The Tavern

When I see Sigmund I kill him. When I see Grinder I run for my life.

Sigmund dies to poison. Grinder is immune to poison.
Sigmund can be confused, put to sleep, etc. Grinder resists.
Sigmund wastes time telling you how he's going to kill you. Grinder just kills you. Efficiently.

I've never understood why Sigmund has the status he does. To me Sigmund basically a Jessica that takes an extra hit. Grinder is the one that people should fear....

I don't fear Grinder because he's very easy to run away from (and IIRC his placement so early in the dungeon is fairly recent). Sigmund is pretty dangerous to melee characters when they run into him early.

Because on D:2 you often don't have any of those options?

Plus, he can confuse you to prevent you from escaping.

Well, to be fair, you're playing a wizard. With meph, everything without rPois is killable or at least escape-able. If that's a class you play a lot, you've probably had less than your fair share of Sigmund deaths, and an early unique who counters your usual tricks is gonna seem much nastier.

Many, if not all, non-casting builds are just boned the minute the see Sigmund. An enemy who goes invisible, can confuse you, can generate with deadly wands, and often shows up before you have any MR and your escape options, if you're lucky enough to have any, are unidentified? That's deadly.

Also, everyone who's played long enough eventually gets the joy of dying by coming downstairs only to find Siggy waiting for you. Right next to the steps. On D:2.

Finally, Ginder's new. Sigmund's had years to camp D:2, collect player skulls, and accumulate a nasty reputation.

I killed grinder once and went up 3 whole levels. I think he's a little out of his depth, really.

I kill Sigmund the second I see him even when I've played melee characters.

It usually involves me ducking around a corner or something then testing different potions. If I hit a might potion, speed potion, or anything decent really I just run bank and kill him before it wears off. I've killed him at level 1 with just starting gear using an assassin... 2 needles to the face and he's down for the count.

With grinder you don't have these options. His blinks make your potions wear off, you drop out of berserk, etc. and he resists poison, cold, etc.

I think that if grinder and sigmund appeared together it'd be pretty tough.

Anyway, the arena matchup has grinder winning around 90%.

Sigmund is a has been. Grinder is our new champ.

I think they are ok, berserkers won't have any trouble with them, unless they spawn with some ridiculous items.

Sigmund has notoriety due to people coming in from other roguelikes.

Sigmund has a crippling ranged status effect that he can use at will, an infinite number of times. It is randomly hard to resist, and if he gets you locked down with it there isn't any obvious way to correct the problem. You can't move properly or use stairs to escape like with other monsters, and the use of healing potions to fix the problem is not necessarily obvious even if you have them identified already.

I can't think of any other roguelikes that drop such an opponent on a mandatory second level of dungeon. A Nethack veteran, for instance, has probably never encountered any opponent with a ranged status effect at all, unless they've seen rhaumbusuns in Slash'EM or Nazgul in Sporkhack. Neither show up early. The same Nethack veteran would not expect it to be advisable or even safe to quaff-identify potions, even if that player does read the item descriptions carefully.

Sigmund may be only marginally more dangerous than a typical monster in Crawl, but he's a memorable example of mechanics that are wildly different than many experienced players are used to. Until you adjust to the new mechanics, it's natural for the bits that seem unusual to also feel more difficult than they actually are.

Grinder, though… I don't know how a D3 character is supposed to survive him, except by dumb luck. Maybe if he spawned with a band of mixed class-5 demons, he could be pushed a little deeper. Too deep, and he's too fragile, but too shallow and he has Paralyze.

Part of the other way that Sigmund kills transplanted players from other roguelikes is with his scythe. No, not by hitting you with it (although that happens distressingly often). Veterans of other roguelikes see how easily Sigmund can kill you with his scythe and joyfully equip it after taking him down. Without an understanding of how the weapon speed system works, those players then get slaughtered by the next hobgoblin packing a dagger or orcish club.

(Yes, speaking from experience, back from when Linley was running the show.)

You can't quaff a potion of healing to cure paralysis, and random blinking means he randomly catches up to you even if you retreat immediately. The only reason Sigmund is ever going to tag you with confusion is if you mess up the approach and can't retreat out of line-of-sight. And then there's his immunities, of course.

Furthermore, they are both likely to appear in close proximity to other monsters by random chance. A pack of orcs or gnolls that are near Sigmund is actually a boon, because they'll block for you while you're maneuvering to retreat. A pack of orcs or gnolls by Grinder means that paralysis is automatically fatal, and if you retreat to a corridor you could get sandwiched. It should usually be possible to get away from Grinder if you recognize the threat he presents, but if things don't go well they get much worse, much faster.

Yes, and when you see him for the first time he gets a chance to cast. You're out of range for his attack spells, so he will either cast Blink or step toward you. If he casts Blink, he will most likely disappear off your LOS and you can retreat, but he might also end up 3 tiles away from you, at which point he's going to be hard to shake.

Sigmund can be fairly reliably shaken by the same routine measures that work against, say, orc packs.

I'm not saying anything silly, like 'Grinder is unavoidable death if he spawns', but I do think it is correct to say that he is noticeably more dangerous than other early-game uniques.