Slaying

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Slaying is a term used to describe a property that increases a character's accuracy and damage in melee and ranged combat. Slaying does not affect spellcasting, wand use, or anything else that isn't melee or ranged combat. It is functionally identical to weapon enchantment, but affects unarmed attacks and auxiliary attacks as well.

Mechanics

Accuracy

The total of all of a character's slaying bonuses are added to the player's to-hit number, in the same way as weapon enchantment. A random number from 1 to the player's total to-hit is checked against a monster's EV to determine if the player lands a blow; thus, it is not a flat accuracy increase that is provided, but an increase in accuracy on average.

Damage

The character's total slaying bonus is added to the enchantment of the player's weapon (and applies to unarmed combat as well). In combat, the player gets a damage bonus of 1d(enchantment+slaying). Unlike base damage, this bonus is not affected by the player's skill or strength. The total damage done is then adjusted appropriately by your brand and the monster's AC.

Sources

There are a number of sources of slaying bonuses:

• A ring of slaying.
• Artefacts may provide a bonus or penalty, displayed as {Slay ±X}.
• The spell Wereblood provides a variable amount of slaying, increasing by 1 for every monster killed.
• The Wu Jian Council's Heavenly Storm provides a variable slay and EV bonus, starting with 5 and increasing by 1 for every martial attack you perform.
• Gloves with hurling ego provide a +4 slaying bonus to Throwing weapons.

And sources of negative slaying:

• Sacrifice Courage's Horrified condition.

There are also a number of slaying-like effects:

• The effect Might gives a flat +1d10 bonus to melee damage. This is added as a separate effect from slay/enchantment. For example, having Might and +10 slay (1d10 + 1d10) would be more consistent damage-wise than +20 slay (1d20) would be, even if the average increase in damage is roughly the same. It doesn't increase to-hit.
• Gloves with the Infusion ego give +4 to the damage bonus of only melee attacks (not auxiliary or ranged attacks), at the cost of 1 MP per strike. They don't increase to-hit.
• Corrosion lowers damage bonus and AC by 4 per rank of corrosion. It doesn't lower to-hit.
• Ru's Sacrifice Eye functions like a -5 to-hit malus, though it affects magic too.

Strategy

Melee and ranged characters will want as much slaying as they can get. Slaying is relatively better for quicker weapons, as its damage is independent from weapon damage. Be rational about it: a +2 slaying bonus does not make a -1 randart leather armour a worthwhile proposition on your MiBe.

Strength adds 2.5% damage from a weapon's (base damage * skill multiplier); 1 strength equals 1 slay at 40 pre-strength damage, before auxiliary attacks. Slay is better at lower damage values and also increases to-hit. Slay also increases the aforementioned aux attacks.

Slaying doesn't affect spells, except for spells that attack with your weapon, so it's largely a nonpriority for casters.

History

• Prior to 0.26, the aptly named Song of Slaying gave slaying (being renamed to Wereblood).
• Prior to 0.15, there were separate slaying bonuses for accuracy and damage. Bonuses were shown in the form +x, +y, where x was the accuracy bonus, and y was the damage bonus
• Prior to 0.10, slaying bonuses for damage were added to the weapon's base damage, meaning that they would be increased by having high weapon/Fighting skill. When this was changed, slaying bonuses were generally increased to compensate.