Vampiric

Version 0.31: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

It inflicts no extra harm, but heals its wielder when it wounds a living foe.

The vampiric brand, not to be confused with draining, does the following:

• Has a 60% chance per swing to heal you for 1d(damage), if you hurt a living or plant monster (natural or plant holiness) that isn't resistant to negative energy.

Use of this brand is considered to be Necromancy, so the good gods forbid its use.

A few unrand artefacts have special properties. Leech activates 100% of the time. Vampire's Tooth activates at the normal rate, but always heals for the full amount possible.

Attack Flavour

Certain monsters have innate vampiric attacks that are slightly different from the weapon brand. These attacks can heal the attacker only if the defender can bleed. This means that the following player conditions will prevent the monster's vampiric attacks from providing healing:

• Being nonliving (Djinni, Gargoyle, or in Statue Form and Storm Form)
• Being undead (Mummy, Ghoul, bloodless Vampire, or in Death Form)
• Negative energy resistance; rN+++ negates healing entirely

Tips & Tricks

• While vampiricism deals no extra damage, it gives rapid healing, making it a strong brand in its own right. It's often considered to be a top-tier brand, at least before extended (most monsters in extended are immune to this brand).

History

• Prior to 0.28, plants and players in Tree Form were immune to vampiric attacks.
• Prior to 0.24, wielding a vampiric weapon incurred a significant initial hunger cost, and such weapons could only be wielded when the user was at least Full.
• Prior to 0.13, this brand activated on 80% of attacks.
• Prior to 0.12, this brand was safer when found on sharp weapons, since blunt weapons didn't allow you to butcher corpses.
• Prior to 0.6, vampiric weapons massively increased the hunger cost for all actions (giving an average character the metabolism of a troll) instead of having a large set hunger cost. Vampires received a smaller hunger penalty. Also, all species received satiation with each attack, although in practice this was never enough to offset the increased hunger without some extremely tedious weapon-switching before and after fights.