Summon Cactus Giant

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Summon Cactus Giant
Level	6
School1	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Scorching Book of the Wilderness
Casting noise	4
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	200

Summons a warrior from a particularly prickly tribe. Foes that strike these giants in melee are in for a painful surprise! When cast at a higher power, older, more robust warriors will answer the call.

Sumon Cactus Giant is a Level 6 Summonings spell, which summons a titular cactus giant. These animated cacti attack extremely slowly, but are spiny and have remarkably high HP to boot.

Effect

A single cactus giant 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.

When attacked in melee, cactus giants will retaliate with 5d8 damage. This damage cannot miss but is reduced by AC. Any individual monster can only be harmed by spines once per turn, even if they have multiple attacks, like a hydra.

The cactus giant's hitpoints are determined by spell power; roughly equal to 27 + <power>, which is then randomized like any other monsters HP. Duration of the summon is around 27 turns, it does not depend on the spell power.

Strategy

• Cactus giants are, effectively, a leveled up version of Summon Guardian Golem. While they don't explode, they fulfill the same tanky retaliatory summon role that they do. Their low EV helps with this role; projectiles are likely to hit them.
• Despite what it may seem on paper, cactus giants actually 'deal' respectable damage in melee. Melee is the key word here; ranged attacks just don't activate spines.
• Spines can only affect hostile monsters once per round. While a cactus giant can still take out a regular hydra quite easily, don't expect them to obliterate the Lernaean hydra in one turn.

History

• Summon Cactus Giant was added in 0.28.