Diamond Sawblades

Version 0.33: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Diamond Sawblades
Level	7
School1	Forgecraft
Source(s)	Book of Contraptions Treatise on Traps
Casting noise	7
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	200

Forges up to four razor-sharp sawblades at fixed positions around the caster which shred any enemies adjacent to them over several turns.

Diamond Sawblades is a level 7 Forgecraft spell that creates up to 4 sawblades; 1 is spawned in each empty tile that's two-diagonal from you. The sawblades deal damage to every enemy adjacent to them each turn they are active.

Useful Info

The diamond sawblades are placed in the X positions in this diagram, where @ is the player:

X...X
.....
..@..
.....
X...X

Sawblades cannot be placed on tiles that are either out of LOS or contain a wall or a monster.

Sawblades have 1 + power/10 HD, and their Shreds deal 4d(4 + 12*HD/22) damage that always hits. They will always cast Shred if an enemy is in range. HP = 39 + 2d20 and does not depend on power or HD.

Strategy

While not a primary "killdudes" spell due to the placement restrictions, Diamond Sawblades is useful as an option whenever the situation is ideal (akin to Eringya's Noxious Bog). The sawblades attack all adjacent enemies, giving them some AOE, and they can obstruct enemies, or at least reduce the enemies that can get to you.

Note that monsters tend to prefer moving in orthogonal directions rather than diagonal, although they'll still move diagonally if it would be the shortest path

You can help get monsters to stay in range of the sawblades by standing in the way, and prevent the sawblades from being targeted for attacks.

History

• This spell was added in 0.33.