The Sword of Balance
) Sword of Balance 
| |
|---|---|
| Base item | silver short sword |
| Damage vs. small | 1d6 +5 +(1d20) |
| Damage vs. large | 1d8 +5 +(1d20) |
| To-hit bonus | +2 |
| Bonus versus | non-neutral |
| Weapon skill | short sword |
| Size | one-handed |
| Affiliation | |
| When carried |
(none) |
| When wielded |
(none) |
| When invoked |
(none) |
| Base price | 5000 zm |
| Weight | 30 |
| Material | silver |
The Sword of Balance is an artifact weapon added in SLASH'EM. It is neutrally aligned, and its base item is a silver short sword. It has +2 to hit and +5 to damage against cross-aligned monsters.
Strategy
This artifact is relatively weak, and will mostly make it more difficult for neutral characters in SLASH'EM to get a decent artifact weapon (a problem compounded by the multiple non-weapon sacrifice gifts that neutrals can receive). It only gets a modest damage bonus against non-neutrals, and is quite weak against the numerous always-hostile neutrals.
One possible use is against the extremely tough werecreatures that appear in SLASH'EM, including werepanthers, weretigers, and werespiders, though Werebane is clearly a better choice for this. Another possible use for The Sword Of Balanced is for #twoweaponing, which is allowed for artifacts in SLASH'EM. Its silver damage is also quite useful in Gehennom, and its damage bonus makes it preferable to an ordinary silver saber. A weapon such as Skullcrusher or Doomblade will still outperform it as a secondary, however.
Naming
Up until the latest version of SLASH'EM, this weapon could be #named in the manner of Sting or Orcrist. This was changed in the latest stable release[1], however, to be no longer possible.
