Spriggan

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Spriggan (monster).

Spriggans are small magical creatures distantly related to Elves. They love to frolic and cast mischievous spells. They are poor fighters and have little physical resilience, though they are incredibly skilled at dodging attacks. They are terrible at destructive magic - conjurations, summonings, necromancy and elemental spells. On the other hand, they are excellent at other forms of magic, and are very good at moving silently and quickly. So great is their speed that a Spriggan can overtake a Centaur. Their size makes them unable to wear most armour. They cannot wield large weapons, and even most smaller weapons require both hands to be wielded by a Spriggan.

Innate abilities

• Acute Vision: Spriggans can see invisible.
• Fast 3: Spriggans cover ground extremely quickly during movement. Each move takes 0.6 decaAut, which equals to 16.67 monster "speed".
• Spriggans are little, too small for many items.
  • They are completely unable to use most two-handed weapons: great swords, triple swords, dire flails, great maces, battleaxes, executioner's axes, halberds, scythes, glaives, bardiches, longbows, javelins, and anything medium-sized species can't wield.
  • Large one-handed weapons: magical staves, double swords, tridents, demon tridents, and broad axes, are two-handed weapons to them.
  • In addition, spriggans are unable to wear the following types of armour: kite shields, tower shields, gloves, boots, helmets, and any type of body armour apart from robes or hide-based armour (animal skin, troll leather armour, and dragon scales). Bucklers are more encumbering to them.

Spriggans have a base Strength of 4, Intelligence of 9 and Dexterity of 10 (before Background modifiers). They have +1 to base magic points.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Brigand
• Zealots: Abyssal Knight
• Warrior-mages: Warper, Enchanter
• Mages: Conjurer, Earth Elementalist, Venom Mage
• Adventurers: Artificer

Level Bonuses

• +1 intelligence or dexterity (equal chance) every 5th level.
• 30% less HP than average.
• +7 willpower per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Spriggans start with the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions.

• Incompatible body armour is replaced with an animal skin or robe.
• Javelins are replaced with boomerangs.

Difficulty of Play

Spriggans are a fairly easy race to play, primarily due to their very fast movement speed. They are also the only species with a "tiny" body, giving them high evasion and stealth bonuses, complemented by their excellent aptitudes for those skills. Spriggans also have tremendous, albeit uneven, aptitudes in magic skills.

However, spriggans have very low HP, and are too tiny for most armour. Keep this in mind even when you have huge EV and feel that nothing can touch you; a few bad rolls — or a few evasion-ignoring attacks — can be fatal. Fortunately, Spriggans' high speed makes it easy to remain in control and fight or flee from battles on your own terms.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	-2	Armour	-3	Spellcasting	2
		Dodging	3
Maces & Flails	-3	Shields	-3	Conjurations	-3
Axes	-2	Stealth	5	Hexes	2
Polearms	-3			Summonings	-2
Staves	-3	Invocations	0	Necromancy	-1
Unarmed Combat	-2	Evocations	3	Translocations	4
Throwing	0	Shapeshifting	2	Alchemy	1
				Fire Magic	-2
Short Blades	1			Ice Magic	-2
Long Blades	-2			Air Magic	-1
Ranged Weapons	0	Experience	-1	Earth Magic	-1

Strategy

Spriggans are fast, meaning that outside of getting trapped in between monsters, or scary ranged attacks, you should just be able to run away. Careful exploration (so that you don't have to retreat into unexplored areas) is extremely helpful to avoid those types of nasty situations. They are even faster than centaurs, meaning you can run before the monster starts firing. A +5 Stealth aptitude serves as a reinforcement. Considering Spriggans often don't want to wear heavy dragon armours, training some stealth early on costs little and helps a lot.

While they have both the speed to kite and an amazing +2 aptitude for Slings and Bows, keep in mind that Spriggans don't have much strength, are unable to use longbows (a net 66% base damage increase from shortbows), and that fustibali are frustratingly rare outside of gifting gods. Kiting is powerful, but not the be all, end all, with your fragility noticable in ranged duels.

Background Choice

Spriggans' innate abilities make them well-suited to a few particular classes:

• Enchanters: Spriggans' aptitudes heavily favour stabbing, as they are quite talented in Stealth, Short Blades, and Hexes. Moreover, their high speed works very well for a stabber: unlike normal speed races, a few bad rolls of the dice will not leave a Spriggan with an angry ogre sticking to them like glue.
• Venom Mages and Brigands: Both of these builds rely (early on, at least) upon inflicting high levels of poison on monsters from a distance. Spriggans' speed allows them to maintain that distance, allowing them deal with many threats without ever letting them into melee range.
• Necromancers: Spriggans have passable aptitude with Necromancy, and the ability to raise several meat shields for yourself is always helpful.
• Conjurer and Summoner types in general: Being able to maintain distance while blasting is a great thing. Unfortunately, Spriggans' aptitudes for such magic are rather terrible, but spells like Fulminant Prism (Conjurer) and Summon Forest (later on) also use your greater aptitudes.

God Choice

Spriggans are reasonably good with most gods, but a few stand out (in no particular order):

• Kikubaaqudgha: Goes well with a necromancer build. The torment ability is a bit more useful for Spriggans than most races, since their speed provides a powerful escape option.
• Trog: A somewhat paradoxical choice, but actually pretty strong. Spriggans' intrinsic speed makes post-berserk slowing somewhat less dangerous, Trog's Hand helps out with their low HP, and Brothers in Arms is a powerful panic button in general.
• Ashenzari: Complements a stabbing build very nicely. The detection and scrying can be good for avoiding danger, particularly around corners.
• Okawaru: Armour gifts can occasionally be useful for Spriggans, since they are guaranteed to be wearable for them.

Cheibriados is considerably more difficult, since they remove one of Spriggans' primary advantages (speed).

History

• Spriggans replace starting kite shields with bucklers, but no background in 0.28 gives the former.
• Prior to 0.27, Spriggans had a +4 Dodging aptitude and started with base 11 Dexterity, but EV had a hidden stepdown.
• Prior to the removal of the hunger system in 0.26, spriggans had Slow Metabolism 2 and were Herbivorous, meaning they required very little food, but could only eat rations.
• In 0.20, demon tridents became two handed for spriggans again.
• Prior to 0.19, spriggans could not use triple crossbows. Also, morningstars, eveningstars, long swords, scimitars, demon blades, war axes, spears, demon tridents, and greatslings were two handed for them.
• Prior to 0.16, spriggans began play with a potion of porridge in place of a bread ration.