Demonbane

)   Demonbane
Base item	long sword
Damage vs. small	1d8 x2
Damage vs. large	1d12 x2
To-hit bonus	+1d5
Bonus versus	demons
Weapon skill	long sword
Size	one-handed
Affiliation	lawful
When carried	(none)
When wielded	(none)
When invoked	(none)
Base price	2500 zm
Weight	40
Material	iron

)   Demonbane
Base item	silver mace
Damage vs. small	1d6+1 x2
Damage vs. large	1d6 x2
To-hit bonus	+1d5
Bonus versus	demons
Weapon skill	silver mace
Size	one-handed
Affiliation	lawful
When carried	warning versus demons
When wielded	demon summoning is blocked
When invoked	(none)
Base price	2500 zm
Weight	40
Material	iron

Demonbane is a lawful long sword that has +1d5 to hit and deals double damage against all proper major demons, i.e. all & except Death, Pestilence, Famine, djinn, the mail daemon, and sandestins.

Demonbane is slightly less useless than most of the other monster-specific weapons, since demons are actually reasonably common in the late game and could use an extra dose of damage. However, there are plenty of other weapons that do extra damage to demons, such as Grayswandir, Frost Brand, or even a regular silver saber, on which your scrolls of enchant weapon are certainly better spent. Therefore, Demonbane is rarely used. However, if you have no other particularly good artifacts, it may make a good weapon for an intelligent pet, especially since Archons are often generated with it.

Unlike a silver saber or other silver weapons, Demonbane does not deal additional damage against minor demons.

SporkHack

In SporkHack, Demonbane has been significantly overhauled. It is now a silver mace which does double damage to demons, provides warning versus demons and prevents demons from summoning in your presence. It is the first sacrifice gift for priests. Because silver maces are not randomly generated, Demonbane will never be randomly generated.

Like all revised SporkHack artifacts, it gets +1d5 to hit all monsters, not just its target monster.

References

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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

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