Palentonga

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The Palentongas are a large, scaled mammalian race, walking on four feet and swinging a powerful tail behind them. Their elephant-back armies terrorize the lands outside the Dungeon. Palentongas are best known for their powerful roll attack, curling up and rolling into a crashing melee attack against nearby foes. They're well suited to melee combat and to casting supportive spells, but they're significantly worse at other forms of combat and advance quite slowly in experience levels. Their body shape reduces the protection given by the body armour they wear.

Innate Abilities

• Palentongas are a hybrid species, with a humanoid torso atop a larger body.
  • Deformed: A Palentonga's hybrid body fits poorly into body armour, granting them only half of the armor's base AC.
  • Palentongas cannot wear boots, but may equip bardings.
  • Palentongas are large enough to attack normally while standing in shallow water (though they still move slowly through it).
  • Palentongas are less encumbered by shields than medium-sized races.
• Rugged Brown Scales 3: Palentongas are covered in rugged brown scales (AC +3, +7% max HP).
• Acute Vision: Palentongas can see invisible.
• Rolling Charge 1: Palentongas can perform a rolling charge attack. You must target a non-harmless, hostile monster within 4 tiles.
  • This moves the user up to the target and attacks, taking as long as either one move or one swing (whichever is higher). It bypasses traps and other hazards, but not impassible terrain or monsters.
  • Rolling charge deals 33% more damage per tile moved, for a maximum of 2* damage (at 3 tiles). It also recieves a +5 bonus to to-hit and creates a soft noise.
  • Auxiliary attacks and cleaving still apply when making rolling attacks, but you can't stab.
  • Rolling charge's range may be improved with any source of good mutation.
• Armoured Tail: Palentongas have armoured tails that they may use to make especially damaging tail-slap auxiliary attacks.

Palentongas have a base Strength of 13, Intelligence of 8, and Dexterity of 5 (before background modifiers).

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Fighter
• Zealots: Berserker, Abyssal Knight
• Warrior-mages: Warper
• Mages: Hedge Wizard

Level Bonuses

• +1 to a random stat every 4th level.
• Average base HP and MP.
• +3 willpower per level.
• Gain the Reflexive Curl mutation at 7th level; when struck, palentongas gain 7 bonus AC until their next turn.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Palentongas start with all the skills and equipment listed for their background.

Difficulty of Play

Similar to Hill Orcs and Minotaurs, Palentongas are well suited to careers as melee bruisers. They get less AC from their body armour, but their scales, reflexive curl, and the increased protection of bardings helps compensate for that. Rolling Charges can be a powerful opener to combat, but care must be taken to not just charge into the unknown. Still, charging headlong can be useful for certain targets, especially against ranged attackers such as centaurs or creatures that blink often.

Their combination of natural scales and deformity also make Palentongas decent spellcasters, with many aptitudes not that far below average.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

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

History

• Prior to 0.29, Rolling Charge was very noisy. Palentongas also had base 11 strength (now raised by 2) and a -2 Shields aptitude (raised by 1).
• Prior to 0.27, Palentongas had 10% extra HP, in addition to Rugged Brown Scales.
• Palentongas were added in 0.26.