In another thread I was warned that Bloodbane, a twinky spear from Red Badge component of Tactics, may be unbalancing. I agree that is possibly so. In my game, it is not. I decided to play around with it just to see if it makes things too easy. My plan was to give it to my fighter 7-mage. The result of my play so far is that it does not significantly impact my game. There are several reasons for this: (1) the character is almost always casting spells, (2) the character seldom hits the hard targets when she does attack (poor THAC0), (3) some monsters are immune to poison, and (4) some monsters are immune to stun and/or have very good saves. Now if I had created a kensai to use this weapon, it would probably be much more effective. However, I speculate that the Improved Anvil upgrade weapons would often be more effective against Sikret's monsters than this spear, particularly under improved haste with two weapons. And as someone else commented, the monster's of the regular game just don't compare... I'm not sure that the fighter 7-mage may do better with a +5 sling and +3 bullets, providing her a better chance to hit...

Similarly, the Boots of Preservation from The Ritual component of Tactics may also be twinky. I haven't got them yet and never played with them. I may test them to see if they're too good of a thing, or sell them, or drop them. We'll see. I'm kind of wishing for something to make the simple fighters a little more durable vs the mages, but don't know the best solution for that. Some items of magic resistance may help, but at least one foe dealt out several lower resistances and fried my iron golem (shapechange) in one encounter - is nothing sacred? I can see how a Morituri could really rock in Improved Anvil, as could the more commonly chosen fighter-mage types.

I think Bloodbane's effectiveness is balanced by the fact that it's only available comparatively late in the game. A low level party should not be able to complete the Red Badge encounter easily, without either luck or cheesiness. In terms of unbalancing items, I can think of at least one that is far worse: Alucastria's Dart from Freedom's Reign. Available virtually as soon as you leave Chateau Irenicus, for only about 20-25000 GP, a +5 enchanted weapon that has a chance of stunning the target every hit, inflicts cold damge, and has a very high rate of fire.

It may be better not to have too many of these item mods, else you run the risk of making the IA battles easier than they should be. Some of the items in the Ruad mod are a little overpowered as well (Black Sword of Undeath, anyone? All its restrictions mean very little when Use Any Item is widely available to all rogues).

You have to have more than 3 million XP to do red badge. I haven't installed any item mods except some Tactics components - but no acid katana!

After further play with Bloodbane, I would like to reaffirm my initial impressions. I still believe that this weapon is not unbalanced in the hands of a caster and probably isn't the best choice for a melee fighter. Although Bloodbane is probably an excellent weapon for fighter-types, I think weapons like Crom and the Improved Anvil weapons really shine for IA (golems, great saves, immunities etc. in IA monsters). Conversely, I can see how this weapon would destroy any challenge when used by a fighter-type in the regular game (not IA).