Hobgoblin

o hobgoblin
Difficulty	3
Attacks	Weapon 1d6 physical

o hobgoblin
Difficulty	3
Attacks	Weapon 1d6 physical
Base level	1
Base experience	13
Speed	9
Base AC	10
Base MR	0
Alignment	-4 (chaotic)
Frequency (by normal means)	2 (Quite rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	1000
Nutritional value	200
Size	Medium
Resistances	None
Resistances conveyed	None
A hobgoblin: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. is omnivorous. is an orc. is strong. can pick up weapons and food. has infravision. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 734

A hobgoblin, o, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The hobgoblin is a type of orc that is strong, and hobgoblins are generally tougher than goblins but weaker than hill orcs. Like other living orcs, they have infravision, can be seen via infravision and can collect items such as weapons, armor and food that they come across.

A hobgoblin has a single weapon attack, but does not possess poison resistance unlike most other orcs.

A hero that is polymorphed into a hobgoblin will have their strength set to 18/50, which matches the maximum strength of an orcish hero, rather than 18/** like other strong monsters.

Generation

Randomly-generated hobgoblins may sometimes be created as peaceful towards orcish heroes, and will always be hostile to all other races of hero.

Hobgoblins may appear among the hostile o that generate in throne rooms, as well as appearing among the various throne room monsters that can be randomly generated by looting a throne while confused and carrying gold (provided there is no chest on the level). Hobgoblin generation in throne rooms ignores extinction.

A hobgoblin has a roughly ¹⁄₂ chance of being generated with an orcish helm, and separately has a roughly ¹⁄₂ chance of generating with an orcish dagger or a scimitar (with roughly equal probability of each weapon).

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"See if named hobgoblins show up outside of Orcish Town in a game that has it."

Strategy

Hobgoblins are relatively weak and slow, and are usually not a significant threat for decently-equipped early heroes unless they get their hands on an attack wand—weaker ones will want to approach them with caution since a scimitar-equipped hobgoblin can inflict surprising amounts of damage, although exploiting their lack of resistance to poison can tip the playing field in your favor.

Hobgoblins can provide somewhat-filling corpses for a non-vegetarian hero or a meat-eating pet, and can also possibly provide an early hero with some offensive and defensive items once they are capable of reliably killing the monsters in one hit. As orcish monsters, hobgoblin corpses are theoretically useful sacrifice fodder for chaotic orcish heroes to convert altars with, especially if a throne room is placed on the same floor—in practice, their corpses are incredibly heavy and will generally require some amount of luring the monsters closer to the altar first.

History

The hobgoblin first appears in Jay Fenlason's Hack and Hack for PDP-11, and is part of the initial bestiary for Hack 1.0. From these versions to NetHack 2.3e, hobgoblins use the H glyph—NetHack 3.0.0 moves hobgoblins to the orc monster class at o.

In versions up to NetHack 3.6.7, including some variants based on those versions, a hero that polymorphs into a hobgoblin has their strength set to 18/** as with other strong monsters. NetHack 5.0.0 lowers the strength of the hobgoblin polyform via commit b6a3d4b9, which is done to maintain congruence between non-player monsters and their player counterparts—the commit also gives poison resistance to all orcs except the goblin and hobgoblin in order to make the latter two slightly more distinct as monsters.

Origin

The hobgoblin was originally a helpful spirit of the hearth in folklore once considered helpful, but the spread of Christianity gave it a reputation as a mischievous prankster.

NetHack hobgoblins are borrowed from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, where the name is used to describe a larger kind of orc. In the preface to The Hobbit, Tolkien states that "Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds)".

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, hobgoblins do not normally generate in Gehennom, and they behave largely as they do in NetHack 3.4.3 and previous contemporary versions—a hero that polymorphs into a hobgoblin will have their strength set to 18/**. A hobgoblin corpse that is subjected to the raise zombies technique will arise as an orc zombie.

Grund's Stronghold generates a hobgoblin in the cavern area outside of the fortress during level creation.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, hobgoblins behave largely as they do in NetHack 3.4.3—a hero that polymorphs into a hobgoblin will have their strength set to 18/**.

Hobgoblins may appear in the court of a throne room ruled by an orc-captain. They can also appear among the default prisoners placed in generic throne rooms.

In the Chaos Temple Quest, ¹⁄₁₀ of randomly generated monsters on the Ruined Temple level will be hobgoblins, and three hobgoblins are randomly placed in the grassy forest outside of the temple during level creation.

Hobgoblins can appear among the "drow-related" monsters that make up ²⁄₇ of the monsters randomly generated on the Drow Healer quest.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, hobgoblins are given poison resistance like other orcish monsters, and behave largely as they do in the NetHack 3.6 series—a hero that polymorphs into a hobgoblin will have their strength set to 18/**.

Encyclopedia entry

Hobgoblin. Used by the Puritans and in later times for
wicked goblin spirits, as in Bunyan's "Hobgoblin nor foul
friend", but its more correct use is for the friendly spirits
of the brownie type. In "A midsummer night's dream" a
fairy says to Shakespeare's Puck:
        Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
        You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
        Are you not he?
and obviously Puck would not wish to be called a hobgoblin
if that was an ill-omened word.
Hobgoblins are on the whole, good-humoured and ready to be
helpful, but fond of practical joking, and like most of the
fairies rather nasty people to annoy. Boggarts hover on the
verge of hobgoblindom. Bogles are just over the edge.
One Hob mentioned by Henderson, was Hob Headless who haunted
the road between Hurworth and Neasham, but could not cross
the little river Kent, which flowed into the Tess. He was
exorcised and laid under a large stone by the roadside for
ninety-nine years and a day. If anyone was so unwary as to
sit on that stone, he would be unable to quit it for ever.
The ninety-nine years is nearly up, so trouble may soon be
heard of on the road between Hurworth and Neasham.

[ A Dictionary of Fairies, by Katharine Briggs ]