Piercer
The piercer, p, is a monster class in NetHack that contains the following monsters:
- p rock piercer
- p iron piercer
- p glass piercer
Common traits
All piercers are capable of hiding on the ceiling, surprising your character by falling on you just as you pass beneath. The fall itself deals 4d6 damage regardless of piercer type, but is rather inaccurate and dependent on your AC - it has only a 3⁄5 chance to hit you at 10 AC, and will always miss a player with at least −2 AC. Wearing any metallic helm will fully protect you from the attack, with the blow glancing off it.
Outside of this, piercers are the slowest monsters in the dungeon with a measly 1 speed - their sole bite attack is somewhat damaging for the point at which you first encounter them, but this can easily be mitigated by keeping your distance. Piercers have relatively low AC that can pose a problem to players lacking a decent weapon, but are otherwise trivial to dispatch.
p rock piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 4 |
| Attacks |
Bite 2d6 |
| Base level | 3 |
| Base experience | 28 |
| Speed | 1 |
| Base AC | 3 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 4 (Uncommon) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 200 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Small |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
A rock piercer:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line661 |
p iron piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 6 |
| Attacks |
Bite 3d6 |
| Base level | 5 |
| Base experience | 63 |
| Speed | 1 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 2 (Quite rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 400 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | None |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
An iron piercer:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line668 |
p glass piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 9 |
| Attacks |
Bite 4d6 |
| Base level | 7 |
| Base experience | 106 |
| Speed | 1 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 400 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | Acid |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
A glass piercer:
| |
| Reference | monst.c#line675 |
Heaven piercer (dNetHack)
p heaven piercer 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 20 |
| Attacks |
Bite 4d6 stunning |
| Base level | 18 |
| Base experience | 508 |
| Speed | 8 |
| Base AC | 0 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 3 (Rare) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 400 |
| Nutritional value | 300 |
| Size | medium |
| Resistances | fire, cold, acid |
| Resistances conveyed | |
|
A heaven piercer:
| |
A somewhat higher-damage piercer found in Gehennom.
Origin
Yet another Dungeons and Dragons monster.
A piercer resembles a stalactite, but with eyes in the sides. It is actually a giant gastropod; the "stalactite" is its shell.
They cling to the ceiling, pretending to be a stalactite. When prey comes beneath them, they fall to impale it.
The adjectives "rock", "iron", and "glass" describe the materials that the respective piercers resemble, not what they (or their shells) are composed of. They leave ordinary meaty corpses when killed, and iron piercers do not rust (although glass piercers are acid-resistant).
Encyclopedia entry
Ye Piercer doth look like unto a stalactyte, and hangeth
from the roofs of caves and caverns. Unto the height of a
man, and thicker than a man's thigh do they grow, and in
groups do they hang. If a creature doth pass beneath them,
they will by its heat and noise perceive it, and fall upon
it to kill and devour it, though in any other way they move
but exceeding slow.
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It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.
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