by Charles Warren and Gyrefalcon
by Charles Warren and Gyrefalcon
You must create a new mage and designate him with an (MM) to indicate that you're playing the muscle mage subtype.
Weapons:
A Muscle Mage (or MM for short) shows off their massive muscles by refusing to use any non-unique weapon without a strength requirement. If the weapon is a spell stave, it must be drained of all charges before being used.
Only the following unique weapons may be used by a Muscle Mage:
Armor:
Any armor used by a Muscle Mage must have a strength requirement, and the requirement 3 * clvl or 90, whichever is lower (so you can always wear full plate).
Helms:
A Muscle Mage can wear any helm with a strength requirement.
Shields:
A Muscle Mage can wear any shield with a strength requirement.
Jewelry:
All jewelry worn by a Muscle Mage must make him either stronger or tougher. One of the following must be the suffix for the jewelry: strength, might, power, giants, titans, vitality, zest, vim, vigor, life, sky, moon, stars, heavens, zodiac, fox, jaguar, eagle, wolf, tiger, lion, mammoth, or whale. As long as the item has one of the approved suffixes, any prefix is allowed.
Spells:
A Muscle Mage may use a scroll at any time to cast a spell. The following spells are permissible to cast at any time from memory: Healing, Telekinesis, Stone Curse, Teleport, Phasing, Town Portal, Golem, and Heal Other. Mana Shield is allowed to be cast only in Nightmare or Hell difficulties. Should a Muscle Mage perish in an attempt to clear the dungeon, he may use any spell to clear away the monsters surrounding his gear. Once the gear is retrieved, the limitations go back in force.
Items of 'Corruption':
Much like a Beyond Naked Mage, the Muscle Mage places great value on items of Corruption. There are two things that a Muscle Mage can do with an item of Corruption: streaking and conquering. Streaking is performed much in the same way as a Beyond Naked Mage. The Muscle Mage takes all of their items off except for the item of Corruption. They then enter the dungeon and attempt to run as far into the dungeon as possible before dying. If they retrieve their item, they become Streakers of the nth Order, where n is the dungeon level that they reached. Conquering is the ultimate goal for a muscle mage. To Conquer, a Muscle Mage must equip the item of Corruption along with their regular gear and enter the dungeon using the crack behind Pepin's house. The goal is then to defeat Diablo without dying. If the Muscle Mage dies, they must retrieve their gear and start over from scratch. While conquering, the mage may return to town as often as he likes.
Trading:
Mucle Mages may accept any legit items that they can use except items of Corruption.
Elite Muscle Mages
Requirements for a Muscle Mage:
You must create a new mage and designate him with an (SNOB-MM) to indicate that you're playing the elitist muscle mage.
Weapons:
Only the following unique weapons may be used by a Muscle Mage:
Armor:
Next point was armor. I realized very fast that a SNOB-MM would run in serious trouble
here. Strength requirement 3 times
clvl or 90 plus the rules mentioned above are very restricting, leaving only these armors:
* Demonspike Coat
* Scavenger's Carapace (usable up to clvl 13)
* Sparking Mail (usable up to clvl 10)
An alternative would be to remove the "3 times clvl or 90" rule and just go with a plain strength requirement.
Helms:
* G�tterd�mmerung
* Helm of Sprits
* Overlord's Helm
However, Fool's Crest can be used as long as other "legal" unique helms are not available.
Shields:
Besides the Blackoak Shield with it's -10 vit all of them are legal, those with Fast
Block are prefered.
* Dragon's Breach
* Holy Defender
* Split Skull Shield
* Storm Shield
Jewelry:
All jewelry worn by a Muscle Mage must make him either stronger or tougher. One of the following must be the suffix for the jewelry: strength, might, power, giants, titans, vitality, zest, vim, vigor, life, sky, moon, stars, heavens, zodiac, fox, jaguar, eagle, wolf, tiger, lion, mammoth, or whale. As long as the item has one of the approved suffixes, any prefix is allowed.
For an elitist muscle mage, in addition to the above requirements, the jewelry must be a perfect specimen (i.e. +11 for stars, +15 for heavens or +20 for all).
Spells:
A MM-SNOB may use a scroll to cast a spell at any time.
The following spells are legal to cast from memory at any time:
Heal Other
Healing
Town Portal
After beating the game on Normal:
Upon entering a level and before using magic for the first time, a MM-SNOB must make a
choice about which spells they will
use on that level. They may either:
Use the bonus spells of a MM
- OR -
Use the attack spells of a SNOB
During item recoveries, all legal SNOB and MM spells are alllowed.
SNOB Spells:
They may use all the unique spells (i.e., heal, town portal, stone curse, etc.). But for similar spells, they may only use the "noblest" one; i.e., nova for lightning based; elemental for fire based missiles; flame wave instead of fire wall. Both Bone Spirit and Blood Star are considerd "noble" (since the proletariat eschews them).
Trading:
Elitist Mucle Mages may accept any legit items that they can use except items of Corruption. In addition, as an elitist, they are allowed to receive one at birth, and henceforth on their 5th, 10th, 15th, etc. birthday. (This is the only time I allow higher-level characters to pass to lower-level ones.) -- They of course can use all the uniques they find themselves.....
