Healer/SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the Healer is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.

Healers can be humans, gnomes, elves, or hobbits, and are always neutral.

Starting equipment

Each Healer starts with the following equipment:

• a +1 scalpel (wielded)
• an uncursed +1 pair of leather gloves
• 10-20 uncursed apples
• a blessed spellbook of healing
• a blessed spellbook of stone to flesh
• 4 non-cursed potions of healing
• 4 non-cursed potions of extra healing
• wand of sleep (4-8 charges)
• wand of healing
• an uncursed stethoscope
• an uncursed medical kit with 1-60 items, each with an equal chance of being a pill, bandage, or phial
• an uncursed oil lamp (¹⁄₅ chance or 20%)
• an uncursed magic marker (¹⁄₅ chance or 20%)
• an uncursed blindfold (¹⁄₅ chance or 20%)

Healers start with additional knowledge of the following items and their appearances:

• Several potions
  • The potion of sickness
  • The potion of blindness
  • The potion of hallucination
  • The potion of restore ability
  • The potion of full healing
• the healthstone

The Healer's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.

Intrinsics

Healers gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• Level 1: poison resistance
• Level 15: warning

Attributes

The Healers's starting attributes are distributed as follows:

Attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma	Remaining
Minimum attributes	7	7	11	7	13	16	14
Distribution percentages	15%	15%	25%	20%	20%	5%
Mean w/ standard deviation	18/01.61±2.48	13.19±2.16	16.43±1.76	8.90±1.40	9.21±1.49	7.90±1.40

Skills

Healers have the following skills available to them:

Healer skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: scimitar, saber, mace, polearms, spear, javelin, trident Combat: riding, bare hands Spells: attack, divination, enchantment, protection, body, matter
Skilled	Weapons: dagger, short sword, club, paddle, sling, shuriken
Expert	Weapons: knife, quarterstaff, dart, unicorn horn Spells: healing

Healers start with Basic skill in knives and healing spells. They use the wisdom stat to cast spells, and their special spell is cure sickness.

Techniques

Healers can learn the disarm technique by reaching Skilled in any weapon, and also gain the following techniques:

Level	Technique
1	Surgery
20	Revive (technique)

Special rules

Healers get a +1 alignment record bonus for healing pets.

Healers do not suffer damage or attribute loss from quaffing a potion of sickness, though doing so will still cure hallucination.

Nurses will not damage Healers with their attacks.

A Healer can more reliably apply a stethoscope to themselves while engulfed by a whirly monster.

Healers can reliably apply medical kits to consume pills, and always gain their beneficial effects.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• XL 1-2: Rhizotomist
• XL 3-5: Empiric
• XL 6-9: Embalmer
• XL 10-13: Dresser
• XL 14-17: Medicus ossium/Medica ossium
• XL 18-21: Herbalist
• XL 22-25: Magister/Magistra
• XL 26-29: Physician
• XL 30: Chirurgeon

Gods

The Healer pantheon is based on the mythology of ancient Greece. Their first sacrifice gift is Mirrorbright, an artifact shield of reflection.

• Lawful: Athena
• Neutral: Hermes
• Chaotic: Poseidon

Quest

The Healer's quest sees them fighting the Cyclops for The Staff of Aesculapius, an artifact quarterstaff. It grants hungerless regeneration while wielded, and deals double damage to all monsters without drain resistance and drains levels from them on each hit - this life-draining applies a further +1d8 damage to the target's current and maximum HP, and restores half of that damage to the wielder's current HP. Invoking The Staff of Aesculapius heals the user by half of the HP needed to return to full health, and cures sickness, blindness not caused by gunk (e.g. from a cream pie) and sliming.

Strategy

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Healers in SLASH'EM are distinguished from their vanilla NetHack counterparts most notably by the following:

• They can gain Basic proficiency in all schools of magic
• They have a guaranteed first sacrifice gift, Mirrorbright
• They start with a wand of healing and a medical kit

Early game

In dire situations in the early game, SLASH'EM Healers will prefer to rely on their wand of healing rather than their potions of (extra) healing, saving as many of the latter for alchemy as possible. Their wand of sleep is a powerful option to deal with difficult monsters, but one should be careful of the reflected ray; sleep resistance is a priority for non-elven Healers. Larvae are a common early source of said property: their corpses are poisonous, but that is not a concern for Healers.

Healer's healing spells are useful on the first couple levels, but by XL4 or so, a good suit of mithril will generally be preferable, especially given the increased non-spell sources of healing available to SLASH'EM Healers.

The zombification of the Gnomish Mines for gnomish characters makes a very early dive to do the protection racket considerably more difficult for them.

Mid game

Healers in SLASH'EM generally suffer from low hitting power in the early mid-game. The presence of Mirrorbright makes obtaining an artifact weapon considerably more difficult, but playing as a blaster caster is normally not possible this early. Furthermore, SLASH'EM's high-damage artifacts (such as the Bat from Hell and Skullcrusher) are either lawful or chaotic, further limiting what is possible to obtain through sacrifice. As a result, Healers may want to strongly consider artifact wishing: the aforementioned Bat from Hell is an excellent wish for them, as they can gain Skilled proficiency with clubs. In order to survive the artifact blast, they will want to hold off on wishing until they have at least 41HP, but fortunately this is rarely a problem given their decent HP growth.

Those not wanting to wish for an artifact will likely want to enchant a unicorn horn: Healers can gain Expert skill in them, and in SLASH'EM one needs to enchant unicorn horns anyway, in order to make them reliable. If no other artifact weapons are forthcoming, they can eventually obtain Vorpal Blade by being crowned; note that in SLASH'EM, its chance to behead is doubled to 10%, making it a somewhat more effective weapon.

Healers not averse to exploiting a bug can often get a wish by burying their medical kit, requiring little more than a pick-axe, a boulder, and some time.

Late game

Rather than worrying about disabling the Cyclops, Healers should simply obtain a source of drain resistance before entering their quest.

While the artifact itself is unchanged other than losing drain resistance, other changes in SLASH'EM can render The Staff of Aesculapius either more or less useful, depending on your character. Its remaining defensive ability - hungerless regeneration - is always available by simply carrying the Hand of Vecna, meaning that most Healers will not wield the staff defensively. However, SLASH'EM also introduces a number of high-level monsters, such as Planetars and Solars, that are not drain-resistant, making it potentially valuable as a weapon, particularly on the Elemental and Astral Planes. Furthermore, Healers' inability to #twoweapon combined with their increased spellcasting abilities makes a two-handed weapon potentially desirable. As the #tip command does not exist in SLASH'EM, be sure to have some means of curse removal in open inventory.

Eventually, SLASH'EM Healers will likely fall into one of two archetypes: average fighter, or average spellcaster. Their inability to #twoweapon holds them back in the former, while their Basic proficiency in non-healing spell schools and lack of hungerless casting holds them back in the latter, but they can do either well enough to win the game. Which type you choose will largely depend on what items you have, as well as personal preference. Mirrorbright is a handy item for characters who choose to entirely forgo spellcasting, but spellcasters may prefer the Staff of Aesculapius, or a one-handed weapon and a small shield. Note that, unlike some other SLASH'EM roles (most notably Monks), Healers do not gain any techniques that are particularly useful in the later game; Surgery is entirely superseded by a good supply of potions of full healing.