Acid Mage

In SlashTHEM, the Acid Mage is one of the roles that is available to the hero. It originates from Slash'EM Extended, where it is created by the developer AmyBSOD to serve as an acid-based counterpart of the Flame Mage and Ice Mage of SLASH'EM.

Acid Mages can be of neutral or chaotic alignment, and can be played as doppelgangers, drow, elves, illithids, humans, incantifiers, or orcs.

Starting equipment

Each Acid Mage starts with the following equipment:

• a blessed +1 quarterstaff
• an uncursed +0 studded leather armor
• 2 uncursed food rations
• a random scroll
• a random potion
• a random ring
• a wand of acid
• a spellbook of acid sphere
• a spellbook of acid stream
• an equal chance of a spellbook of confuse monster or a spellbook of sleep
• a blindfold (80%), an oil lamp (16%), or a magic marker (4%)

The Acid Mage's default starting pet is a tame acid hound pup.

Intrinsics

Acid Mages gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• Level 1: acid resistance

Attributes

The Acid Mage's starting attributes are copied directly from that of the Wizard, and are distributed as follows:

Attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma	Remaining
Minimum attributes	7	7	7	10	7	7	30
Distribution percentages	10%	20%	20%	30%	10%	10%
Mean w/ standard deviation (human)	10.60±1.80	13.48±2.15	13.47±2.15	17.44±1.07	10.28±1.74	9.96±1.67

Skills

Acid Mages have the following skills available to them:

Acid Mage skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: polearm, spear, javelin, trident, lance, whip Spellcasting: attack spells, divination spells, body spells
Skilled	Weapons: knife, long sword, quarterstaff, unicorn horn Spellcasting: healing spells, protection spells  Combat: riding, twoweapon, bare hands
Expert	Weapons: dagger Spellcasting: enchantment spells, matter spells

Acid Mages start with Basic skill in clubs, slings and bare-handed combat. They use the intelligence stat to cast spells, and their special spell is acid stream.

Techniques

Acid Mages can learn the disarm technique by reaching Skilled in any weapon, and also gain the following techniques at the listed experience levels:

Level	Technique
1	reinforce memory
3	power surge
5	draw energy
7	sigil of control
10	sigil of tempest
20	sigil of discharge

Special rules

Acid Mages have the ability to transform into a dragon of their element: they gain access to the baby yellow dragon polyform at experience level 7, and can become adult yellow dragons upon reaching experience level 14.

Acid Mages only take ¹⁄₅ damage from breaking wands by applying them.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• XL 1-2: Oozer
• XL 3-5: Slimer
• XL 6-9: Sludge Mage
• XL 10-13: Spiller
• XL 14-17: Corroder
• XL 18-21: Acidsplasher
• XL 22-25: Dissolver
• XL 26-29: Dissolver
• XL 30: Acid-Master

Quest

The Acid Mage's quest sees them fighting Lightningrod for The Flute of Slime, an artifact magic flute. It grants warning, teleport control and shock resistance while carried. Invoking The Flute of Slime summons a tame greater earth elemental ³⁄₄ of the time, and otherwise summons a tame earth elemental.

Gods

The Acid Mage gods are named for various types of acids. Their first sacrifice gift is Acidfall, a neutral athame with +5 to-hit and +5 acid damage.

• Lawful: Tartarica
• Neutral: Acetica
• Chaotic: Hydrocloria

Strategy

The Acid Mage is a battlemage similar to the flame/ice/electric mage, with the main difference being that they specialize in acid magic. Their starting pet is also acid resistant, making it much safer to use acid spells/wands. Upon leveling up enough, the acid hound pup will grow into an adult acid hound which is very strong and capable of taking down lots of enemies. Compared to the other elemental mages, acid mages are at an advantage intrinsic-wise since acid resistance is otherwise very hard to obtain; however, their starting wand cannot burn permanent Elbereths.

The Acid Mage quest mainly spawns drow and titans, and there are lots of pre-placed spellcasters as well, making it one of the harder quests in the game. Beating the Lightningrod quest nemesis quickly is recommended since the quest goal level has obnoxious titans hiding behind non-diggable walls, and they can freely summon monsters and cast other spells while the player is running around. However, the Lightningrod also moves very slowly and starts out surrounded by sessile monsters that are hard to take out.