Spiny

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Anything careless enough to attack a spiny creature in melee will take damage from the defender's spines. Ranged or reaching attacks ignore this counterattack, as do spells. Each spiny creature may only hurt a monster once per round.

Monster Version

Each time anything attacks a spiny monster in melee, there is a one in three chance that the attacker will take damage. This damage ignores EV, but is reduced by AC. Spiny enemies are also immune to constriction, whether from melee constriction, Borgnjor's Vile Clutch, or a wand of roots.

Briar patches deal 5d4 damage, which is the default behavior. Cactus giants instead deal 5d8 damage with their spines.

Player Version

You can acquire the spiny trait yourself by gaining the demonspawn spiny mutation. Spiny players have a one in two chance to hurt attackers, dealing damage based on mutation rank and experience level:

  Minimum damage: mutation_rank
  Maximum damage: (2 * XL / 3) + 3 * mutation_rank

As with monster spines, this ignores EV.

Spiny Monsters

• P Briar patch
• C Cactus giant

History

• In 0.28, cactus giants were introduced, which deal more damage with their spines.
• Prior to 0.27, mutation rank had minimal influence on the player damage formula.
• Prior to 0.26, you could naturally find mobile spiny enemies in the Dungeon: porcupines, torturous demonspawns, and hell sentinels had them.
• Prior to 0.19, the player version did damage based only on the mutation rank.