Felid

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

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

Felids are a breed of cats that have been granted sentience. Originally they were witches' familiars that were magically augmented to provide help for their masters' rituals, yet many have abandoned, outlived, or, in at least one case, eviscerated their former masters and gone out into the world. While fully capable of using speech and most forms of magic, Felids are at a serious disadvantage due to their inability to use armour or weapons. Their agility and stealth are legendary, as is their ability to get to hard to reach places. They move faster than most races, but don't run as fast as Centaurs or Spriggans. Felids advance in levels very slowly. They are skilled with many forms of magic, though less so with raw elemental magic. Felids gain extra lives as they increase in levels. Upon death, they will be resurrected in a safe place, losing an experience level in the process.

Innate Abilities

• As small quadrupeds, felids cannot wear any form of armour or cast Animate Armour (though they may still wear jewellery).
• Felids lack opposable thumbs and cannot wield weapons, throw items, or evoke magical staves, nor can they memorize any spells that require wielding a weapon (Excruciating Wounds or Portal Projectile).
  • Felids may, however, drink potions, read scrolls, or evoke wands and evocable items like a phial of floods.
• Felids have paw-claws, which is equivalent to Claws 1.
  • Felid claws are more effective at stabbing helpless foes than standard unarmed attacks (on the same level as Short Blades).
• Fangs 3: Felids have an auxiliary bite attack in melee.
• Acute Vision: Felids can see invisible.
• Fast 1: Felids move quickly.
• Shaggy Fur 1: Felids have +1 AC.
• Felids are little and have larger bonuses than usual to evasion.

Felids have a base Strength of 4, Intelligence of 9 and Dexterity of 11 (before Background modifiers). They have +1 to base magic points.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Zealots: Berserker
• Warrior-mages: Enchanter, Transmuter
• Mages: Conjurer, Summoner, Ice Elementalist, Air Elementalist, Venom Mage.

Due to their inability to use most items, Felids are prohibited from becoming Gladiators, Hunters, Brigands, and Arcane Marksmen. (Without weapons or armour, most of those are indistinguishable from Monks, so use that instead.)

Level Bonuses

• +1 intelligence or dexterity (equal chance) every 5th level.
• 40% less HP than average.
• +6 willpower per level.
• Your fur grows thicker at level 6 (+2 AC) and thicker still at level 12 (+3 AC, rC+).
• Every three levels, you gain an extra life:
  • When you lose a life, your stats, HP, and MP are completely restored. Most statuses, including maximum HP drain and magic contamination, are removed, and you gain a floor's worth of Zot clock time. You are randomly teleported away from the location of your death (prioritizing safe areas) and you retain all of your previous inventory items. You then lose an entire experience level, but retain your skills progress.
  • You may have at most two extra lives at a time. If you miss gaining an extra life because you already had two, you will gain that life the next time you gain a level with fewer than 2 lives (but you may gain at most one life per level).
  • You may check how many extra lives you have and how many times you have died on the % screen, just below "Spells".
  • If you have less than two lives, pressing E shows how much XP is required for an extra life.
  • You continue gaining extra lives past level 27, at XP totals following the same quadratic progression as levels 14 through 27.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Felids receive the skills and equipment listed for their background, with these exceptions:

• Felids receive no armour or weapons.
  • Any background that starts with a weapon skill gives them Unarmed Combat instead.
  • Any Armour skill is replaced with Dodging.

Difficulty of Play

Though a Felid's inability to use weapons and armour does mean that the game becomes simpler and more straightforward (which newer players may find attractive), this simplicity is achieved by the removal of many options and useful tools. Greater speed and multiple lives may appear to be strong defensive characteristics; in practice, however, their -40% health penalty makes them very prone to death in the first place, and the loss of a character level upon re-spawning means they will have even fewer max hitpoints than before they died.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

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

Strategy

All Felids capable of casting spells should at least consider learning Transmutations magic, as the higher-level Form spells can grant the bonus HP, AC and branded attacks that Felids lack. While almost every form will negate your speed advantage, speed becomes relatively less powerful as you advance through the game. Felids specializing in unarmed combat should also be interested in learning Manifold Assault, which helps distribute damage at range without engaging in potentially lethal melee skirmishes.

Extra lives are a lot easier to regain in early Dungeon and Lair than in the Vaults onwards, which means early deaths are not as punishing as late game ones. The XP level gained from a potion of experience counts towards regaining an extra life (unless the player has reached XP level 27).

Background Choice

Felids' legendary fragility can be devastating, but certain backgrounds will help prevent early deaths:

• Summoners: Summons have their own HP bar, meaning your own lack of bulk matters much less. Otherwise lethal melee encounters and projectiles alike can be blocked. Later, reliably powerful Summonings spells like Summon Forest, Summon Mana Viper and Malign Gateway use Translocations or Hexes, which Felids excel at.
• Conjurers: Fulminant Prism benefits greatly from extra movement speed, allowing an extra step from the caster before it explodes. Iskenderun's Mystic Blast may push away enemies with potentially lethal melee attacks. Both of those spells are easier to train, having Hexes or Translocations as their secondary school.
• Ice Elementalists: While Freeze's 1-tile range may be dicey, both it and Frozen Ramparts are fairly strong, never-missing spells. Ozocubu's Armour will partially negate a Felid's extremely low AC, and Hailstorm particularly benefits from bonus movement speed, letting Felids kite enemies that have reached them in melee back into the spell's area of effect.
• Delvers: Felids have massive stealth and stabbing capabilities, and their extra speed will let their ascent back to D:1 be much less risky than usual. A few lucky stabs on dangerous monsters on the way can give an experience headstart once D:1 has been reached.

God Choice

As for religion choice, Felids should take advantage of gods that synergize well with their lack of equipment and/or very small maximum HP:

• Gozag: Gozag is typically one of the strongest gods from the midgame onwards, with plentiful Potion Petitions and the ability to turn dangerous floors into a joke by bribing them. Healing effects from Potion Petition are even more impressive with lower maximum HP. Call Merchant will never suggest Armour or Weapon shops, letting Felids quickly gear up with spells, consumables, and jewellery.
• Hepliaklqana: Provides a permanent ally, useful like all summons. The ancestor can assist and even solo dangerous foes that may otherwise inflict severe damage, while the Felid stacks extra lives and skill levels for the mid and late game.
• Jiyva: While Felids will still lose a fair amount of consumables, they won't mind losing the countless equipment items devoured by Jiyva. Regeneration is especially noticeable with lower maximum HP, and as the jelly-spawning passive is reliant on getting hit for significant portions of one's maximum HP, a lot of high-end oozes will be generated for emergency support.

Cheibriados is considerably more dangerous, removing one of the Felid's primary advantages (speed).

Trivia

• After a death, should you venture to the location of your demise, you will find a felid corpse labeled "felid corpse of (player name)." If you were under the effects of Spider Form or the like when you died, your corpse will even reflect this. You may even use your own corpse to cast Necromancy spells, if you wish.
• As they can't use them, Felids will never receive gifts from Okawaru or Trog. In a related vein, troves will never ask for a weapon or a piece of armour.

History

• Prior to 0.27, Felid had a +20 innate bonus to stealth. Using Blade Hands would, instead, lower stealth by 50.
• Prior to the removal of the hunger system in 0.26, felids were Carnivorous and had a Slow Metabolism.
• Felid jump attacks were removed in 0.16.
• Prior to 0.14, felids could not jump or evoke wands.
• Felids were added in 0.8.