Piercer (monster class)

The piercer is a monster class that appears in NetHack, and is represented by the lowercase p glyph (p). Piercers are designated internally by the macro S_PIERCER.

The monster class contains the following monsters:

• p rock piercer
• p iron piercer
• p glass piercer

Common traits

Piercers are carnivorous neutral animals that are capable of hiding by clinging on the ceiling, and will always attempt to do so while outside of the hero's sight. Their names refer to the type of material that their shells are colored and patterned to resemble. Piercers are among the slowest monsters in the dungeon at a movement speed of 1, though their shell gives them fairly decent AC values (with 3 AC for rock piercers compared to 0 for the iron and glass piercer). Piercers lack any form of MR score, and typically lack resistances save for the glass piercer's acid resistance.

A piercer hiding on the ceiling will often attempt to fall onto targets that pass beneath them, and monsters that the piercer normally attacks are valid targets: a hero that walks underneath a piercer has a chance of being hit and taking 4d6 damage (subject to half physical damage) unless the roll of a d20 is greater than or equal to their current AC value plus 3—this makes the attack rather inaccurate, as it has only a ³⁄₅ chance of hitting the hero at 10 AC, and will always miss a hero with at least player with at least -3 AC; furthermore, a hero wearing a hard helm will always be hit, but will only take 2 HP of damage from the blow glancing off that helm. Tame piercers will not attack the hero and harmlessly drop off the ceiling if they walk underneath. If the hero has warning, they will reveal a hiding piercer's location when moving adjacent to their square.

A hero that is polymorphed into a piercer can drop themselves from the ceiling onto nearby targets in a similar manner as piercer monsters do.

Generation

Randomly-generated piercers are always created as hostile.

Strategy

The bite attack of piercers may be somewhat damaging at the time you first encounter them, but this can easily be mitigated by keeping your distance and taking advantage of their very low speed. Piercers have relatively low AC that can pose a problem to players lacking a decent weapon, but are otherwise trivial to dispatch. Explicitly revealing a piercer via methods such as searching or extrinsic telepathy will prevent them from attempting to drop on you. Some early pets are at some risk of being killed when fighting a piercer, since a monster's ability to retaliate against another attacking monsters is not governed or restricted by their movement speed.

Piercer corpses are fleshy and provide decent nutrition for heroes that are not vegetarian, as well as meat-eating pets.

History

The piercer first appears as an individual monster in Jay Fenlason's Hack and Hack for PDP-11, and is included in the initial bestiary for Hack 1.0. NetHack 3.0.0 introduces the piercer monster class and phases out the piercer monster in favor of the three modern subtypes.

Origin

A piercer is a snail-like gastropod that first appeared in Dungeons & Dragons. It has a shell that resembles a stalactite, and clings to the ceiling of caverns and dungeons, mimicking a stalactite and falling down to impale anything that passes underneath. The "bestiary of Xygag" mentioned in the encyclopedia entry is an in-universe equivalent to the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual—the excerpt originates in "The Ecology of the Piercer" by Chris Elliott and Richard Edward, published in issue #72 of Dragon magazine.

Messages

A <piercer> suddenly drops off the ceiling!

A hostile piercer attempted to land on you.

You are almost hit by a falling <piercer>!

The piercer's falling attack missed.

You are hit by a falling <piercer>!

The piercer hit you and inflicted damage.

Its blow glances off your helm.

As above, but you are wearing a hard helm, reducing the damage to 2 HP.

Variants

Lethe patch

In the Lethe Gorge within the original Lethe patch, the second level contains an iron piercer along with another random p.

Convict patch

In the Convict patch as well as variants that incorporate the role, the lower filler levels on the Convict quest contain an assortment of piercers.

dNetHack

dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack add two monsters to the monster class:

• p heaven piercer
• p radiant pyramid

Piercers can be warded by the Elder Sign and the hallucinatory Cerulean Sign.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, piercers have a dexterity-based percentage chance of missing the player, and a speed-dependent chance of missing a targeted monster—a worn metallic helm will also only halve the damage dealt from being hit by a falling piercer.

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.

the Bestiary of Xygag