Spells with a rule of their own

Some spells do something no other spell does. None of them spares you or your allies.

• Thunderclap and Benison go off around you. They need no aim, and you are at their centre.
  • Thunderclap strikes you with the full roll, as it does everyone at a burst’s centre, and leaves you Stunned along with the rest. The whole level hears it.
  • Benison’s one roll heals you and every ally of yours within it who is hurt. It sears every undead within it, yours or not. It does nothing to anyone else, and it is not cast when no one there is hurt and no undead is there.
• Leech gives you back half the hit points it takes, rounded down, never past your maximum. The undead are immune to necrotic harm, so they give nothing.
• Rebuke reaches only the undead, yours and others’. The living in it are not touched. It is fire, so it burns as fire does and leaves a fire at its centre.
• Bramble only catches those standing where things grow: grass, marsh, reeds, flowers, bushes, forest floor, fungus (the terrain table says which). On stone it does nothing.
• Gale drives everyone on its line one cell straight away from you, the nearest first. Anyone with someone behind them stays put, and so does anyone held or webbed. It harms no one. It puts out the fires on its line and tears away the zones of fire, foul cloud, darkness, and smoke on it; slick ground stays.
• Flare stuns everyone it reaches who has eyes. The eyeless (worms, the black pudding, the canoloth) take nothing. A shut door stops it.
• Bind holds one hostile creature you see where it stands. It is Pinned two degrees (more as your Presence grows), so it cannot step, though it may still strike. A pin eases a degree with each action it takes. Bind never misses. A wand of bind casts it. (Shatter’s wand is a force burst, like the spell.)
• Blink takes you to a free cell within 5, each equally likely, through walls or not. It works while you are held, webbed, or pinned, and ends all three.
• Sense the quick lets you feel every living creature within 8 cells that you cannot see, as a heartbeat. You hear it within 2 cells of where the creature is, every turn while the spell lasts. The undead, constructs, and animated things have no heartbeat.
• Cloudburst, cast under the open sky, brings an hour of rain. It at once puts out every fire, and everyone burning, under the open sky on the level.

Healing harms the undead

Mend, Cure wounds, and Benison are healing spells. On the undead they work backwards: the roll that would close wounds is fire harm instead. “The light of mending sears the skeleton.” Grave feast is not a healing spell: it drains a corpse, so this does not apply to it.

• A touch (Mend, Cure wounds) on an undead beside you is an attack. It must hit, as Cause wounds must: your roll against its Defence. A critical rolls the harm again. It works on an undead that is not hurt.
• Benison sears every undead within it, yours or not, and heals the living allies there.
• The harm is the heal’s whole roll, grown by your scores and the spell’s rank. It is fire, so creatures that resist fire take less, and it may leave one burning.
• Scrolls and wands of these spells do the same.
• The living are healed as before, friend or foe.
• Creatures that heal never heal an undead, and undead creatures cast no healing spells.

Zones

A zone is an area that lies on the floor for a while. Balefire burns, Reek poisons, Mirk darkens, Slick trips, and Fume smokes. All five come only from the grimoires and scrolls you find (and a flask of smoke lays Fume’s). Pitch fire burns too, in a pool where it bursts; it comes from a scroll or a flask of it.

• A zone’s cells stay as they were laid, and it never spreads.
• It takes you and your allies like anyone else. The caster has no protection from their own zone, though a kill it makes is theirs.
• A zone laid over another replaces it on the cells they share.
• It stays when you leave the level, and its time runs while you are away.
• No zone can be laid on the overworld.

A cold spell puts out the fire on each cell it reaches, and the rest of the zone burns on. A zone shows as a still tint over its cells, and look mode names it.

See also: How spells work and Healing.