Undead Slayer

The Undead Slayer is one of the roles available to the hero in SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM. From the guidebook:

Undead Slayers are specialists, trained to hunt the undead as well as other incarnations of evil. They are well aware of the weaknesses of their foes and come prepared. Few denizens of darkness ever encounter such warriors of light and live to tell of it.

Undead Slayers in SLASH'EM can be humans, elves, gnomes, orc, doppelganger, drow, hobbits, or lycanthropes, and can be of any appropriate alignment. In SlashTHEM, they can be any available race other than clockwork automata and ghouls. In Hack'EM, they can be any available race other than illithid, orcs or draugr.

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Starting inventory

Each Undead Slayer starts with the following equipment—the secondary weapon(s) and armor are chosen from one of four possible sets before substitutions are applied, with an equal probability of each set:

	First set	Second set	Third set	Fourth set
Primary weapon	+0 wooden stake
Secondary weapon	+0 pistol	+0 crossbow	+2 bullwhip	+0 silver spear +0 spear (if lycanthrope)
Secondary "ammo"	30-39 +0 silver bullets 30-39 +0 bullets (if lycanthrope)	30-39 +0 crossbow bolts	5 +0 silver daggers 5 +0 daggers (if lycanthrope)
Suit of armor	+0 chain mail +0 orcish chain mail (if orc)	+1 leather jacket	+0 chain mail +0 orcish chain mail (if orc)
Secondary armor	+0 helmet +0 orcish helm (if orc) +0 elven leather helm (if elf)	+1 pair of low boots	+0 helmet +0 orcish helm (if orc) +0 elven leather helm (if elf)
Food	5-10 blessed cloves of garlic 5-10 blessed sprigs of wolfsbane 4-8 lembas wafers (if chaotic) 4-8 holy wafers (if not chaotic) two stacks of 1-2 random comestibles (if orc)	5-10 blessed cloves of garlic 5-10 blessed sprigs of wolfsbane 4-8 lembas wafers (if chaotic) 4-8 holy wafers (if not chaotic)	5-10 blessed cloves of garlic 5-10 blessed sprigs of wolfsbane 4-8 lembas wafers (if chaotic) 4-8 holy wafers (if not chaotic) two stacks of 1-2 random comestibles (if orc)
Potions	4 potions of holy water
Other items	oil lamp (1⁄6 chance)

Chaotic Undead Slayers may start with their wooden stake poisoned.

Undead Slayers start with knowledge of all non-magical weapons and armor, along with any applicable racial equipment.

The Undead Slayer's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.

Intrinsics

Undead Slayers gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• XL 1: Stealth
• XL 1: Drain resistance
• XL 1: Sickness resistance
• XL 1: Warning against undead
• XL 7: Speed
• XL 9: Poison resistance

Skills

Undead Slayers have the following skills available to them:

Undead Slayer Skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: bow, sling, dart, shuriken, boomerang Spells: matter spells
Skilled	Weapons: long sword, club, paddle, mace, morning star, flail, hammer, quarterstaff, polearms, javelin, unicorn horn Spells: protection spells, body spells
Expert	Weapons: crossbow, dagger, firearm, spear, whip
Grand Master	Combat: bare hands

Undead Slayers start with Basic skill in bare hands, daggers and whichever weapons they start with. They use the wisdom stat to cast spells, and their special spell is turn undead.

Techniques

Undead Slayers can learn the disarm technique by reaching Skilled in any weapon, and also gain the following techniques at the listed experience levels:

Level	Technique
1	Turn undead
1	Weapon practice

In SlashTHEM, they also gain the shield block technique at experience level 7.

Special rules

Undead Slayers move at a base speed of 10, compared to 12 for every other role in SLASH'EM minus the Yeoman.

Undead Slayers have a +2 bonus to casting emergency spells.

Undead Slayers have a ⁵⁄₆ chance of a beneficial effect from applying a blessed medical kit to ingest a pill, a ¹⁄₂ chance of doing so with an uncursed medical kit, and a ¹⁄₆ chance with a cursed medical kit.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• XL 1-2: Assistant
• XL 3-9: Eliminator
• XL 10-17: Exterminator
• XL 18-21: Destroyer
• XL 22-29: Vindicator
• XL 30: Undead Slayer

Gods

The Undead Slayer pantheon is based on ancient Egyptian mythology, using different deities from the Wizard pantheon.

• Lawful: Seeker
• Neutral: Osiris
• Chaotic: Seth

Quest

The Undead Slayer's Quest sees them fighting Count Dracula for The Stake of Van Helsing, an artifact wooden stake. The Stake of Van Helsing grants magic resistance while carried, and has +5 to-hit and +12 damage versus all monsters—as a wooden stake, it also deals 1d6+2 bonus damage against vampires with a ¹⁄₁₀ chance of instakilling them.

Strategy

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Early game

Despite high starting HP and a decent starting inventory, the Undead Slayer is a far less powerful role than it appears, particularly early on, for several reasons. The first and primary reason for this is their base speed of 10, i.e. 4 moves every 5 turns. This means that monsters will frequently get an "extra" turn, which is very often all that is needed to finish off an early character. An Undead Slayer's first priority should be to mitigate this disadvantage: scour shops for wands of speed monster and speed boots, using price identification as needed, and don't be afraid to try on unknown magical boots that you find: you can always uncurse them with your potions of holy water if necessary. Once they gain speed, they are still at a disadvantage compared to other roles (they will always have 2 less speed than others), but it becomes far less noticeable.

The second reason that Undead Slayers are less strong than they appear that their starting weapons are middling at best. While it does more damage than other daggers, the wooden stake is unenchanted, and its 1d6 damage stacks up poorly against against most other roles' starting weapons. Worse, unlike other daggers, it lacks an accuracy bonus, making its early-game performance quite subpar. The secondary weapons are a mixed bag: the silver daggers are a reasonable ranged option, but the crossbow and pistol are both inaccurate, with rapidly mulching ammo. The bullwhip has roughly the same average damage as the stake, trading increased accuracy for ineffectiveness against thick-skinned monsters. The silver spear is the best secondary weapon, being strictly superior to the wooden stake, but even it is still an average weapon. Lawful Undead Slayers will want to dip for Excalibur, while neutrals and chaotics will simply want to sacrifice and hope; the Undead Slayer's lack of a guaranteed sacrifice gift makes the latter course quite chancy. All will want to use the weapon practice technique (mostly on daggers) to help mitigate their poor starting weapons.

Finally, Undead Slayers start with a number of useful intrinsics, but unfortunately, apart from stealth, none are particularly useful in the early game: draining is a very uncommon effect there, and eating rotten corpses still provides no nutrition or intrinsics, even with sickness resistance. Early undead are not particularly threatening, and in fact the best use of an Undead Slayer's ability to detect them in the early game is to hunt down that last 1 or 2 experience points to get them to XL2 or XL3.

Middle game

The middle game is where the Undead Slayer's strategic limitations as a role come to light. Similar to cavepeople, they are a melee-oriented class that is unable to #twoweapon. Being poor spellcasters, they will need to rely on their melee and ranged weapons, but with poor damage and below-average speed. They can only gain Expert proficiency in a few weapons (most notably daggers and crossbows), although thankfully they have a reasonably broad selection of weapons they can reached Skilled proficiency, albeit with some noticeable gaps (they are restricted in short swords, for example).

Undead Slayers will want to build an ascension kit that is focused on defense, including a shield of reflection and generally the highest-AC armor they can find. They may still prefer gauntlets of power to gauntlets of dexterity, however, as the former can help offset their poor damage-dealing abilities.

After finishing their quest, Undead Slayers will (finally) find themselves in possession of an excellent artifact weapon: the Stake of Van Helsing provides a flat +12 damage against all monsters - superior to Excalibur - while using one of the Undead Slayers' few Expert weapon skills. Except in very rare cases (e.g. a lucky Bat from Hell), virtually every Undead Slayer will want to use it as a primary weapon - those considering using scrolls of enchant weapon will want to take this into account. Still, as the Stake can be stolen, Undead Slayers will want to hang on to whatever weapon they were using before around, and certainly will want to have a secondary source of magic resistance.

While the pistol that some Undead Slayers start out with is of little use, they are one of only two roles able to reach Expert skill in firearms. Even with the Stake of Van Helsing, Slayers will do a middling amount of damage in the late game, and a highly enchanted assault rifle coupled with a stack of well-enchanted bullets can provide a useful high-damage "panic button". Since SLASH'EM lacks randomly-generated barracks, Slayers looking to build up a bullet collection (several hundred are necessary even just for critical fights) may find themselves needing to raid Fort Ludios to do so, being careful to pick up bullets before soldiers can destroy them with grenades.

Late game

Slayers that survive the early game and middle game will find their starting intrinsics beginning to shine, as wands of draining become common and they find themselves facing guaranteed sickness-inducing monsters such as Demogorgon, Juiblex, and even Pestilence. Moreover, the ability to detect undead also starts coming in very handy, as it lets the Slayer quickly track down and destroy liches and vampire mages that would otherwise quickly fill the level with nasties.

At this point, the Undead Slayer will mostly play like any other character, although their lower damage output and slightly lower speed will still be noticeable in monster-dense areas such as the Astral Plane; their starting intrinsics will give them a bit more flexibility in assembling an ascension kit. For those Slayers who have invested in firearms, it is best to save those bullets for covetous monsters, vampire mages, and the Astral Plane.

Origin

Some of the iconography of the Undead Slayer derives from the Castlevania game series—like the Belmont clan members, the hero starts with a bullwhip, chain mail, daggers, and holy water. Much of the other iconography, including the potential starting crossbow and ability to reach Grand Master in bare-handed combat, is derived from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.