Tooth of an algolian suntiger
| ) | |
|---|---|
| Name | tooth of an algolian suntiger |
| Appearance | very sharp tooth |
| Damage vs. small | 1d15 |
| Damage vs. large | 1d15 |
| To-hit bonus | 5 |
| Weapon skill | knife |
| Size | one-handed |
| Base price | 500 zm (+10/positive enchant) |
| Weight | 10 |
| Material | mineral |
The tooth of an algolian suntiger is a weapon originally found in NetHack: The Next Generation and present in SlashTHEM.
It has striking similarities to the crysknife—a high-damage knife-type weapon of biological origin—and might possibly be the Douglas Adams equivalent of it (though the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger, while significant in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is not described as a weapon there). As its name suggests, it may be dropped on death by algolian suntigers.
The algolian suntiger tooth is an even better weapon than the vanilla crysknife, dealing 1d15 damage against small and large targets, more than the crysknife's 1d10, and has a to-hit bonus of +5, compared to the crysknife's +3. Unlike the worm tooth, the algolian suntiger tooth is an excellent weapon from the time it's dropped by its former owner, and can be used as-is from the time it's picked up, with no need to enchant it first. Best of all, the tooth requires no special treatment, so it will not revert to a useless item if it is ever dropped or put in a container. The tooth's potential as a weapon is balanced by its rarity: the probability of its being dropped by a slain algolian suntiger is 1 in 75. The tooth can be found as a randomly generated weapon, but with a low probability.
Other variants
The tooth of an algolian suntiger appears in SlashTHEM, along with other features from NetHack: The Next Generation. However, in these variants the tooth has lost its superiority over the crysknife because the latter now deals 1d20 to small and 1d30 to large, as in SLASH'EM. The probability of getting a tooth from an algolian suntiger is low (1 in 75), while a long worm is guaranteed to drop a worm tooth, so the only advantages the algolian suntiger tooth has in these versions are its higher to-hit bonus and its stability.
The tooth of an algolian suntiger is made of mineral, so one left on the ground may get devoured by one of the creatures that can eat stone in these variants. (The crysknife is also made of mineral, but is likely to revert to an inedible worm tooth before any lithivore can find it.)
Origin
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the "tooth of an Algolian Suntiger" is an ingredient in the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, which "spreads the fires of the Algolian suns deep into the heart of the drink". This is all that is said of Algolian Suntiger teeth, or, for that matter, of Algolian Suntigers.
