Scroll of vulnerability

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

Type	Scroll
Name	Scroll of vulnerability
Icon

A scroll that briefly halves the willpower of the reader and any nearby beings, rendering them vulnerable to many magical effects. The scroll cannot affect those fully immune to such effects.

Reading a scroll of vulnerability inflicts vulnerability on everything in your line of sight (including you), reducing willpower by half for a short duration. Monsters with infinite will are unaffected.

Strategy

Scrolls of vulnerability aren't only for Hexes specialists. For just about any character, vulnerability can be useful:

• Wands - Halving willpower makes wands of paralysis, charming, and polymorph much more likely to succeed. With a few points of Evocations, hexing dangerous enemies becomes easy - even foes like the Royal Jelly become targets.
• Scroll of fear - Makes it much more reliable. For reference, vulnerability gives a 50% - 60% chance to fear pandemonium lords with Will+++++. Most targets before extended have a 90% fear chance.

Remember that your own willpower is also affected! Watch out for enemy hexers, such as Erica, Erolcha, merfolk sirens, or orc sorcerers, when using this scroll. Also watch out for enemies with wands - otherwise, an orc with a wand of paralysis can outright kill you.

Therefore, the ideal targets are powerful uniques without hexes in their spell set. Examples include nasty brutes like Donald, Bai Suzhen, Frederick, or Sojobo. They can also be useful if you're struggling against say, hydras or dire elephants, though these scrolls aren't plentiful to use on every hydra you see.

History

• Prior to 0.15, scrolls of vulnerability would additionally cause all magical status effects to immediately expire, and would reduce your current magical contamination by 1-5 points. Both of these effects were transferred to the potion of cancellation.