Death by stupidity?

[Bimbul]

Just an idle query as I intend not to test this out.

But can I be killed if my intelligence drops to zero?

I'm playing a Dwarven priest currently, just quaffed a contemplation potion on DL20 and my INT has dropped to a mere 3.
Guess my rod failure rate is going to be quite high for a while.

On the plus side, this priest found a chaos dragon scale mail on about DL10 so I'm feeling pretty invulnerable otherwise - what an awesome piece of kit!

[Mondkalb]

You have to differentiate - if the players INT drops to zero it might as well kill the character ...

[Bimbul]

Well this is actually a way of dying in Nethack so i was curious if the same applied here. Of course I recognise it's a non-ideal stat allocation

Well, it's moot now anyway, just recalled home and have a potion of intelligence in the black market. INT 4 again - braniacs R us.

Have now been given a slightly irritating dilemma - killed Golfimbul on the last DL and he dropped the chain mail of Arvedui - this is also a rather decent piece of kit and I'm thinking +2 str plus resistance and r-dark/nexus is actually a bit more useful currently than r-chaos and r-disenchantment since I'm still in early game (ish).

Breathing chaos and disenchantment is such a useful weapon though...
(think I'll stick with it for a while).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Just an idle query as I intend not to test this out.

But can I be killed if my intelligence drops to zero?

The minimum stat is 3, it cannot drop below that. E.g., a !Brawn gives +1 strength and then tries to do -1 intelligence, but @ already has a natural intelligence of only 3. The @ will still benefit from the +1 from the stat swap, but will not suffer the penalty of the -1.

[Bimbul]

Cool, thanks.

[Derakon]

The minimum stat is 3, it cannot drop below that. E.g., a !Brawn gives +1 strength and then tries to do -1 intelligence, but @ already has a natural intelligence of only 3. The @ will still benefit from the +1 from the stat swap, but will not suffer the penalty of the -1.

On the other hand, his "internal" stat may well be more than 3 (before race/class/equipment modifiers), in which case it can still be drained lower. The only effect gameplay-wise is that it will take multiple Potions of Wisdom to get an effective stat that's higher than 3.

[Bimbul]

On the other hand, his "internal" stat may well be more than 3 (before race/class/equipment modifiers), in which case it can still be drained lower. The only effect gameplay-wise is that it will take multiple Potions of Wisdom to get an effective stat that's higher than 3.

Interestingly I have now experienced the truth of both of these statements.

I keep bumping along 3 or 4 INT as I quaff contemplation or toughness potions and have seen that it doesn't drop below 3 now. As a counterpoint I have just quaffed !intelligence and seen it not rise above 3...

Don't care though. Game is going so swimmingly otherwise it's frightening. I recall saying on another thread recently that all my priests die. This one is doing so well now though. That chaos dragon scale mail has made such a massive difference and it's true (as someone else said) that you can just stand there and take punishment, cast d c (heal) and carry on. That chaos dragon scale mail is causing me no dilemma now. DL 43 now and diving.

I'll get the intelligence up soon enough. For what it's worth, makes no difference really.

[luneya]

Yeah, INT is probably the least important stat for everyone who isn't an arcane caster. IIRC, the only thing it really affects is the magic device stat, and priests probably use devices less than any other class.

[Bimbul]

Yes indeed, I have only three rods, probing, curing and a detection rod which will only be useful until I get godly insights. I still have a wand of teleport other but I'm not sure why since I have 0% failure on the spell in ethereal openings now. Just the lurking thought of needing it when at low SP - not very likely currently since I have 250 SP and 7 restore mana potions. only other thing is staves of identify. Again, godly insights will see the last of them.

Starting to get tired of the chaos dragon armour's attack since it seems every time I come up against something powerful and use the breath attack it changes the monster from something with good XP gain to something else with a much less juicy XP gain. E.g. Balance drake (iirc) got changed to a water troll
I'm very much not tired to rChaos and rDisen though. Where is Kavalax? - for once I'm not frightened of him in the slightest.

[Estie]

Kavalax is scary. The thing you want more than resists versus him is speed. His main danger is slowing and the double moving you.

[Bimbul]

I have speed, muahahaha.

[Bimbul]

Well that game was the captain of unexpected depths.

Only thing I had missing was rPoison. Had taken out Akhoril the blind, a greater basilisk, Gorlim, Rogrog and an undead beholder in 2 levels flat, trivially - not a melee blow laid on me. Got Godly Insights off Akhoril the Blind and was cruising.

Dropped a few nice bits off home, recalled back to DL 48 and got instadeathed by a poison breath from a.... winged horror...

OK, drolem's have done me before like that, but a measly winged horror? Guess I won't take them so lightly in the future.
HP were only just over 300 I suppose. That's not *that* bad for a caster at that level (in my experience)

Sigh - back to lvl1