Wizardry

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

Wizardry refers to items and effects that directly reduce your chance of failure when casting spells. These are provided by rings and the demonspawn mutation Big Brain.

If you have at least one source of wizardry, your raw spell failure is multiplied by 6 / (7 + sources). This is applied after calculating spell failure from skills and other modifiers, though failure is modified by a further modifier. There is no limit to the number of wizardry you can have.

If you worship Vehumet, the raw spell failure of destructive spells is further multiplied by 2/3. This is roughly equivalent to 2 sources of wizardry if don't have any. Note that this bonus is not considered as 2 sources of wizardry; it is a multiplier applied after wizardry is calculated.

Wizardry	Raw Fail Multi.	Wizardry	Raw Fail Multi.
Wizardry x1	75%
Wizardry x2	66.67%	Vehumet	66.67%
Wizardry x3	60%	Vehumet + Wiz x1	50%
Wizardry x4	54.55%	Vehumet + Wiz x2	44.4%
Wizardry x5	50%	Vehumet + Wiz x3	40%

Generally, the actual decrease to failure rate will be larger than the raw decrease. For example, wizardry x1 will bring actual failure rates from 80% -> 45% (×56%), 50% -> 22% (×44%), or 15% -> 6% (×37.5%).

See Also

• Spell success for details on how wizardry affects failure rate.

History

• Prior to 0.31, there was a raw failure multiplier cap of 50%. This meant you could only have 5 sources of wizardry apply at once, or Vehumet and 1 source of wizardry.
• Big Brain was introduced in 0.27.
• Prior to 0.26, staves of wizardry existed, which gave a rank of wizardry.
• Prior to 0.25, potion of brilliance provided a temporary wizardry bonus.
• Prior to 0.14, a staff of wizardry granted a better wizardry bonus than a ring of wizardry.