Poltergeist

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.

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Poltergeists are undead spirits who delight in causing trouble for the living. Completely incorporeal, they interact with the physical world by possessing small objects and making them fly through the air. They can use this to fight with weapons as well as the living do, as well as gain the protective benefits of many different hats, boots, gloves, and cloaks at once, though body armour is too large for them to manipulate in this fashion. At higher levels of experience, they can even control these possessed objects at a distance from time to time, harassing their foes with a barrage of unruly armour. Their superlative aptitude for both stealth and hexes make them powerful enchanters, and they are adequate at most other forms of magic, though they struggle with conjurations. They are adept with short blades, if a little below average with heavier weapons, and their lack of a physical body makes them terrible at unarmed combat. The same power they used to possess objects makes them natural experts at throwing. Finally, their nature as spirits of bad luck also grants them temporary AC whenever they inflict maladies upon their enemies.

Poltergeists are an insubstantial undead species with interchangeable auxiliary armour.

Innate Abilities

• Poltergeists are undead creatures, and have the following innate traits:
  • Cold Resistance 1: Poltergeists are resistant to cold.
  • Life Protection 3: Poltergeists are resistant to negative energy.
  • Poison Immunity: Poltergeists are immune to poison.
  • Torment Immunity: Poltergeists cannot be tormented.
  • Poltergeists cannot gain mutations, use talismans, or be polymorphed. When mutated, they temporarily lose max HP instead.
  • Poltergeists are unbreathing, cannot be put to sleep, cannot go berserk, and do not have blood.
  • Poltergeists are vulnerable to Dispel Undead, holy damage, and holy wrath-branded weapons. They may not worship the good gods (The Shining One, Zin, or Elyvilon). The holy wrath brand will not function on weapons they wield.
  • Poltergeists cannot use the spells Borgnjor's Revivification, Death's Door, or Sublimation of Blood.
• Poltergeists are insubstantial, granting immunity to throwing nets, webs, constriction, petrification, and sticky flame.
• Floating: Poltergeists' insubstantial bodies float through the air, flying permanently.
• Formless: Poltergeists may equip any combination of six items of auxiliary armour (hats, helmets, gloves, boots, cloaks, and scarves). They cannot wear body armour, and cannot train the Armour skill.
• Trickster: Poltergeists gain 3 + XL / 6 AC when an nearby monster is debuffed (not counting poison or constriction), then 1 AC for every following monster, capped at 6 + XL * 4/5. (Past +15 AC, the chance to get +1 AC is 50%).

Poltergeists have a base Strength of 4, Intelligence of 10 and Dexterity of 9 (before Background modifiers) and have normal base magic points.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Zealots: Chaos Knight
• Warrior-mages: Enchanter, Hexslinger
• Mages: Necromancer, Ice Elementalist. Earth Elementalist, Alchemist

Poltergeists are forbidden from becoming Shapeshifters.

Level Bonuses

• +1 dexterity or intelligence every 5th level.
• 10% less hit points than average.
• +4 willpower per level.
• At XL 13, they gain the second rank of the Formless mutation, which grants them the Cacophony ability to animate their equipped auxiliary armour into haunted armour allies (one for each piece of auxiliary armour). These allies will not stray more than 2 tiles from the player, and their attacks may daze, drain or confuse their targets. The ability has an experience-based cooldown longer than most other comparable effects, and is very noisy for its full duration.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Poltergeists start with all the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exception:

• Body armour is replaced with a cloak.

Difficulty of Play

While poltergeists have a large amount of built-in resistances and immunities, their inability to wear body armour makes their AC fairly bad early on, and even when their slots are filled they will still lag behind other species without finding large amounts of enchant armour scrolls for each of their pieces of armour. As such, they tend to need to lean heavily into inflicting debuffs to get AC from their Trickster passive:

• Caster backgrounds can apply a variety of debuffs, especially if avoiding their rough -3 Conjurations apt. Their superlative Hexes aptitude makes Enchanters rather straightforward, though they still have good +1 apts for Necromancy and Alchemy that can both debuff and either provide allies or deal direct damage.
  • As with other Hexes users, their spellpower will fall off eventually versus many lategame enemies' Willpower without an orb of guile, and infinite-Willpower enemies present threats regardless. Branching out between spell schools is still quite cheap due to how little experience the +4 Hexes aptitude needs.
• Weapons of draining and chaos are much stronger for them than other species. The former combines extra damage with gaining AC and lowering monster accuracy / Willpower, while the latter has over a 15% chance to apply a debuff against living enemies and can set up a large number of potent stabs (even if it comes with its own risks of applying Haste, Might, or Frenzy).
• Among other items, wands can still do significant damage and inflict debuffs despite their reasonable -1 Evocations aptitude (especially in games with early wands of acid or light, and while their base Strength and Strength gain are both quite weak, their +2 Throwing apt can still be put to good use with non-poisoned darts.
• God choice can help out significantly when early item luck runs dry.
  • Some gods innately provide constant debuff effects. Hepliaklqana's hexer ancestor choice will constantly give their worshippers AC with both attacks and spells. Uskayaw allows repeated confusion with Line Pass and eventually provides a regular burst of both offense and defense each fight between Solo Time and Pain Bond. Ru's retaliatory aura and Apocalypse effects can apply irresistible devastating effects, though the sacrifices can be extra burdensome for weaker poltergeist starts.
  • In less direct assistance, Sif Muna can sometimes help with finding debuff spells, Kikubaaqudgha helps with Necromancy debuffs and ally spells while also providing the devastating Sign of Ruin, Dithmenos's shadow mimic can spread many debuffs to amplify one's starting spells, and three out of four of Makhleb's flavours of freely-usable Destruction have a 50% chance to inflict a debuff.
  • Xom always presents some degree of risk, but can regularly defeat monsters for free, spreads around a variety of debuffs even when attempting to endanger worshippers, and can guarantee some strong chaos weapons in the unique bazaar.
  • Gozag's gold distraction aura does not count as a debuff, and is thus worse off for Poltergeists than most other species.

The unlucky XL 13 grants poltergeists a strong (if infrequently-available) ability in Cacophony, which immediately surrounds them in allies that can inflict debuffs. This can help substantially with covering an escape to a staircase or to overwhelm individual foes, but should be used with a fair bit of caution on unknown floors or floors with known vaults due to being extremely loud for the entire duration.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

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

History

• In 0.33, Poltergeists will be added as a replacement for Vampires.