Along with STSF, figured I'd bring up something else that I've heard people comment about, and I agree with the bitching.

From what I get out of this spell, it bypasses armor easier, letting you land the maledicting needles easier. Compare this to wounding needles, which makes those needles last longer. From this, I would have thought the purpose of these was to increase it's maledictive potential.

In reality, my experience has been that this edge is allowing it to bypass armor, giving you the maledictions easier *AND* since it has bypassed your armor, gives you the damage bonus. I honestly don't know many fights I had with Nizi that he didn't use this spell, and this spell alone.

Both from it's companion edge, and even it's title, I would have expected something more along the lines of piercing armor, giving you the maledictions, but not recieving the damage bonus. Like...sharper needles that penetrate better, but they're still going through hard armor, so lose their damaging force.

Now, my question is...firstly, is my judgement in error and this spell isn't doing any more damage than normal? And secondly, if it is doing more damage than w/o the edge *AND* giving maledictions more readily, is that the purpose of this edge?

>And
>secondly, if it is doing more damage than w/o the edge *AND*
>giving maledictions more readily, is that the purpose of this
>edge?

Pretty much, although it's not that much of a bonus whereas wounding needles' bonus is a little more significant in its more specialized area. I'll take a second look at their relative costs and make sure they still seem fair to me.

Something people sometimes forget about iceneedles, especially after all that armor standardization went down, is that it takes a piece of equipment that's actually armor to fend off iceneedles. Specifically, you would care about its pierce AC. Wearing a piece of clothing or treasure or what have you on your head/arms/legs/torso/waist (I think) is giving you a location where, if iceneedles should hit you, it's going to do a lot of damage. If your character struggles with invokers, you might think twice about even a great non-armor item for these slots, such as the Dark Crown of Eldritch Power.

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