Staggering blow

A staggering blow is an especially powerful strike which may occur when attacking a monster with bare hands or martial arts. This stuns the opponent and can push it back a square.

Conditions

For a staggering blow to happen, all of the following must be true:

• You must be attacking in melee without wielding any object.
• You must not be wearing body armor or a shield.
• You must be in your natural form (not polymorphed).
• The target monster must not be huge or gigantic and must not be thick-skinned.
• The damage dealt by the attack (with bonuses added) must be greater than 1.
• You must pass a random chance dependent on your bare handed or martial arts skill. The chance is 0% at unskilled, 1% at basic, 2% at skilled, 3% at expert, 4% at master, and 5% at grand master.

Effects

Unless the monster dies from the damage, the staggering blow stuns the target monster, removes its movement points, and tries to move the monster one step in the direction away from you unless there's something stopping this.

If you can see the monster, you get a message saying something like "<monster> staggers from your powerful strike!"

Strategy

Staggering blows are most common for Monks, because they are the class that can be played without body armor or shield, their martial arts knowledge lets them deal more than 1 damage with a higher chance, and they can get the highest martial arts skill.

References

• Weapons spoiler

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