit a bit softer than most two-handed weapons and lean toward caster blessings: mana, spell level and spell defense. Carpenters can make their own.