firebrand gone wrong?

["Michael B. Martin" <martinm@sps1.phys.vt.edu>]

> Has anyone else had problems with archetypes going a bit wrong?
> My relatively low-level character (lvl 10) just found Firebrand,
> and I thought "Great!", the first really decent piece of
> weaponry I'd found so far. But then I tried taking on some
> demons and all I kept getting was "you missed the demon" - I
> couldn't hit them at all. I did better if I wielded nothing
> and hit them with my bare hands! It also wouldn't hit any
> earthwall, which was really inconvenient. Other creatures
> (low-ish level) it was mowing through very nicely.
> 
> Anyone have any idea what is going on? Surely Firebrand has
> a physical attack as well as a fire attack? This is all
> happening with 0.91.8 with no whacky patches applied,
> compiled under Solaris 2.4 and X11R5 using gcc etc etc.
> (Going to try compiling under X11R6 sometime in the
> next two weeks!)

Actually, I noticed something like this myself just yesterday.  I
managed to make it all the way to the Fire DragonMaster (or whatever
the correct name is) in the "Dragon Quest" cave, and beat it.  I found
two special swords, one was a "Storm[something]" (maybe "Stormbringer"?)
and the other (I think) was a Firebrand.  I tried then both out and
found them to be quite disappointing compared to the sword I enchanted
myself way back when I was 12th level or so (perhaps the 7 "Enchant"
scrolls are more important than I realized at the time).  With the
Firebrand I had the same problem with always missing tough monsters
that I only infrequently missed with my sword +7, even though it is
supposed to have "weaponmagic" attacks as well (or does the
"weaponmagic" just do more damage?).  I just figured that this was due
to the new sword not having as high a wc, and thus couldn't hit the
tougher monsters, but the other person's situation makes it sound
a little strange (if he could hit better with bare hands).  Is it
supposed to be this way?  I got a fair amount of platinum for
selling those two swords, but I would think that special weapons
should seem more powerful.

BTW, is there a "reflector" shield that a 20th level character could
get to by himself?  I am still getting clobbered by these lightning-
wielding monsters...

-Michael