Handedness
Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.
Each weapon has a particular handedness, which determines how well you can wield it based on your size, and whether or not you can use a shield.
Weapon Handedness
| Weapon Type | One handed weapons | One handed weapons (Two handed for little species) |
Two handed weapons | Two handed weapons for large species only |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short Blades | Dagger Quick blade Short sword Rapier |
|||
| Long blades | Falchion Long sword Scimitar Demon blade Eudemon blade |
Double sword | Great sword Triple sword |
|
| Axes | Hand axe War axe |
Broad axe | Battleaxe Executioner's axe |
|
| Maces and Flails | Club Mace Flail Morningstar Demon whip Sacred scourge Eveningstar |
Dire flail Great mace |
Giant club Giant spiked club | |
| Polearms | Spear | Trident Demon trident Trishula |
Halberd Scythe Glaive Bardiche |
|
| Staves | Magical staves | Quarterstaff* Lajatang* |
||
| Throwing | Dart Throwing net Stone Boomerang |
Javelin | Large rock | |
| Slings | Hunting sling Fustibalus |
|||
| Bows | Shortbow* Longbow | |||
| Crossbows | Hand crossbow | Arbalest Triple crossbow |
||
| Entries with * can be wielded as two handed weapons by spriggans and kobolds. | ||||
- Felids are little species and cannot wield weapons, throw items, or evoke magical staves because they lack opposable thumbs.
- Spriggans are little, and Kobolds are small, but they can wield quarterstaves, lajatangs, shortbows, and crossbows as two handed weapons.
- Ogres and Trolls are large species.
- Nagas and Palentongas have large bodies with medium torsos, so don't get any special access to weapons.
- All other races are medium species.
Shields
Shields can be worn while wielding one handed weapons. Shields provide SH, in exchange for a penalty to EV, attack speed, and spellcasting.
With the exception of Felid, anyone can wear a shield, though with varying extents. Formicids have four strong arms, so can wield a two-handed weapon and a shield. Everyone else (including the 8-tentacled Octopode) is limited to one-handers.
- Spriggans and Kobolds are more encumbered by a shield, and can not wear tower shields. Spriggans can't use kite shields, either.
- Ogres and Trolls find bucklers too small for them, though have reduced shield penalties.
- Nagas, Palentongas, and Formicids have no shield restrictions, but also find shields easier to wield.
History
- In 0.18 throwing delays followed the throwing skill dependency improvements like other weapons. Before this thrown missiles used the unarmed combat skill and were not impacted by wearing a shield.
- In the 0.14.2 bug fix release transformations no longer allow the character to wield too-large weapons.
- Prior to 0.12, there were two additional types of handedness: 1.5-handed (which could be used with a shield but suffered larger-than-normal penalties) and double-handed (which had even worse penalties, plus cut the weapon's base damage in half).
