Totem

From The Discworld MUD Wiki

Totem is a misc ritual which calls upon an sentinel to help you in combat.

The totem protects you in combat, and has very low offensive and defensive power, even with high skills, so it shouldn't be relied on too heavily, when you have shield and cure rituals. (Note that totems can be both shielded and cured to somewhat offset their weak defensive skills.)

Fighting with a totem reduces the amount of "bury xp", while increasing the amount of "death xp" you get per kill. The total xp seems to be about the same with or without a totem.

Totems vanish if you attack an NPC or player priest.

Each God requires you to have a different item (not consumed) before you can create a totem:

• Sek: a body part. For convenience, consider getting a non-troll eye and pickling it (many player shops have pickling machines). A pickled eye is light and doesn't rot. (And, if it's a human eyeball, it has a fair amount of evil-and-gross-and-creepy factor, too.)
• Hat: a party hat
• Gufnork: Fluff. This includes the fluff created by Summon fluff.
• Sandelfon: a pebble
• Fish: Something fishy
• Gapp: Stylish clothing. "finger gapp" to find out what's in style.
• Pishe: Water. One way to get water is to Splash yourself, dry yourself with towel and then perform the ritual on the towel.

Useful in a pinch, the totem can hold out for a few rounds, and when shielded, provides an adequate meat shield and attack power for younger priests.

Cautious priests of any level can use the totem when trying to expiriment with fighting against unknown NPCs. Even an unshielded totem will completely absorb at least one attack before dying, giving the priest a bit more time to run away from an underestimated foe.

Midlevel and above priests can use a shielded totem with two dust devils (and, if a Sek priest, a creeping doom, too) to swarm a tough NPC. Fighting is tougher when outnumbered and there's a very good chance the NPC will be unable to parry/dodge/block all of the incoming attacks. This also has defensive advantages--the shielded totem protects the priest and if the totem dies, the NPC is more likely to hit one of the two dust devils than the priest, increasing the priest's chances of running away. (If the fight was going fairly well, the priest may want to create another totem, minor/major shield the totem and head back to the fight). This tactic consumes a lot of gp and the xp you get will be reduced this way due to the dust devils, but it's useful when you want to kill an otherwise-too-tough NPC that has an item you want.

• Requires: one of the above items (not consumed), and a holy symbol
• Learnt at 25 fa.ri.mi.ta
• Costs 40 faith gp.