Draft:Rod of disintegration

Omega 0.90.4

Rod of disintegration/TypeWandBase value (Au)2000Item level7Weight80Unidentified appearanceRandom wand appearanceCursed nameRod of disintegration

A rod of disintegration deals 100 unstoppable damage to a selected creature or changes the terrain at an unoccupied target. Against the player it instead destroys a cloak or armor before resorting to a much larger damage attempt.

Generation

This item-level-7 random wand normally has 1–20 charges, random blessing and +0 enchantment. It can appear in random loot, pawn-shop stock and acquirement. Its high item level makes it uncommon in low-level random generation rather than completely excluding it.

Description

One charge is spent and the type revealed before aiming. There is no travelling projectile or hit roll. Positive blessing and enchantment do not increase the effect; a curse forces it onto the player after the targeting prompt. The first applicable target case below wins, so a creature normally takes priority over its terrain.

Target	Result
Creature	100 unstoppable damage; surviving HP is possible despite the disintegration message
Player	Destroys the cloak in the cloak slot if present, otherwise the armor in the armor slot; with neither, attempts 250 unstoppable damage
Unoccupied altar	Altar survives and retaliates with disintegration against the player
Unoccupied pit	In the current dungeon, becomes a trap door; elsewhere only reports a deeper hole
Unoccupied floor	Becomes a pit trap
Unoccupied wall, open/closed door, portcullis or statue	Becomes rubble; walls also count toward tunneling collapse
Unoccupied rubble or other trap	Becomes plain floor, except the earlier pit case
Unoccupied hedge, including trifid	Becomes floor; destroying a trifid also gives 50 XP

Ordinary physical or elemental immunity does not stop the monster damage. A surviving creature's message about armor is not an actual armor reduction calculation. A kill follows ordinary death handling and can leave carried items and remains; the effect does not erase the entire ground-item list.

Terrain destruction does not require the normal projectile path to reach the selected square. Concealed terrain is cleared where the specific branch resets its secret state; this is not a universal reveal of every selected tile. Repeated wall destruction can collapse a dungeon: most depth-zero scenes and the Astral Plane are exempt from that collapse counter, but the Dragon's Lair is not.

Cancelling noncursed targeting yields out-of-bounds coordinates, which this effect checks and rejects, but the charge is still lost. A cursed rod resets those coordinates to the player, so Escape does not stop the self-directed effect.

Strategy

Use disintegration when the target's ordinary damage immunities defeat cheaper attacks, or when a particular terrain change opens a useful route. It is not an automatic one-hit kill on a creature with more than 100 HP. Distinguish it from disruption, which deals the same numerical damage but uses the physical type and cannot alter terrain.

Identify curse status before use. Never select your own square as a casual test, and do not test an altar: equipment destruction happens before any attempt to damage an unarmored player. Avoid indiscriminate wall clearing in a dungeon that can collapse, and remember that zapping an empty floor makes a pit rather than a safer walking surface.