Spell "Runestaff" in the "Book of Glyphs" appears bugged

[aeoo]

When I cast this spell it creates a magical weapon which in its description tells me it can be activated for an effect. Also when I view my character sheet, and switch it up with 'h' to see the various equipment effects, I notice an 'Activ' flag is set to '+' for the Runestaff. However neither 'A' nor 'Z' in a roguelike keyset will activate this weapon. Even if I use a handle command ('%' in roguelike or 'h' in original), there is no option to activate this weapon.

Further, this weapon appears to have no damage dice listed in its title. But in wizard mode I can see it does over 20 points of damage in melee on a CL 29 character with only 11 strength and no other equipment besides a torch. Where is all this melee damage coming from? This might be "as designed" but I think it would be nice to be able to tell the true damage potential of this staff without entering into a wizard mode or having to probe monster HP for a few turns.

[StultusTemporis]

Please refer to object.txt in the Edit folder in the lib (library) folder. Runestaff deals 6d4 base damage, and has the Electric and Fire brands. It is blessed by the gods, allowing clerics and shamans to use it. It also increases one's light source radius by 1, although it may need to be activated to do this.

While I cannot say for certain, it seems likely that the character who's using the item simply hasn't used it enough to realize that it's crackling with fire and electricity. A lot of objects in Unangband don't reveal their full effects until they have been used for a while. Check your character self-knowledge (~ and then 9) to see what you know is affecting your character.

I suggest playing around with the flags to see if that affects the way it works until it seems to work properly.

[DGoldDragon28]

The activation thing is well-noted though: the weapon has the ACTIVATE flag, and its description (when hack-identified with ^A-f ) promises an activation that "creates a jumping and moving chain of 30 degrees and radius 20 which seeks out nearby enemies. It automatically attacks to electrify for 75 damage every 50 game ticks ... and takes effect 1d10+10 times ... or creates a ball of range 20 and radius 2 to burn your enemies for 80 damage, recharging in d50+50 turns." It cannot be activated, despite all this. I will try to fix this.

As Stultus noted, the melee damage is what it should be, all though adding the damage to the title line would make sense.