How creatures fight

This page covers how creatures attack and what you are told about it, who fights whom, and how much of a blow each kind of body shrugs off. It ends with two odd kinds: the incorporeal, who pass through walls, and the elementals. The exact numbers for every creature are on Creatures in numbers, and their special powers on Creature powers.

Attacks

Creatures’ blows and shots follow the rules of Combat, the same as yours. They hit or miss, hurt, and kill: “The kobold hits you.”, “The giant rat bites the kobold hard!”, “You block the kobold’s spear with your shield.”, “The kobold archer shoots the giant rat.”, “The giant rat dies.” Casters cast real spells (see Spells): “The kobold shaman casts spark at you!”, “The spark shocks you.”

You are told only of attacks you perceive: those where you see the attacker or the target, or where you are the target. An end you cannot see is “something”: “Something hits you.”, “The kobold archer misses something.” Attacks are noisy, so you may also hear fighting, a bowstring, or chanting out of sight.

When you see both ends of an attack, you also see it happen. A creature fighting up close (you too) lunges at its target, an arrow flies from the archer to its target, and a spell lands with a faint violet sparkle. This needs the matching settings on.

Wounds and death

A creature that dies is gone, and what it carried lies where it fell. Creatures do not flee or fight differently when they are hurt, but look mode shows how hurt they look and whether they bleed.

Big hits and criticals make creatures bleed, just as they make you bleed. A badly wounded creature may bleed to death after the fight. Some attacks carry more: a barrow spider’s bite may poison whatever it bites (see Status effects), and once in a long while a giant rat’s gives it filth fever (see Diseases).

Bumping into creatures

Moving into a hostile creature attacks it, which takes a turn (“You hit the giant rat.”, or “You miss something.” if you cannot see it).

Moving into any other creature swaps places with it, for your step’s time (“You swap places with the deer.”). Afterwards it walks back to where it stood and carries on. A few will not make way (“The sentry doesn’t budge.”), which takes no time; see People and talk.

Who fights

The people of Cēaptūn are peaceful folk by nature and talk to you (see People and talk): the townsfolk, Sister Hild, Godgifu, the reeve, and the mine-factor. The town is safe. The fighting happens in the dungeons (see Dungeons and danger).

A creature that is hostile by nature may still be placed among the peaceful folk by the place it lives in. Then it walks its rounds and never attacks you.

Shopkeepers are merchants. They trade with everyone and fight no one, until you rob or attack one. Then it joins the outraged shopkeepers and comes after you (see Shops).

Creatures of factions at war fight each other on sight, wherever they meet. A demon and a devil fight to the death, and both turn on you when they see you. Light your lantern near them and their archers will find you.

Trolls

Trolls are a tribe of their own (the trolls faction), from about level 13 to 42:

• the troll and the hill troll of Fyrdelf;
• further on, the forest, ice, stone, two-headed, and fire trolls, the troll shaman, the troll chieftain, and the elder troll.

Every creature’s hit points come back at a pace set by its Toughness. A troll’s Toughness is the greatest of anything its size, so its wounds close while you watch. Hit it hard and keep hitting.

Fire hurts every troll more than steel does: half again as much, or a quarter more for the stone troll. The exception is the fire troll, which shrugs fire off and hates the cold instead.

The marsh troll of the fen is a marsh thing, and the rotting troll is undead, but a quest to kill trolls counts them too.

Hides and bodies

What a creature is made of decides how much of each blow it shrugs off. This is its Protection, and the older and stronger the kind, the more it has.

• Soft bodies (skin, fur, feathers, dead flesh) give little until they grow huge.
• Bony bodies (bones, scales, chitin, shell) turn blades.
• Hard-skinned bodies (stone, ice, iron-hard skin) turn most blows.
• Spirits, flame, wind, and water have nothing to cut through, and so no Protection at all.

A blow that does nothing “glances off” the hide.

People who fight in armour have no hide of their own: kobolds, goblins, orcs, the drow, the duergar, and outlaws. What they wear is their Protection.

Hard bodies are what armour-piercing is for: the war hammer, the stiletto, crossbow bolts, and criticals. A critical’s damage is multiplied first and the Protection taken off only once. The Armour-breaker talent’s criticals drive through 2 more.

Protection by body and level, rounded down (each kind’s own is in Creatures in numbers):

The exceptions:

• the cave beetle’s and the ember beetle’s shells: 3;
• the stone troll’s stony hide: 5;
• the mud golem: 5 (a blow sinks into it);
• the balor and the pit fiend: 10, held to the bony line;
• the hags who cast: half a hide’s;
• every living troll: a hide of at least 2.

The animated objects have their own table.

Incorporeal creatures

Some creatures have no body to stop them. These incorporeal creatures drift through walls, solid rock, trees, and closed doors, and may stop inside the stone. A door stays shut behind them. They are:

• among the restless dead, the ghosts, shadows, poltergeists, corpse candles, and wraiths of Fennmynster, and the knockers and spectres of Fyrdelf;
• far deeper, banshees, dread wraiths, greater shadows, white ladies, wraith lords, the sluagh, washers at the ford, night mares, and ghost lords;
• the earth elementals, whose element is the stone.

They cannot leave the level through the stone, and lava stops them as it stops anyone. Nothing of them presses down, so they set off no traps and never break ice.

One inside a wall is still there to fight. You see it when you see that piece of wall: when it is lit, or close enough for darkvision. If you cannot see it there, the wall is only a wall.

• Move into the wall where you see it, and you strike at it.
• It strikes out of the wall at whoever stands beside it.
• An arrow that hits it is lost in the stone. One that misses falls before the wall.

The stone shelters it, though. Inside a wall it is harder to hit: it uses its Wall Defence, in the Defence table on Creatures in numbers. Some misses just strike stone (“Your sword strikes stone where the stone haunt hides in the wall.”). When one dies inside a wall, what it carried falls out onto the nearest floor.

Elementals

Elementals are fire, earth, air, water, ice, and lightning given a shape and a will. Each element comes in sizes and ages: the mote (small, e), then the lesser and the plain elemental, then the greater and the elder (E). The eldest of each has an old name: the balefire, the hoarstone, the welkin wind, the brimwolf, the rimethurse, and the thunderhead.

All elementals are hostile to you and leave everyone else alone. Poison cannot hurt them. Nothing is left of one when it is destroyed, though the oldest now and then leave something they had caught up.

• Fire burns what it touches and lights its way. Fire cannot hurt it, and cold hurts it more.
• Earth is slow, heavy, and hard to cut or pierce. Electricity cannot hurt it. Its blows may stagger you, and the eldest also grips and holds. From the earth elemental up, it moves through stone as an incorporeal creature does, though the stone shelters it less.
• Air is very fast and hard to hit. Arrows blow aside from it, and its blows may stagger you.
• Water walks on the land. Fire and arrows do it less harm, electricity more. Its blows may leave you sluggish, and the greater ones may hold you.
• Ice is slow. Its cold blows may leave you sluggish. Cold cannot hurt it, and fire hurts it more.
• Lightning is fast and lit blue. Electricity cannot hurt it, and its shocks may stagger you.

The exact numbers are on Creatures in numbers.

See also: Creature powers, Creature tricks, and Held.