Draft:Grunt

Omega 0.90.4

g Grunt
Form	Ordinary creature
Attacks	2 center attacks: 0–14 physical each before absorption; no defensive actions
Base level	1
HP	25
Hit	12
Defense	5
Action interval	8 ticks; lower is faster
Kill experience	10, when death is in sight
Generation	Random pools and arena
Carried items	Club; no random starting treasure
Immunities	Fire, cold, electricity
Remains	Dead grunt; 50% on normal death
Remains use	Poisonous food; no alchemy
Traits Initially hostile, hungry and asleep Moves toward the player when awake Accepts food while hungry
Reference	minit.h in Omega 0.90.4, line 24

A grunt is a tough, hungry monster, displayed as a brown g. Despite being level 1, it has two substantial physical attacks and immunity to fire, cold and electricity. Its ordinary form carries a club, and its corpse is poisonous.

Generation

Grunts belong to the ordinary random-monster pools, including those used in Rampart's hedge maze. A normally generated grunt starts asleep, with an uncursed +0 club and no random treasure. Approaching within three squares wakes it.

At the Coliseum, a grunt follows the goblin in the fixed sequence. The named arena grunt starts awake and carries the disposable garage-door opener. The arena's separate construction does not give it the ordinary form's club.

Form	HP	Hit / defense	Raw damage per attack
Ordinary	25	12 / 5	0–14
Arena	35	24 / 5	0–21

Both forms retain two center-directed attacks and a base interval of eight ticks. Their damage comes from their own attack rating, so obtaining or removing the carried club does not disarm those attacks.

Behavior and feeding

An awake hostile grunt moves toward the player and attacks when adjacent. With one to five HP remaining, its next normal pursuit movement triggers retreat, drops all possessions and reduces its base interval to two ticks. The arena's extra HP does not raise this threshold. Talking and surrender do not themselves make it peaceful.

While hungry, a grunt accepts ordinary food and becomes peaceful. Poisonous food instead inflicts 100 poison damage and moves alignment two points toward Chaos. A grunt is not immune to poison, despite its poisonous corpse; this feeding attack kills ordinary and arena grunts at their initial HP. Either accepted meal consumes the food and ends the grunt's hunger, so a second meal cannot be relied on after first pacifying it with safe food.

Normal death drops its possessions and has a 50% chance of leaving a dead grunt; the named arena form always leaves a corpse on normal death. Eating the corpse causes poisoning without ordinary food benefit. It has no alchemical transformation, but can serve as poisonous food for another still-hungry grunt or hyena.

Strategy

The grunt is a significant escalation from the preceding arena goblin: it has more HP, two attacks instead of one, and immunity to three common elemental damage types. Choose damage that bypasses those immunities. Its attacks target the center, which is useful when planning a tactical defense, but blocking should not be mistaken for a guarantee against both blows. Armor reduces physical damage; non-immune hits still inflict at least one HP.

Ordinary food can spare you the fight, while a retained hornet corpse provides a lethal poison offering if the grunt is still hungry and the alignment cost is acceptable. Use Give while adjacent to it; cursed food cannot be given. In the arena, merely feeding it safely does not win; poisoning that kills it does invoke normal victory handling. Collect the opener after the kill. Do not enter the match expecting a club as loot, and do not assume a nearly dead grunt remains slow when its retreat begins.