Maw talisman

Trunk-only: This article pertains to a feature of Crawl which is being tested. It will likely change before the next release, and may even be removed entirely.

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 chance to make a maw attack. Damage equals 7 + Shapeshifting (max. 27 dmg).

The chance to activate any aux attack depends on XL; see auxiliary attack for details. If this XL-based check succeeds, then the maw has a 100% chance to attack.

• Devour on kill: Whenever you kill a enemy that can drop a corpse, you'll devour it, which heals you. You'll heal the lesser of HD + 1d(HD) or Shapeshifting + 1d20.
  • Beogh followers will not devour orcs. Gozag turns corpses into gold, stopping this effect. Death drops still generate, so you won't miss out on dragon scales and the like. (Necromancy??)

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 9, below which you get an HP penalty. It has a maximum skill of 20, where skill has no further impact.

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 obvious, but it also works well with Short Blades and demon whips.

Because the maw is an auxiliary attack, it scales with your XL. When Maw Form is first usable, it'll be weaker to Unarmed combatants or Shapeshifting specialists than comparable forms (Anaconda Form or Blade Hands). However, late game Short Blades users can take full advantage of this form.

At XL 27 and skill 20, you'll get a 27 damage attack at a 96% chance to proc. A quick blade at mindelay swings every 0.25 decaAut, so you'll be getting maw attacks four times per turn. That's well above triple sword values. Unlike many other forms, Maw Form only melds the body armour slot, leaving the shield and 4 aux slots free. While training all the way to 20 Shapeshifting may be unwise for a 3 rune game, having a 16 damage (skill 9) attack is still respectable.

History

• Will be introduced in trunk, in the transformation overhaul. Maw Form had no previous counterpart.