Officer

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The Officer is a role in the variant SlashTHEM.

They can be considered a role equivalent to the Keystone Kops, who serve as the police officers of the game when you steal from a shop directly.

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 SlashTHEM.

They can be a human, elf or dwarf of either gender, but (as can be expected by the jobs of real police officers) are always lawful.

Skills

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

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, broadsword, quarterstaff, club, spear, bow, firearms Spells: enchantment Combat: two weapon combat

The Officer's special spell is haste self. Spell success is determined by intelligence.

• SlashTHEM u_init.c line 1804 in v. 0.8

Intrinsics

• XL 1: Searching
• XL 10: Warning

Starting equipment

• +0 pistol
• 40 +0 bullets
• +0 club
• +0 leather armor
• 6 doughnuts

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; this is also true of SlashTHEM, which also makes them a food item that can be randomly generated.

In SlashTHEM, Officers start with a tame little dog.

• SlashTHEM u_init.c line 223 in v. 0.8

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

SlashTHEM role.c line 1059

Quest

The quest sees the Officer fighting Grandpa Tank Breaker for 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. The maps are copied from the Convict quest, but with muggers and street thugs.

• 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 SlashTHEM.

References

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