Agony

Version 0.17: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Agony
Level	5
School1	Necromancy
Source(s)	Book of Death
Casting noise	4
Spell noise	0

This spell cuts the resilience of a target creature in half, although it will never cause death directly.

Agony is a level 5 Necromancy spell which functions as a single-target torment, cutting the HP of any one target that you have line of effect to in half. It cannot deal lethal damage, but it can very quickly soften up powerful, uninjured targets like hydras or giants to make them more manageable. Like torment, it is worthless against demons, plants, and the undead; unlike torment, it is completely nullified by any degree of life protection. While it never misses, it can be resisted with high magic resistance, although it does receive a spell power multiplier of 5.

Strategy

One of the greatest selling points of Agony is the fact that it can affect opponents at the edge of your line of sight. Hitting an enemy with it once or twice as they charge toward you makes it much easier to mop them up with whatever other attack spells you have available once they're in range. If you haven't branched into other magic schools, Pain makes a decent finishing blow, as it affects all the same creatures as Agony and only has to carve through a fraction of the HP it normally would.