
====== Defence ======

Healing:
     If your hitpoints drop below zero, you die.  Always have something to
quickly restore them.

Escaping:
     A trapped adventurer is a dead adventurer.  Always have a way to get out of
trouble.

Detecting:
     The best defence is being prepared.  Know your enemies, and know where they
are.

Defending against pure damage:
     Your armor class (AC) reduces the chance that most kinds of melee attacks
(except gazing and stealing) will hit you.  It reduces the pure damage inflicted
by most melee attacks (acid, electricity, fire, frost, and poison attacks being
the exceptions), and makes it less likely that they will stun or cut you.  It
also protects against shots, arrows, bolts, boulders, missiles, and certain
kinds of traps, but not against magic.
      Each piece of armor has a base AC value and possibly also a magical bonus.
Add the two together, and you have the total protective value of the item.  For
example, a Chain Mail (-3) [14, +6] increases your AC by 20.  Note the "(-3)".
It is a (small) penalty to melee Skill; heavy armor restricts your movement
slightly.
     Special note:  shields worn on the back have a base AC value of zero.

Cuts, poison, and stunning:
     Many monsters can inflict special kinds of physical damage on you, such as
opening wounds, poisoning, or stunning.  After you start earning a little money,
plow some of it back into potions or mushrooms of cure wounds, and keep them
handy at all times.  If a monster manages to heavily stun you, get away fast!

Character-hindrance:
     There are many monsters capable of casting spells to blind, confuse, slow,
and paralyze you, plus quite a few other nasty tricks not mentioned here.  Free
Action eventually becomes critical to your survival and you should keep stuff
that fixes blindness and confusion on hand.  Your Saving Throw protects against
these and other attacks.

Elemental and magical attacks:
     Acid, Electricity, Fire, and Cold are the basic elements; many monsters use
them.  Because the maximum damage they can do to you is very high, becoming
resistant is important.  Unlike with other attack types, you can resist, double
resist, and be immune to the elements.  Double resistance is the combination of
a permanent resistance (from equipment) and a temporary one (from a spell).
Temporary resistances are also known as oppositions.  Immunity to any of the
elements is hard to get.
     Poison is deadly and not so easy to resist.  You can double-resist (resist
and oppose) poison.
     There are many kinds of magical attacks; most can be resisted, some can
not.  Those capable of doing the most damage are darkness, chaos, and nether.

     For more detail, see the section on object attributes.

Reductions of Experience and Stats:
     Even when your character is starting out, there are rare traps and monsters
capable of lowering his stats and attacking his skills.  In addition, a strong,
unresisted elemental attack can occasionally lower a stat.  Slowly, these
dangers increase until it becomes very important that you find objects that
provide hold life and sustain at least your critical stats.

Theft:
     Nobody is more annoying than a thief.  You've just found that cool
spellbook or nifty weapon and now it's gone.  You can gain a significant degree
of protection from theft by increasing your dodging skill and your dexterity,
and can always collect your stuff from the thief's corpse.  Unfortunately,
thieves are smart enough to stash away the money they take from you.

Rumours:
     It is rumoured that certain undead possess a very deadly touch...
     The same rumours whisper that Athelas has remarkable curative properties...















