Summon Mana Viper

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Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.
Summon mana viper.png Summon Mana Viper
Level 5
School1 Hexes
School2 Summoning
Source(s) Book of Beasts
Book of the Wilderness
Casting noise 4
Spell noise 0
Power Cap 100
Flags Mons abjure
Summons a violet-scaled serpent whose bite can swiftly drain the magical reserves of nearly any foe. At higher power, the antimagic properties of the viper's bite grow even stronger.

Summon Mana Viper is a level 5 Hexes/Summoning spell which summons a single mana viper.

Effect

A mana viper is summoned. Higher spell power increases the strength of the creature. Players have a summon cap of 1; casting the spell again will cause the old summon to very quickly time out.

The hit dice of the mana viper is 6 + <power> / 12, randomly rounded.[1] This increases the HP and strength of the antimagic bite.

Duration of the summon is around 18 turns, it does not depend on the spell power.

Strategy

Mana vipers are fast and moderately durable, but are most notable for their antimagic bite. The antimagic status gives a % chance for monsters to fail their spells. The more antimagic a monster has, the greater the failure rate. Mana vipers are very effective against spellcasters and demons.

Theoretically, mana vipers can be used to "stun" endgame threats like ancient liches, orbs of fire, and fiends. But vipers aren't the strongest creatures, and you can only summon one at a time. So it's likely that the viper just dies, or gets abjured.

Against non-magical targets, mana vipers are alright. Better than a warg or ice beast, but not amazingly so. If you want a raw combat summon, cactus giants are a much better bet.

Monster Version

Creates multiple mana vipers based on the spell power, their hit dice is not adjusted from the base monster. Duration is the same as the player version.

The following enemies cast Summon Mana Viper:

History

  • Prior to 0.30, mana vipers' HP did not scale with spellpower, resulting in less HP overall. Also, their HD was 1 lower.
  • Prior to 0.28, this spell had a summon cap of two.
  • Summon Mana Viper was added in 0.14.

References