Item you can use provided you have the skill

Hey I was wondering if anyone else noticed this.

When an item says you require say 10 Smiting Prayers to use (say a staff), do you really need 10 of Smiting Prayers to use it? because I was still able to equip this item without having 10 of Smiting Prayers.

Same thing goes for other items. For instance, my monk/necro is able to equip max damage swords which are only meant for warriors to use because you need 10 of Swordsmanship.

I noticed this situation as well. I'm guessing that perhaps the damage cannot be reached or not effective?? Or maybe the extra properties on the weapon has no effect. Anyone can clarify this?

Thats right, if an item has x amount of damage and requires that you have a certain amount of skill, you will not get the full damage capability from that weapon if your points do not meet requirements.

The same goes for anything, such as "Armor +12 requires 8 strength" or whatever.

When i use my ranger but i cannot shoot a guy who is high up (in a tower for example, obstructed view my ****) i have been known to grab a melee weapon which i have found, lol.
Gotta love that elevation, hehe.

When you equip an item that has requirements that you don't meet, the item acts as a starter item of the same class. For example, equipping a +12 energy focus requiring 9 Healing Prayers when you have 8 or less would only give you a +3 energy bonus. Max damage swords would only do something like 2-3 damage if you didn't reach the requirements.

Modifiers are not reduced in effectiveness, however. If a focus had +8 armour while health is over 50%, you'd gain that bonus no matter what the requirements were.

I've tested this. When eqquiping an item you don't have the required stats for you get exactly half of the bonus that item gives. Say a Healing Ankh would give you +12 energy (req. 9 Healing Prayers) and you only had 6 healing prayers, you would gain 6 energy when equipping that item. Same goes for weapons.

Think of it this way, you're 8 years old and you'veonly ever played games on a nintendo (computer skill of say 2) and someone hands you a nice fancy machine and says, please write me a program to calculate my taxes. Sure you can use the computer, but you're sure as hell not gonna be effective in the task at hand