# Scissors
NetHack brass includes a new item, the scissors. Apply them to cut cloth items into bandages. The resourceful adventurer may wish to undo some tailoring and destroy spare cloaks and other cloth items that the adventurer recovers from the dungeon.
Scissors are most effective in the hands of those who know bandages best: either a Healer, or alternatively a female wearing either a nurse cap or nurse uniform.

Contents

1 Messages
2 Yield
3 Dudley's dungeon
4 References

Messages

"You can't cut that!"

You tried to cut a material other than cloth, so nothing happened.

"You can't cut something you're wearing."

Regardless of how low your intelligence or wisdom may be, NetHack brass does not permit you to injure yourself by applying scissors to that cloak or robe on your body.

"You cut your (item) asunder."

You completely destroyed the item without producing any bandages. (The yield of bandages would have been zero or negative.)

"You cut your (item) into a bandage."

You produced one bandage.

"You cut your (item) into some bandages."

You produced multiple bandages.

"Oops!  (count) bandages slip away from you!" (when you are underwater, on the Plane of Air, or inside a monster that engulfed you)
"Oops!  (count) bandages slip to the floor!" (anywhere else)

You managed to produce some bandages, but you had not enough room to carry them in your inventory.

Yield
If you use a scissors to cut an existing bandage, then you destroy it. Otherwise, you destroy the item but produce some number bandages. You can produce the most bandages if either you are a healer, or you are a female wearing a nurse cap or nurse uniform:

Item

Amount (before adjustments)

mummy wrapping
1 bandage

kitchen apron, frilled apron
3 bandages

towel, T-shirt, Hawaiian shirt
5 bandages

nurse uniform
7 bandages

other cloth items
weight divided by 4

If you are not a healer, and you are not a female wearing a nurse cap or nurse uniform, then you will only produce a random number of bandages, from 0 to the number in the above table. If the scissors are cursed, then you produce 1 or more fewer bandages. If your dexterity is less than 18, then you produce 1 or more fewer bandages. (The two effects are compounding if you use cursed scissors while your dexterity is less than 18.) However, neither of these penalties applies to healers, or to females wearing a nurse cap or nurse uniform.
The new bandages inherit their beatitude from both the scissors and the cloth item that you cut. If either the scissors or the cloth was blessed, then this makes blessed bandages; if either the scissors or the cloth was cursed, then this makes cursed bandages; but if one item was blessed and the other was cursed, then this makes uncursed bandages; otherwise both items were uncursed and this makes uncursed bandages.[1]

Dudley's dungeon
Dudley made use of a pair of scissors in two strips of Dudley's dungeon:

11 June 2007
12 June 2007
These strips follow the rules of rock, paper, scissors. By simply wielding the scissors, Dudley can scare a paper golem into flight.

References

↑ use_scissors, line 1492 of apply.c of NetHack brass 040923