Maw talisman

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Transforms the user's midsection into a giant mouth, gnashing and ready to devour foes. The mouth may devour slain creatures, healing the user to an extent increased by the user's Shapeshifting skill and the power of the creature eaten. Skill also increases the damage done by the maw.

A maw talisman is a talisman that changes you into Maw Form, which adds a giant, gnashing mouth in place of the stomach.

Useful Info

When eVoked, a maw talisman turns you into Maw Form, which lasts until you end the form. Entering or exiting a form takes 5 turns.

Maw Form has the following effects:

Combat Bonuses

• Unarmed Combat: 5 base damage.
• Maw aux attack: Adds a biting auxiliary attack. Whenever you make a melee attack, weapon or not, you have a flat 75% chance to make a maw attack. Unlike other aux attacks, this chance is not impacted by XL. Damage scales linearly with Shapeshifting skill:
  • Below minimum: 3 damage (0 skill) - 12 damage (10 skill)
  • Above minimum: 12 damage (10 skill) - 20 damage (19 skill) ; +0.8 damage per level
• Devour on kill: Whenever you kill an enemy that can drop a corpse in melee, you have an independent 66% chance to devour it, healing you. You'll heal the lesser of HD + 1d(HD) or Shapeshifting + 1d20. You don't need to make a maw attack to devour.
  • Beogh followers will not devour orc corpses. Gozag turns corpses into gold, stopping this effect. Death drops still generate, so you won't miss out on dragon scales and the like. However, Animate Dead and Infestation won't function for corpses you devour.

Restrictions

• Melded Gear: Body armour.

Maw Form does not block any mutations, does not change your size, and gives no innate bonus to HP / AC.

Maw Form has a minimum Shapeshifting skill of 10, below which you get an HP penalty, and the maw's damage scales down. It has a maximum skill of 19, where skill has no further impact.

Rupert may carry a maw talisman.

Strategy

The maw auxiliary attack doesn't care about how hard you hit, but the faster you swing, the more maw attacks you'll proc. Therefore, it works best on fast weapons. Skilled Unarmed Combat is an obvious choice, but it also works well with Short Blades and demon whips.

Species that do not wear body armour (draconians, octopodes, felids) incur no penalty from using Maw Form (other than any penalty resulting from insufficient Shapeshifting skill).

History

• Maw talismans were introduced in 0.31, along with talismans themselves. Maw Form had no previous counterpart.