Miscast effect

Version 0.16: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

A miscast effect occurs when a player fails to cast a spell successfully. These can range in severity from completely harmless to inflicting heavy damage and magic contamination, depending on the school of magic that is used.

Failure to cast spells causes various generally nasty things to occur, becoming nastier with spell level and spell failure. Miscasts come in a severity scale 0, 1, 2 and 3. 0 is always harmless, although it can occasionally make a moderate amount of noise.

There is a special case if Hell's mystical force produces a miscast effect that spawns any monsters: those monsters are not summons and are worth experience.

Unless otherwise stated, all miscast effects for a given school and level are equally probable.

Air Magic

• 1: 4-12 electric damage, or rain cloud, or Mephitic Cloud
• 2: 3d8 electric explosion or Poisonous Cloud
• 3: 12-40 Airstrike, or twister, or ball lightning

Conjurations

• 1: smoke or 6-12 damage
• 2: 9-25 damage or 3d12 explosion
• 3: 12-40 damage or 3d20 explosion

Divinations

The Divinations school has long since been removed from the game, but its miscasts remain. They can be triggered by Sif Muna's wrath, orange crystal statues, crystal balls, or any source of "random miscasts" (such as Zot traps).

• 1: confusion or no effect
• 2: confusion plus either 1-3 INT loss or 3-12 MP loss
• 3: confusion plus either 3-5 INT loss or 5-24 MP loss

Earth Magic

• 1: harmless
• 2: 10-22 damage (checked by AC)
• 3: 3d15 explosion, or Petrification

Hexes

• 1: corona or random uselessness
• 2: Curse one item, or Slowing, or Silence
• 3: Magic vulnerability effect on self, or Confusion, or 0-18 glow, or fall asleep for 5 turns

Charms

• 1: corona or random uselessness
• 2: curse one item (3/7 chance), slowing (3/7), or berserk (1/7)
• 3: Paralysis, confusion, 0-18 glow, or cancellation effect (can actually remove some magical contamination)

Fire Magic

• 1: nothing or summons a fire vortex.
• 2: 5-33 fire damage, or 3d14 Fireball
• 3: 9-41 fire damage, or 3d20 Fireball, or Sticky Flame, or temporarily reduced fire resistance

Ice Magic

• 1: nothing, or 4-8 damage only if the player has cold vulnerability (rC-).
• 2: 5-16 ice damage, or 3d11 ice explosion
• 3: 9-31 ice damage plus Frozen status effect, or Freezing Cloud

Necromancy

Torment, rotting, and draining damage have no effect on undead. For spells, no effect at all if Kiku** and Piety/150 chance. These effects are also frequently seen as death curses from non-plain mummies. For death curses, if Kiku**, then Kiku has a 1/2 chance of blocking it entirely, otherwise reduces the severity by one level.

• 1: Slowing, rotting, or 5-19 torment damage
• 2: Draining, 1-3 shadows, or 15-37 torment damage
• 3: Draining, reaper, soul eater, random stat loss 1-7, rotting, or player-targeted torment

Poison Magic

Poison resistance blocks the damage and stat loss, and renders the clouds harmless.

• 1: 2-4 poison damage or Mephitic Cloud on your location only
• 2: 3-11 poison damage, large Mephitic Cloud, or random stat loss 1
• 3: 10-28 poison damage, Poisonous Cloud, or random stat loss 1-5

Summonings

• 1: 5-13 damage, or spatial vortex, or lesser demon
• 2: 2-4 spatial vortices (1/6 chance), common demon, or 2-3 small abominations (1/2)
• 3: 1-2 worldbinders, or 2-3 common demons, greater demon, banishment, or Malign Gateway

Spatial vortexes and greater demons summoned in this manner are durably summoned, so they do not time out and cannot be abjured.

Translocations

• 1: 4-12 damage (1/2 chance), 4-10 damage and Blink (1/3), or spatial vortex (1/6)
• 2: 9-31 damage (3/7 chance), 5-13 damage + confusion + 66% chance blink, 33% chance teleport (2/7), 2-4 spatial vortices (1/7), or banishment (1/7).
• 3: 15-43 damage, 9-25 damage plus Dimension Anchor, banishment, or 0-18 glow.

Transmutations

• 1: 1-11 damage or random uselessness
• 2: polymorph, 3-25 damage, 0-18 glow, petrify, or confusion
• 3: polymorph (1/2 chance), 3-20 damage plus 0-34 glow (1/6), 5-27 damage plus remove mutation (1/6), 5-27 damage plus 1-2 bad mutations (1/6)

Hell effects

Hell's mystical force selects a miscast or other effect with the probabilities given below. As noted further down, it will always try to place a Malign Gateway instead of banishing, as banishment is rarely more than annoyance for a character that can handle Hell.

• Necromancy miscast: 16.66%
• Summoning miscast: 8.33%
• Conjurations miscast: 4.16%
• Charms miscast: 2.08%
• Hexes miscast: 2.08%
• Miscast appropriate to each branch: 22.22% (Fire magic miscast in Gehenna, Ice magic miscast in Cocytus, Necromancy miscast in Tartarus, and Earth magic miscast in Dis)
• Summon a greater demon appropriate to each branch: 14.15% (Brimstone fiends in Gehenna, Ice fiends in Cocytus, Shadow fiends in Tartarus, and any greater demon in Dis)
• Summon 1-5 random monsters: 9.88%
• Nothing happens: 19.75%

See Also

Magic contamination

History

In 0.16, many magic miscast effects received a significant overhaul.

Prior to 0.14, Hell's mystical force could paralyze the player.

Prior to 0.13, Zot traps inflicted a random severity 3 miscast, instead of having a hardcoded list of effects.