Call Canine Familiar

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Call Canine Familiar
Level	3
School1	Summoning
Source(s)	Book of Callings Book of the Hunter
Casting noise	3
Spell noise	0
Power Cap	100

Summons an inugami to the caster's aid. These mystical canines form a bond with their summoner, strengthening them in direct proportion with the caster's spellpower. Recasting this spell while your familiar is nearby will imbue it with additional magic, mending some of its wounds and causing its next attack to strike more quickly and cleave adjacent foes. “There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened, I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said. ‘Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!’ Seeing, I suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he added, ‘Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter.’” -Bram Stoker, _Dracula_. 1897.

Call Canine Familiar is a level 3 Summoning spell which summons a canine monster.

Effect

One canine monster is summoned. Higher spell power results in a better canine and more duration.

Possible summons are:

h Hound

h Wolf

h Warg

To pick the monster, random value in range of power ± 10 is taken. If this value is at least 60 a Warg is summoned, if at least 40 a Wolf is summoned and otherwise a Hound is summoned.

Duration class ranges from 2 (around 18 turns) to 6 (around 171 turns). The formula is 2 + (1d<power> - 1) / 4 (capped at 6).

Strategy

• Call Imp may produce more interesting allies than Call Canine Familiar, but they're far less reliable; the tactical usefulness of a crimson imp or iron imp is far less guaranteed than that of a fast monster that bites fairly hard. But as Call Canine Familiar has a summon cap of only 1, there's little reason not to use both together.
• Hounds are certainly helpful, but this spell really starts to shine when you manage to get your spell power high enough that you can reliably summon wolves. Eventually reaching warg spell power levels will help further, but that increase in effectiveness is significantly less dramatic.
• This is the only spell in the Summoner starting book which summons allies which can see invisible - it is at the very least useful for dealing with early invisible enemies like orc wizards or unseen horrors.

History

Prior to 0.14, this spell could also summon jackals and its summon cap was 3.