Magic cancellation
Magic cancellation or shortly MC is a property of some pieces of armour which protects against a wide variety of special melee attacks. It reduces the chance of success of the following special melee attacks:
- Fire (e.g. fire ant burning attack)
- Cold (e.g. winter wolf breath)
- Shock (e.g. homunculus bite)
- Sleep (e.g. electric eel bite)
- Poison (e.g. killer bee sting)
- Paralysis (e.g. guardian naga bite)
- Drain life (e.g. vampire bite)
- Sticky attack (e.g. large mimic bite)
- Lycanthropy (e.g. the werejackal bite when it is in animal form)
- Slowing attack (e.g. Shade touch)
- Teleport by the quantum mechanic claw
- Sliming by the green slime touch
- Disenchanting by the disenchanter touch and claw
- Intrinsic-stealing by the gremlin claw
- Energy drain
Note that that magic cancellation does NOT affect ray attacks, nor does it help against passive attacks such as the floating eye's gaze. It does not affect grabbing attacks such as the owlbear bearhug, nor the giant eel drowning attack. Magic cancellation is different from the extrinsic magic resistance. It has more in common with the effect of zapping a monster with a wand of cancellation (in that it can cancel harmful attacks) although MC has no permanent effect on the monster.
Magic cancellation is a whole number from zero (no reduction in the chance of special attacks succeeding) to 3 (special attacks have 2% of their normal chance of success). The relationship between MC level and chance of special attack success is as follows:
- Magic Cancellation 0 = 100%
- Magic Cancellation 1 = ~67%
- Magic Cancellation 2 = ~35%
- Magic Cancellation 3 = 2%
- Monster cancelled by wand or spell = 0%
All cloaks, some pieces of body armour and the cornuthaum provide non-zero magic cancellation. Note that magic cancellation is not cumulative - your magic cancellation is the maximum of that provided by any single piece of your armour. The following items have maximum magic cancellation (3):
- Elven mithril-coat
- Dwarvish mithril-coat
- Elven cloak
- Oilskin cloak
- Robe
- Cloak of protection
- Cloak of magic resistance
Most players like to have maximum magic cancellation, but some favour the benefits conferred by a cloak of displacement (MC 2).
This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:
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