Leprechaun

l leprechaun
Difficulty	4
Attacks	Claw 1d2 steal gold

l leprechaun
Difficulty	4
Attacks	Claw 1d2 steal gold
Base level	5
Base experience	59
Speed	15
Base AC	8
Base MR	20
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	4 (Uncommon)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	60
Nutritional value	30
Size	Tiny
Resistances	None
Resistances conveyed	Causes teleportitis (50%)
A leprechaun: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. can teleport. does not eat. (*) is normally generated hostile. likes gold. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	monst.c#line553

A leprechaun, l, is a monster that appears in NetHack. It is the only member of the leprechaun monster class.

Leprechauns have intrinsic teleportitis, and approach you to try and steal any gold they see in your open inventory - they will otherwise keep their distance from you where possible. When you attack a leprechaun that is not frozen, asleep, confused, or blind, it has a ¹⁄₇ chance of moving one square away instead of being hit - this will cause you to "miss wildly and stumble forward" into that square.

Eating a leprechaun's corpse has a 50% chance of conveying teleportitis.

Generation

Leprechauns are normally generated sleeping, and will always be given with LDd30 pieces of gold. Leprechaun halls are special rooms filled with sleeping leprechauns, with each one on top of a pile of gold in a similar manner to a treasure zoo.

Strategy

Leprechauns are generally annoyances best dealt with via ranged weapons or spells. For most players, the leprechaun and its weak attack poses no real threat—however, its tendency to run rather than fight can make it time-consuming to kill. Occasionally, they may stop to attack you if you keep next to them, and will have no choice if you prevent them from moving anywhere else, e.g. catching them at the end of a hall. If possible, close or obstruct doorways in a room to limit their movement, as leprechauns cannot open doors; you can also make use of your pet(s) to pick them off, since they will not have to deal with wild misses as you do.

If you plan to fight a leprechaun, stash your gold in a container or leave it on a distant floor space; alternately, you can throw your gold at them, then run the fleeing leprechaun into a corner. If you are a Knight, awaken leprechauns before attacking them to avoid alignment penalties; other roles will want to get as close as possible so they have a chance to cut off the leprechaun's escape path. You may have trouble if a leprechaun has an escape wand, such as a wand of teleportation or make invisible—or worse, a wand of digging—because in most cases you will have to force them to exhaust all the charges.

Amusingly, using a ring of conflict in a leprechaun hall will cause them to steal from each other—but it will soon prove annoying, as this scatters them across the level.

While the leprechaun polyform can steal gold from other monsters without killing them, this is of little practical use since there is rarely a situation where it is less ideal to kill the monster yourself (or via pet).

Credit cloning

Leprechauns can be exploited for credit cloning: Drop all but one of your gold coins in a shop, then lure a leprechaun inside - once it picks up the pile of gold, then let it either steal your last gold piece or teleport out. Once you kill it to retrieve your gold back, you'll still have your credit - since you can only do this once per leprechaun, you should do it with as much gold as possible. Using leprechauns this way is difficult since they won't follow you, but it does mean you can credit clone even without a pet or a sack.

Messages

You miss wildly and stumble forward.

A leprechaun dodged one of your attacks.

Origin

The leprechaun (Irish leipreachán or luchorpán) is a diminutive supernatural being in Irish folklore, and is often classified as a type of solitary fairy; leprechaun-like creatures only became prominent in later folklore. They are usually depicted as little coat-and-hat-clad bearded folk with a tendency towards mischief, and were later portrayed as shoe-makers who have a hidden pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

History

The leprechaun is among the many monsters present in the very first version of Hack by Andries Brouwer, along with "Hack for PDP-11" (which was based on an early draft). In early versions such as this and NetHack 1.3d, leprechuans used the L glyph and had slightly different behavior: they would still attempt to attack players that closed in as they attempted to keep their distance.

Variants

In variants featuring an object materials system, leprechauns are commonly given the additional ability to steal gold items.

xNetHack

In xNetHack version 3.0, leprechauns were previously merged into the ​i imp or minor demon class, with xNetHack changing the glyph for the lizard monster class to lowercase l (l) instead to avoid using a punctuation glyph; this was reverted as of version 6.0.

Like other minor demons and fey creatures, leprechauns are subject to bonus damage from iron and silver weapons. Leprechauns are also capable of stealing gold items as well as gold pieces.

Encyclopedia entry

The Irish Leprechaun is the Faeries' shoemaker and is known
under various names in different parts of Ireland:
Cluricaune in Cork, Lurican in Kerry, Lurikeen in Kildare
and Lurigadaun in Tipperary. Although he works for the
Faeries, the Leprechaun is not of the same species. He is
small, has dark skin and wears strange clothes. His nature
has something of the manic-depressive about it: first he
is quite happy, whistling merrily as he nails a sole on to a
shoe; a few minutes later, he is sullen and morose, drunk
on his home-made heather ale. The Leprechaun's two great
loves are tobacco and whiskey, and he is a first-rate con-man,
impossible to out-fox. No one, no matter how clever, has ever
managed to cheat him out of his hidden pot of gold or his
magic shilling. At the last minute he always thinks of some
way to divert his captor's attention and vanishes in the
twinkling of an eye.

[ A Field Guide to the Little People
by Nancy Arrowsmith & George Moorse ]