Reaching

Version 0.13: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A weapon with a reaching brand gives the player the option to attack a target 2 tiles away. You can activate this with the v key or by auto-attacking a monster within reaching distance. This brand can occasionally be found on whips. Additionally, all polearms have a reaching attack, but are not so branded, thus they enjoy the benefits of reaching along with those of their actual brand, if any.

A reaching attack through an interposing monster's tile has a 25-50% chance of either failing outright or affecting the interposing monster itself (see below). Immobile and/or neutral monsters like bushes and toadstools are treated like mobile, hostile monsters when determining whether they block an attack. Reaching attacks may be freely made through inanimate statues with no penalty. However, reaching attacks may not be made through trees or iron grates.

Evoking a weapon for a reaching attack does not use the Evocations skill and is processed in the same way as a traditional melee attack.

Reaching Attacks by Monsters

Those monsters that are able, are free to use whips of reaching and polearms, just like the player. However, there are several monsters that have an inherent (and quite powerful) reaching attack: snapping turtles, alligator snapping turtles, and Geryon.

Game Mechanics

When there is exactly one avenue of attack (eg, the attack is exactly vertical, or a wall partially intervenes), and there is an intervening, non-submerged monster, the attack on the reached-for monster has a outright 50% chance of failure: if the intervening monster is friendly, the attack fails completely; if the intervening monster is neutral or hostile, the attack is instead made upon this intervening monster (See Example 1).

When there are two avenues of attack (ie, the attack is like a chess knight's move [1]), but both are occupied, the attack is resolved as above, with the avenue chosen randomly (See Example 2).

When there are two avenues of attack and only one is occupied, there's a 75% chance of the attack moving forward on the reached-for monster, and a 25% chance of failure. In the case of failure, if the intervening monster is friendly the attack fails completely; if hostile, the attack is instead made upon this intervening monster (See Example 3).

 A reaching attack on Monster M:
 Example 1:                      Example 2:                    Example 3:
 .......  .......  .......       .......                       .......
 ..@....  ..@AM..  ..@A...       ..@A...                       ..@A...
 ...A...  .......  ####M..       ...BM..                       ....M..
 ....M..  .......  ####...       .......                       .......
 With A interposed.              With A and B interposed.      With A interposed, plus
                                                               one free avenue of attack.

The message given when the attack fails due to a friendly monster blocking your attack is rather uninformative:

You could not reach far enough!"

History

Prior to 0.10, only polearms or whips with the reaching brand were capable of reaching. In 0.14, the reaching brand will be removed, but not the inherent reaching on polearms (i.e., whips will no longer have reaching).