Spriggan

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This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Spriggan (monster).

Spriggans are small magical creatures distantly related to Elves. They love to frolic and cast mischievous spells. They are poor fighters and have little physical resilience, though they are incredibly skilled at dodging attacks. They are terrible at destructive magic - conjurations, summonings, necromancy and elemental spells. On the other hand, they are excellent at other forms of magic, and are very good at moving silently and quickly. So great is their speed that a Spriggan can overtake a Centaur. Due to their tiny size, they need very little food. However, they are herbivorous and cannot eat meat. Their size also makes them unable to wear most armour. They cannot wield large weapons, and even most smaller weapons require both hands to be wielded by a Spriggan.

Innate abilities

• Acute Vision: Spriggans can see invisible.
• Slow Metabolism 2: Spriggans need almost no food.
• Herbivore 3: Spriggans gain more satiation from plant-based food, but they cannot eat meat, including chunks from corpses.
• Fast 3: Spriggans cover ground extremely quickly during movement.
• Spriggans are little and are unable to use bardiches, battleaxes, dire flails, executioner's axes, glaives, great maces, great swords, halberds, longbows, scythes, triple swords, giant clubs, giant spiked clubs, javelins, and throwing nets. One-handed weapons like magical staves, broad axes, tridents, demon tridents, and double swords are two-handed weapons to them.
  • In addition, spriggans are unable to wear the following types of armour: shields, large shields, gloves, boots, helmets, and any type of body armour apart from robes, hides, troll leather armour, and dragon armour.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Assassin
• Zealots: Abyssal Knight
• Warrior-mages: Transmuter, Warper, Arcane Marksman, Enchanter
• Mages: Wizard, Conjurer, Necromancer, Air Elementalist, Earth Elementalist, Venom Mage
• Adventurers: Artificer

Level Bonuses

• +1 intelligence or dexterity (equal chance) every 5th level.
• 30% less HP than average.
• 30% more MP than average.
• +7 magic resistance per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Spriggans start with the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions.

• Incompatible body armour is replaced with an animal skin or robe.
• Potions of porridge replace bread rations.
• Stones replace throwing nets.

Difficulty of Play

Spriggans are a fairly easy race to play, because the early game is a breeze and they are able to rely on their great speed and magic resistance for the whole game. They are also the only race with a "tiny" body, giving them great Dodging ability complemented by their excellent aptitude for it. They are not as effective with Short Blades and ranged weapons as Kobolds or Halflings and have lower HP, as well as a worse aptitude for Fighting.

Spriggans also have tremendous spellcasting aptitudes, but this is where they run into trouble. Since they cannot eat chunks, spell hunger is a substantial limitation for Spriggan spellcasters – especially with the removal of The Hive in 0.10, formerly a source of large amounts of herbivore-friendly food.

When playing a Spriggan, you should avoid casting most spells until you can bring their hunger cost down to zero; otherwise, you will burn through your limited food supplies and starve. To bring spell hunger costs down, focus on raising the Spellcasting skill and your Int.

Even without spell hunger to contend with, Spriggans must carefully manage their permafood, as the only infinite sources in the game are raids on the Abyss or Pandemonium, and those are by no means guaranteed. A staff of energy is a godsend for a spriggan.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

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

Strategy

Spriggans make excellent Enchanters and Transmuters, and generally have a very easy time in the early game thanks to their blazing speed (and unlike Centaurs, they don't need to eat all the time). The middle game is where things begin to get tough for Spriggans, as more enemies have decent ranged attacks, and their speed/dodging is no longer so insurmountable an advantage. Spriggans are also among the most frail races in Crawl; they have very low HP, compounded by the severe restrictions on the armour they can wear.

Spriggans have several tools for dealing with this, however. Their Spellcasting is keen enough that in practice, they have little trouble with attack spells, despite low aptitudes for Conjurations and elemental magics. They are also bar none the best sneaky assassins in the game. Aside from their uber Stealth and speed, their Hexes aptitude makes them great with invisibility, confusion, and other magical means of making enemies vulnerable to Stabbing (which they also excel at).

Spriggans also have tremendous ability at Evocation. A Spriggan with a rod of destruction is nigh unstoppable, at least by monsters. The problem is to survive until you can acquire or find (good luck with that!) one, and then to survive the hunger from the rod (intelligence and spellcasting skill help with spellcasting hunger, slow metabolism 2 helps with walking about, but no matter how high your Evocations skill becomes, you can never reduce hunger from evoking a rod to zero).

Finally, they can get a lot of mileage out of gods who grant allies (Yredelemnul, Makhleb, Fedhas, or - for an offbeat choice - Trog), as they can happily use all the meatshields they can get. Even better, all of these gods accept blood sacrifices or have other uses for corpses, which is great for Spriggans who don't need meat anyway. On the other hand, Sif Muna or Vehumet could add a lot to a Spriggan's already great magic game. Zin can help compensate for the Spriggan's picky diet through his Sustenance ability, and Spriggans are utterly unaffected by his dietary restrictions as theirs are already more severe. Jiyva can also help provide sustenance, and he may also provide useful resistances through mutation gifts; Spriggans also won't experience many of the disadvantages of the body-warping mutations they may acquire, as their size already limits the equipment they can use, and their high speed can help them get to useful items before hungry jellies do.

This wiki also contains a Spriggan Enchanter Guide.