Spriggan
- This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Spriggan (monster).
| Spriggans are small magical creatures distantly related to Elves. They love to frolic and cast mischievous spells.
They are poor fighters and have little physical resilience, though they are incredibly skilled at dodging attacks. They are terrible at destructive magic - conjurations, summonings, necromancy and elemental spells. On the other hand, they are excellent at other forms of magic, and are very good at moving silently and quickly. So great is their speed that a Spriggan can overtake a Centaur. Due to their tiny size, they need very little food. However, they are herbivorous and cannot eat meat. Their size also makes them unable to wear most armour. They cannot wield large weapons, and even most smaller weapons require both hands to be wielded by a Spriggan. |
Contents
Innate abilities
- Acute Vision: Spriggans can see invisible.
- Slow Metabolism 2: Spriggans need almost no food.
- Herbivore 3: Spriggans gain more satiation from plant-based food, but they cannot eat meat, including chunks from corpses.
- Fast 3: Spriggans cover ground extremely quickly during movement.
- Spriggans are little and are unable to use bardiches, battleaxes, dire flails, executioner's axes, glaives, great maces, great swords, halberds, longbows, scythes, triple swords, giant clubs, giant spiked clubs, javelins, and throwing nets. One-handed weapons like magical staves, broad axes, tridents, demon tridents, and double swords are two-handed weapons to them.
- In addition, spriggans are unable to wear the following types of armour: shields, large shields, gloves, boots, helmets, and any type of body armour apart from robes, hides, troll leather armour, and dragon armour.
Preferred Backgrounds
- Warriors: Assassin
- Zealots: Abyssal Knight
- Warrior-mages: Transmuter, Warper, Arcane Marksman, Enchanter
- Mages: Wizard, Conjurer, Necromancer, Air Elementalist, Earth Elementalist, Venom Mage
- Adventurers: Artificer
Level Bonuses
- +1 intelligence or dexterity (equal chance) every 5th level.
- 30% less HP than average.
- 30% more MP than average.
- +7 magic resistance per level.
Starting Skills and Equipment
Spriggans start with the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions.
- Incompatible body armour is replaced with an animal skin or robe.
- Potions of porridge replace bread rations.
- Stones replace throwing nets.
Difficulty of Play
| Simple • Intermediate • Advanced |
Spriggans are an easy race to play, primarily due to their very fast movement speed. They are also the only race with a "tiny" body, giving them high Evasion and stealth bonuses, complemented by their excellent aptitudes for those skills. Spriggans also have tremendous, albeit uneven, aptitudes in magic skills.
Though their dietary restrictions are more stringent than any other species, Spriggans seldom have real problems with food, except perhaps in the case of very specific circumstances (such as a Spriggan Healer). At most, when playing a Spriggan one should train the spellcasting skill—for which Spriggans have an excellent aptitude—a bit higher, and a bit earlier, than one otherwise might.
Spriggans have very low HP; keep this in mind even when you have huge EV and feel that nothing can touch you. A few bad rolls—or a few evasion-ignoring attacks—can cut through your HP suddenly. Fortunately, Spriggans' speed makes it easy to remain in control and fight—or flee from—battles on your own terms.
Skill aptitudes
The higher the value, the better the aptitude.
| Skill | Aptitude | Skill | Aptitude | Skill | Aptitude |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attack | Miscellaneous | Magic | |||
| Fighting | -2 | Armour | -3 | Spellcasting | 2 |
| Dodging | 3 | ||||
| Maces & Flails | -3 | Shields | -3 | Conjurations | -3 |
| Axes | -2 | Stealth | 5 | Hexes | 2 |
| Polearms | -3 | Summonings | -2 | ||
| Staves | -3 | Invocations | 0 | Necromancy | -1 |
| Unarmed Combat | -2 | Evocations | 3 | Translocations | 4 |
| Throwing | 0 | Shapeshifting | 2 | Alchemy | 1 |
| Fire Magic | -2 | ||||
| Short Blades | 1 | Ice Magic | -2 | ||
| Long Blades | -2 | Air Magic | -1 | ||
| Ranged Weapons | 0 | Experience | -1 | Earth Magic | -1 |
Strategy
Spriggans' innate abilities make them well-suited to a few particular classes:
- Enchanters: Spriggans' aptitudes heavily favour stabbing, as they are quite talented in Stealth, Short Blades, and Hexes. Moreover, their high speed works very well for a stabber: unlike normal speed races, a few bad rolls of the dice will not leave a Spriggan with an angry ogre sticking to them like glue.
- Venom Mages and Assassins: Both of these builds rely (early on, at least) upon inflicting high levels of poison on monsters from a distance. Spriggans' speed allows them to maintain that distance, letting them deal with many threats without ever letting them into melee range.
- Necromancers: Since they have no other use for corpses, Spriggans can raise large armies of the dead without worrying about starving themselves.
As for god choice, Spriggans work reasonably well with most gods. Their speed tends to make those gods who give ranged abilities (Makhleb, Nemelex Xobeh) a bit more useful, and the fact that they don't eat corpses makes the blood gods (Okawaru, Trog, Makhleb) also a bit more useful. These effects are somewhat minor, however.
