Summon Guardian Golem

Version 0.29: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Summon Guardian Golem
Level	3
School1	Hexes
School2	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Callings Book of Dangerous Friends
Casting noise	3
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	100

Summons a protective golem. It redirects the injuries of its allies (but not the caster) to itself. When sufficiently damaged, it may fill with an inner flame, causing it to explode if destroyed. It gains more health at high power.

Summon Guardian Golem is a level 3 Hexes/Summoning spell which summons a guardian golem.

Effect

Summons a single guardian golem; it cannot attack, but it will immediately share damage done to other allies (but not the caster). When the golem is below 1/2 health and still alive, it will always gain the explosive Inner Flame status. Higher spell power increases the golem's durability.

The golem's hit dice is 4 + <power> / 16 (randomly rounded).

Duration of the summon is around 27 turns. It is not affected by spell power.

Strategy

• A guardian golem can significantly extend the combat duration of your other summons. Just be sure to keep a safe distance in case it explodes.
• Even if you have no other way to gain allies, a guardian golem still has enough durability to stand in a corridor and take hits while you retreat. It is also completely immune to Hexes and has resistance to several elements.
• Despite having no way to attack on its own, the fact that a guardian golem can gain Inner Flame when damaged lets you use it offensively; summon one in a corridor or other convenient checkpoint, take a step or two back, and let the fireworks ensue.
  • This is effective against enemies with high melee damage, such as gnolls or ogres, but low-damage enemies (such as basic orcs) are unable to detonate the Golem before the duration expires.
• Gods that forbid harming your allies will not mind a Guardian Golem incidentally blowing up.

History

• Prior to 0.27, guardian golems only had a 1/4 chance to be lit with Inner Flame.
• In 0.17, the spell level was lowered from 4 to 3.
• Summon Guardian Golem was added in 0.14.