Protection

For the item, see cloak of protection.

Protection is an effect that lowers your AC but does not involve wearing armor. There are few types of extrinsic protection:

• The spellbook of protection gives a spell that temporarily lowers AC by 3.
• A +1 ring of protection lowers AC by 1, a +2 ring of protection lowers AC by 2, and so on. Cursed rings of protection tend to increase AC.

Divine protection

You can attempt to purchase some protection from a priest by donating to a temple. (To donate, #chat with the priest.) The donation must be at least four hundred times ones' experience level, but less than six hundred times. For example, a level 6 character would donate 2400 gold. There is a strategy called the protection racket that makes use of this feature to drastically lower armor class.

Note that protection brought from priests is actually granted by your god, regardless of the alignment of the priest you paid. If you ever make your god angry, even for just a moment, you instantly lose all your divine protection.

All of these types of protection stack; you can buy protection from a temple (more than once), wear two rings of protection, and zap the spell, if you need a large temporary AC boost.