Ice Mace

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Ice Mace
General Information
Appears in	Hexen II
Character	Crusader
Weapon Statistics
Damage	10 (per Shot) 30 (Splash) 100 Powered (direct hit; see text) 5/10 Blizzard (see text)
Speed	~6/sec 1/sec Powered
Ammunition	Blue Mana

“	At times I have seen the Crusader bearing an Ice Mace, a curious weapon indeed. This weapon fires small, jagged ice projectiles that can harm enemies at a great distance. Enemies slain by the Ice Mace are frozen solid. The Tome of Power completely transforms the Ice Mace’s function. Instead of firing an ice projectile, the Mace instead causes a blizzard of frozen shards to pelt its target from above. This attack is extremely powerful, and difficult to avoid as well.	”
—Chronicle of Deeds

The Ice Mace is a weapon used by the Crusader in Hexen II.

Overview

It fires projectiles of ice, the damage is underwhelming but each projectile only costs 1 Blue Mana. The projectiles will freeze fleshy enemies and objects when brought to death, with them shattering a few seconds later. Projectiles will bounce off targets already frozen. If it instead strikes a solid wall, it will splash for a small amount of damage instead (usually only less than 10 points).

When powered up, a single projectile will fly towards a target, and release a blizzard lasing 10 seconds. A direct hit will freeze any fleshy target with less than 100 health (other targets aren't even damaged), and fall on the target which usually freezes and kills pretty quick (10 Blue Mana). The blizzard moves around randomly, and has six vertical "beams" that inflict 10 damage per frame. Targets within the blizzard itself take 5 damage per frame. In general, it can inflict significant damage to stationary targets.

Two creatures are resistant to the Ice Mace: the Ice Imp and the imp from the Stone of Summoning. They take 3 damage from direct hits from basic projectiles, and 1 damage from being in the blizzard. They still take full damage from the vertical blizzard beams.

In a multiplayer deathmatch, the Ice Mace will freeze players for 10 seconds, leaving them vulnerable to any other attack. The weapon would only kill other players from the splash effect. With a blizzard, being close to the blizzard start will flash the screen.

Gallery

Concept art.

Beta model.

Audio

Action	Audio
Ice Mace firing
Ice Mace hitting somebody
Ice Mace freezing somebody
Ice Mace hitting something
Enhanced Ice Mace firing
Blizzard from the enhanced Ice Mace

Notes & Trivia

• Whenever a boss would otherwise have been frozen, it takes 10 damage instead. This tends to only affect corner cases where the target would have died anyway.
• icemace.hc:409 shows a particular condition with "Mjolnir", the thrown warhammer, not found elsewhere in the blizzard use. It would be redundant, as the warhammer's projectile is also not a "fleshy" thing and thus wouldn't be necessary to reject that branch.
• The ice statues don't automatically shatter on the hardest difficulty level (in contrast to the ones in Hexen: Beyond Heretic).
• There is unused code in the game for blizzard shards that would have done 2.5–27.5 damage and ricochet off of walls.
• In the 0.23 beta, the Ice Mace looked and functioned like an actual mace, rather than a ranged weapon. The Crusader’s player model had one frame of him holding it.

Death Messages

• "Player" was snowed in by "Attacker"'s blizzard!

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