Creature powers

Besides their blows (on Creatures in numbers), many creatures have a power of their own. They throw boulders, summon help, stare you into stone, split in two, breathe fire, or burst. Each section explains one power and gives a table of the creatures that have it, with its exact numbers. Thieves, blinkers, the unseen, casters, and auras are on Creature tricks.

Throws

Giants hurl boulders. A throw flies like any missile, along its line as far as its range, and strikes the first one in its way (see Ranged combat).

A creature that throws does so whenever you are in range with nobody between you, until it is next to you. Then it fights up close. Its throws never run out, but each takes it the time below, and what it throws breaks where it lands.

A throw adds the thrower’s Dexterity modifier to hit and its Strength modifier to the damage, as yours do. A boulder that does two kinds of damage does whichever hurts its target more.

Bombers throw flasks instead: a kobold alchemist its flasks of oil, a goblin firebomber flasks of fire, a cult chymist stinking flasks. A bomber’s flask has no roll to hit: it breaks where a flask you throw would, on the first one in its way, and its spell’s splash is the attack (the table names the spell). Whoever else stands in the splash catches it too, the bomber’s own kind and the bomber itself. If you see where it breaks, you learn what the flask was, as when you throw one. Its flasks never run out either, but it carries one or two, which fall where it dies.

Summoning

Summoners call up creatures of their own side. A goblin wizard calls its kin and their wargs, a necromancer the lesser dead, and a dark wizard devils.

A summoner that sees a foe within its reach (you, or anyone its side fights) summons before it does anything else. The creatures appear on free cells around it that it can see, nearest first. How many come is rolled each time. They are real creatures of the summoner’s side: they fight, carry gear, drop it where they die, and give their full experience when you kill them. Killing the summoner does not send them away.

Each summoning costs the summoner mana, and then it must wait a while before it can summon again. A few summoners, the breeders, pay no mana. A summoner never has more of its summoned alive at once than the last column says. Its mana comes back as anyone’s does (see Mana), so one that has spent itself summons again only much later. A summoner that cannot cast (silenced) cannot summon.

A breeder calls up its own brood while it fights, as the wormlord calls its grave worms. Kill it first, or the fight gets worse the longer it lasts.

You cannot summon this way.

Gazes

Some creatures harm with a look. A vampire’s stare holds you transfixed. A sea hag’s leaves you frightened and drains your Toughness. A spectre’s drains your will.

A gazer that sees you within its reach looks you in the eye before anything else except summoning. A gaze takes as long as a spell.

The eyes must meet both ways. The gazer needs a line of sight to you, and you must see it. If it stands in a cell too dark for your eyes, or behind a wall or a closed door, it cannot catch your eye. You only feel its cold stare, and its look is wasted.

When the eyes meet, the gaze catches your eye at the chance in the table. It then does what its row says, each effect by its own chance. A drain is still resisted by its check. Hit or miss, the gazer must wait before it looks again.

A creature with no vitals has no eyes to meet and is never gazed at. Gazers look at your allies as they look at you.

Forced gazes

A gaze marked forced in the table makes you avert your eyes by reflex while you see its gazer. You have no choice in it and nothing to switch. With your eyes averted you fight half-blind: −4 to hit, your Dodge halved, and no free blows. The gaze still finds a glance you cannot help, at the chance in that column. Darkness, a wall, or a door between you ends the averting, as it ends the gaze.

The basilisk’s is the one forced gaze, and the deadliest. A glance it catches gives you a degree of Stiffening unless you make a Toughness check against 15. Each degree is told (your limbs stiffen, your skin greys, you can barely move), and the fourth turns you to stone, which is death.

A degree eases in two minutes. A basilisk is slow, so one glimpsed and walked away from is only a fright. The scroll of restoration, a temple’s cure, or Still mind’s Stillness ends the Stiffening, and the Heal skill eases it by a degree each try.

The cockatrice’s peck gives the same Stiffening by touch: one peck in four, against a Toughness check of 13. The gorgon’s breath gives it to everyone it harms (see Breath).

A creature that is stoned leaves no corpse. It leaves a statue holding what it carried (see Doors for kicking one apart, Digging for digging through it).

Splitting and dying into

Splitting. The charnel heap and the black pudding split under a blade’s slashing and piercing. Such a blow cuts the creature in two if it leaves it alive with at least twice the hit points in the third column. The creature keeps the greater half of what it has left. A second one, with the other half and nothing it carried, stands on the nearest free cell beside it. The new one is of its side and hunts what it hunted. With no free cell beside it, the creature does not split.

Blunt blows, fire, acid, and every other kind of damage leave it whole. Below twice that floor of hit points, it dies like anything else.

A half you kill gives a quarter of the creature’s experience (an ally’s kill a quarter of the ally’s share), and no quest counts it.

Dying into. A creature that dies into something lets it out of its corpse as it dies. As many come as the table says, each drawn at random, on free cells it could see within that many cells. They are of the dead one’s side. Each gives a tenth of its experience when killed, and no quest counts them either. Look mode shows such a creature as writhing. A hydra’s heads crawl out of it this way and go on biting.

Breath

Dragons breathe their element. The fire drake, for one, breathes a long fan of fire.

A dragon that sees you within its cone’s length, with nothing solid and nobody between you, breathes whenever its breath is ready, before anything else. The cone fans out a quarter turn wide from the dragon toward you, like Burning hands but far longer.

Everyone in the cone is struck by one roll of its damage, with no roll to hit. Evasion halves it, and resistance takes its share. The dragon’s own kind is immune to its element and takes nothing.

The element does to those it harms what any spell of it does: fire sets one in four burning. A breath may carry more, as a blow’s added effects do. The gorgon’s grey vapour leaves those it harms stiffening unless they make the Toughness check (the Then column).

After breathing, the dragon cannot breathe again for the time below. Meanwhile it fights up close with its claws and bite. Each is struck in turn and rolled on its own, one row each in the attacks table. Unseen, a dragon’s breath is heard as a roar.

Bursts

Some creatures go off in a burst of their element.

Vortices. The motes are vortices. A vortex has no blow at all. Once it is beside its target it bursts instead, and is gone. Killed before it gets there, it goes out quietly. So shoot or throw at one as it comes, or close a door on it (a mote opens none).

Death throes. Some creatures burst where they die, however they die:

• every elemental except the earth line;
• the burning skull;
• the magma crawler;
• the animated lantern (its oil);
• the balor.

So an elemental is best killed from a cell or more away. The earth elementals do not burst. Instead they hurl stones at what is not beside them, as the giants do (see Throws), and pound what is.

How a burst strikes. A burst is centred on the creature’s own cell. It reaches everyone within its radius and in its line, except creatures of its own kind. One roll of its damage strikes each of them in full, with no roll to hit and no halving at the edge. Evasion halves it, and resistance takes its share. It strikes your allies and other creatures as readily as you.

A burst does to the floor what an area spell of its element does, so the scrolls under a dying fire elemental may burn. Its element does to the cells what such a spell’s burst does: fire is left burning, water frozen. The spell types’ added effects do not come with it, but the creature’s own do, by the chance below, on those it harmed. A water elemental’s wave puts out the burning of everyone it reaches and the fires there. An air elemental’s gust blows what lies loose on its cells a cell farther out.

The dice of a death throe are half of what a damage spell of the creature’s level rolls: (2 + level ÷ 8)d6, rounded down. Unseen, a burst is heard as an explosion.

See also: How creatures fight, Creature tricks, and Creatures in numbers.