Scroll of taming
? 
| |
|---|---|
| Name | taming |
| Appearance | random |
| Base price | 200 zm |
| Weight | 5 |
| Ink to write | 10-19 |
| Monster use | Will not be used by monsters. |
A scroll of taming, when read, tames adjacent monsters. Monsters can potentially resist this effect, and some targets are not valid for taming. There is no difference between a blessed and uncursed scroll and this effect is identical to the charm monster spell.[1] Reading a cursed scroll will instead anger peaceful (but not tame) monsters that are adjacent to you.
Reading the scroll while confused will increase the range, so that monsters within 5 squares of your location (i.e. an 11×11 area) will be affected (either tamed or angered, depending on the scroll's BUC as described above), instead of just those in adjacent squares.
In all cases above, if you are engulfed, the effects will only be applied to the engulfing creature and not any otherwise adjacent creatures or creatures within the the confused reading range.
The taming effect will pacify any angry creatures it affects that were formerly peaceful, such as shopkeepers and aligned priests.
Identification
This scroll cannot be distinguished from amnesia by price-identification, preplaced items, or monster usage. So you might want to formally identify any such 200 zm scrolls.
Messages
- Nothing interesting happens.
- You read a scroll of taming with no monsters in range.
- Nothing interesting seems to happen.
- You read a scroll of taming with monsters in range that were not tamed or angered.
- The neighborhood is friendlier.
- You tamed at least one monster with a scroll of taming.
- The neighborhood is unfriendlier.
- You angered at least one monster with a scroll of taming.
Strategy
Charming monsters is useful in several situations - it can be used to quickly pacify a shopkeeper, aligned priest, or Minetown guard that you have accidentally angered, if you can afford repeated tries. It can be used to tame powerful monsters like minotaurs that don't have any magic resistance, or to halt an attack in a situation where you would otherwise die by taming a number of pets that you can easily abandon later.
Variants
Prior to NetHack 3.6.0 and in derived variants, this scroll had no messages for any situation. This still unambiguously identified it upon reading, however, as it was the only such scroll to not have any messages.
