Draconian breath attacks
When draconians reach level 7, they receive a colour and an associated draconian breath attack. Each colour receives its own unique attack, except for grey draconians (they stop breathing entirely and become immune to certain effects as a result). While these attacks are fairly powerful, they all come with a significant hunger cost and inflict the breath status effect, preventing you from using them repeatedly in combat.
Contents
Breathe Fire
| Breathe a blast of fire at a targeted monster, possibly leaving fire clouds in its wake. |
Red draconians receive Breathe Fire, which allows you to bellow forth a bolt of flame which leaves a cloud of fire at its destination. This can be used to place a single cloud of fire at a desired location (by aiming at a floor tile with [.]). You can deal heavy damage over several turns if you engage the target in melee or otherwise force it to remain in the flames.
Breathe Frost
| Breathe a blast of frost at a targeted monster. |
White draconians receive Breathe Frost, which allows you to bellow forth a bolt of frost which ignores AC and knocks back flying creatures.
Breathe Mephitic
| Breathe a blast of noxious fumes at a targeted monster. |
Green draconians receive Breathe Mephitic, which allows you to cough up a noxious trail of Mephitic Clouds, confusing the target and doing very minor poison damage. You can then use this opportunity to stab your disabled opponent or to simply run away. Although very useful against living natural opponents, this breath weapon is useless against plants, most demons, the undead, and the non-living.
Spit Acid
| Spit acid at a targeted monster. |
Yellow draconians receive Spit Acid, which allows you to spit a corrosive glob at an enemy, corroding their armour and inflicting bleeding. Unlike the other breath attacks, this can only affect a single enemy. Its advantage lies in the fact that hardly any opponents resist acid damage, and bleeding is an excellent way to soften up dangerous natural and demonic opponents at the start of a fight.
Breathe Lightning
| Release a great discharge of electricity causing an uncontrollable lightning storm. |
Black draconians receive Breathe Lightning, which allows you to generate electrical explosions around you while firing Lightning Bolts and Shocks in random directions, much like use of a disc of storms. This is an extremely powerful attack, but it's impossible to aim and is somewhat dangerous to the user.
Breathe Steam
| Breathe a jet of steam at a targeted monster. |
Pale draconians receive Breathe Steam, which allows you to issue forth a bank of scalding steam that deals weak damage while also blocking line of sight. Although unimpressive for offensive uses, it is exceptionally good at forcing dangerous ranged opponents to engage you in melee or simply to escape pursuing distant foes.
Breathe Energy
| Breathe a blast of power at a targeted monster, possibly removing some of its enchantments. |
Purple draconians receive Breathe Energy, which allows you to launch a bolt of irresistible power at a line of enemies, reducing the duration of any magical effects currently on them. This is a modestly powerful attack, but it can be a life saver when you manage to dismiss an opponent's Might or Haste prematurely.
Monster Version
Monstrous dragons and draconians are capable of identical breath attacks which are also determined by their associated element, though there are some exceptions:
- Monstrous green draconians and swamp dragons have Breathe Poison instead of Breathe Mephitic.
- Monstrous black draconians and storm dragons breathe regular Lightning Bolts in place of the uncontrollable havoc player black draconians create.
- Player ghost draconians will always have a draining breath attack, regardless of the character's initial color.
- The unique draconian Tiamat can breathe whichever breath attack matches her current color.
History
Before 0.20, there was a draconian breath ability associated with mottled draconians and mottled dragons called Breathe Sticky Flame that splattered Sticky Flame onto a target. The player version only worked in melee range, but it could potentially splash onto other monsters adjacent to the one targeted, while the monster version could work at range.
