I talk a good game, but honestly...a lot of it is that I just play for a long time. It's easier to get PKs, edges, etc. when you've got 600 hours to work with.

That said, my point was just that if all the original poster is concerned about is newbies with beads then he really doesn't need to be concerned. Vet vs. newbie will almost always be tilted in favor of the vet, prayer beads or no. Newbie may have beads, but he doesn't understand how your class works, much less his own. He probably doesn't have any preps or a good set of aliases to work with.

Another thing I thought I'd mention- there's been some hyperbole in this thread regarding how much damage they actually do. To get an >>>ANNIHILATE<<< from them, it really needs to be on a vuln_positive character with no damage reduction, and that guy has to not make his save.

To play devil's advocate, though- they're a lot better than the stuff I could get with an evil character for that particular gear slot. Nobody's arguing they're not nice gear, or even necessarily that they're not "better" than what's available to evils in that same slot. I just don't think they're the "game changer" that people make them out to be. (Unless you're a duergar, then they might be.)