Officer

The Officer is a role in the variants Slash'EM Extended and SlashTHEM.

The Officer first appeared in an early version of SLASH'EM (NetHack-- 3.0.10) but was dropped from the code at the time the quest branch was ported into that variant. The role was later revived and given a quest in Slash'EM Extended.

Skills

NetHack-- 3.0.10 was based on NetHack 3.0.10, which predated the skill system, so Officers could use any weapons.

The Slash'EM Extended code describes the Officer as a "master of all weapons", though completely lacking in spellcasting skills:

Officer skills
Max	Skills
Expert	Weapons: dagger, knife, axe, pick axe, short sword, broad sword, long sword, two handed sword, scimitar, saber, club, paddle, mace, morning star, flail, hammer, quarterstaff, polearms, spear, javelin, trident, lance, bow, crossbow, sling, dart, firearms, shuriken, boomerang, whip, unicorn horn, lightsaber Combat: riding, two weapon combat, bare hands

SlashTHEM restricts the Officer's selection of weapon skills and adds some moderate spellcasting skills:

Officer skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: two handed sword, javelin, sling, crossbow Spells: matter
Skilled	Weapons: knife, long sword, scimitar, saber Spells: healing Combat: riding, bare hands
Expert	Weapons: dagger, short sword, broad sword, quarterstaff, club, spear, bow, firearms Spells: enchantment Combat: two weapon combat

The Officer's special spell is resist petrification. Spell success is determined by intelligence.

• Slash'EM Extended u_init.c line 3620
• SlashTHEM u_init.c line 1804 in v. 0.8

Intrinsics

• XL 1: Searching
• XL 10: Warning

Starting equipment

• +0 pistol
• 100 uncursed +0 bullets (40 in SlashTHEM)
• +0 club
• +0 leather armor
• A wand of magic missile
• A wand of striking
• 6 Hacker's Foods (Slash'EM Extended) or 6 doughnuts (SlashTHEM)

NetHack-- did not include firearms, so originally the Officer's only starting means of defense/offense was a club and the two wands, which were probably meant to represent sidearms. Both current incarnations of the role have the wands, even though the Officer now gets a gun. The SlashTHEM Officer starts with the club wielded.

In NetHack--, the Officer's starting food was a stack of doughnuts, which were replaced in Slash'EM Extended with Hacker's Foods, a comestible borrowed from NetHack: The Next Generation as part of the starting inventory of the Geek role. SlashTHEM reintroduces doughnuts both as the Officer's snack, and as a food item that can be randomly generated.

In Slash'EM Extended, Officers start with a pet player monster officer, complete with gear, which guarantees the player access to a second pistol. In SlashTHEM, this is changed to a (unarmed) tame little dog.

• Slash'EM Extended u_init.c line 443
• SlashTHEM u_init.c line 223 in v. 0.8

Rank titles

In Slash'EM Extended, the status line shows you to be one of the following ranks when you reach the specified experience level:

• XL 1-2: Street Cop
• XL 3-5: Traffic Officer
• XL 6-9: Patrolling Cop
• XL 10-13: Strifer
• XL 14-17: Crime Scene Cop
• XL 18-21: Junior Sheriff
• XL 22-25: Deputy Sheriff
• XL 26-29: Wild-West Sheriff
• XL 30: Cop Chief

SLASHTHEM has a different set of rank titles:

• XL 1-2: Coffee Boy/Girl
• XL 3-5: Cadet
• XL 6-9: Meter Man/Maid
• XL 10-13: Rookie
• XL 14-17: Beat Cop
• XL 18-21: Sergeant
• XL 22-25: Captain
• XL 26-29: Police Chief
• XL 30: Commissioner

Slash'EM Extended role.c line 1841

SlashTHEM role.c line 1059

Quest

The quest sees the Officer fighting Grandpa Tank Breaker for the Shiny Magnum, a lawful pistol with to-hit and physical damage bonuses.

SlashTHEM gives the Officer a new quest artifact, the Whistle of the Warden, a lawful magic whistle which grants telepathy, teleport control, and drain resistance while carried. It can be invoked for "leadership", revealing the location of all pets on the level and increasing the tameness of those within line of sight.

• Slash'EM Extended artilist.h line 522
• SlashTHEM artilist.h line 621

Gods

• Lawful: Magnum
• Neutral: Smith
• Chaotic: Wesson

History

The Officer's first appearance was in SLASH'EM precursor NetHack-- 3.0.10, as one of nine new roles in addition to the twelve in the contemporary version of NetHack. The discussion thread in which the authors first announced the variant suggests that some of the new roles were taken from a list proposing a role for every letter of the alphabet. See here for the relevant post.

After the release of NetHack 3.1.3 in 1993, NetHack-- was updated to NetHack-- 3.1.3 by porting some of the changes from NetHack-- 3.0.10 into a patch for the newest version. Due to some changes in the vanilla code, however, some content was removed to improve compatibility with NetHack. Most significantly, NetHack 3.1 had seen the addition of the Quest branch. To avoid the challenge of fitting full-length quests for the roles that had been added in NetHack-- 3.0.10 into the patch code, those roles were simply left out of the patch.

The Officer role, along with the other eight new roles in NetHack-- 3.0.10, made its reappearance in the variant Slash'EM Extended. It was also carried over, with some tweaks, into SlashTHEM, a variant of Slash'EM Extended v75.

References

• NetHack-- 3.0.10 attrib.c line 84
• NetHack-- 3.0.10 u_init.c line 186