Healer/dNetHack
In dNetHack, the Healer is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.
Healers can be humans, gnomes, elves, or yuki-onna, and are always neutral.
Drow Healers and hedrow Healers are treated as radically different from their counterparts, with their own articles available in the provided link.
Starting equipment
Each Healer starts with the following equipment:
- 1001-2000 gold pieces
- a blessed +0 scalpel
- a blessed +0 quarterstaff
- an uncursed +1 pair of gloves
- a blessed +0 healer uniform
- a blessed +0 pair of low boots
- 5-10 uncursed apples
- 5-10 blessed eucalyptus leaves
- a blessed spellbook of healing
- a blessed spellbook of extra 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)
- an uncursed stethoscope
- an uncursed oil lamp
Healers start with knowledge of the potion of full healing's randomized appearance, in addition to any applicable racial equipment.
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 1: Immunity to sickness
- Level 15: Warning
Attributes
The Healer's starting attributes are distributed as follows:
| Attributes | Strength | Dexterity | Constitution | Intelligence | Wisdom | Charisma | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum attributes | 7 | 7 | 11 | 13 | 11 | 16 | 10 |
| Distribution percentages | 5% | 15% | 25% | 30% | 20% | 5% |
Skills
Healers have the following skills available to them before racial adjustments:
| Healer skills | |
|---|---|
| Max | Skills |
| Basic |
|
| Skilled |
|
| Expert |
|
Healers start with Basic skill in knives, quarterstaffs and healing spells. They use the intelligence stat to cast spells, and their special spell is full healing.
Special rules
Healers gain experience and a +1 alignment record bonus for healing pets and peaceful monsters.
Healers only take 1⁄2 damage from breaking wands by applying them.
Healers do not suffer damage or attribute loss from quaffing a potion of sickness and are immune to their vapors, though quaffing the potion will still cure hallucination.
A Healer can apply a stethoscope to a statue to determine whether it contains items or is on a statue trap; they can also more reliably apply a stethoscope to themselves while engulfed by a whirly monster.
Healers gain a +10 bonus to their natural HP regeneration rate and a +6 bonus to their natural power regeneration rate.
Healers have an increased chance of obtaining a tame minion from an altar as a sacrifice boon.
Healers gain reduced spell failure rates for all spells while wielding a khakkhara, bell, effigy, or scalpel (including artifacts).
Healers can safely extract the fang from the hearts of Jrt Netjer in hell vaults, and can safely free monsters from vivisection traps - this will tame the monster in both cases.
Healers have a +0.5 base attack bonus per experience level, and gain to-hit and damage bonuses for attacks with scalpels and unicorn horns based on their skill in healing spells: +0 for Basic, +2 for Skilled, and +5 for Expert.
Healers can make sneak attacks with knives.
Healers are capable of determining roughly how much HP a vampiric or living monster has left: A phrase is appended to the monster's name whenever the Healer sees them take any action, and is also displayed when using far look.
Healers apply a bonus to their pets' threshold for experience gain, maximum level, AC, and DR based on each of their skills in beast mastery and healing spells: +1 for Basic, +2 for Skilled, and +5 for Expert. Wielding Clarent or carrying it as an alternate weapon doubles the bonuses from beast mastery.
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 standard Healer pantheon is based on the mythology of ancient Greece.
Quest
As in the standard quest for NetHack, the Healer's quest sees them fighting the Cyclops for The Staff of Aesculapius, an artifact silver-shod serpent-entwined staff. Additionally, the Healer will encounter many monsters that have fallen victim to a plague inflicted upon them by the Cyclops and his machinations.
A Healer can gain access to their quest if the average of their experience level and the monster level of their pet with the highest level is 14 or higher.
The Staff of Aesculapius grants hungerless regeneration and drain resistance 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. Reading The Staff of Aesculapius teaches the mass healing spell. Applying the non-cursed Staff can cure status ailments for the wielder or other allied monsters similar to a unicorn horn, and inflicts status ailments on opposing monsters while completely ignoring monster MR - this is reversed if the Staff is cursed, and in all cases skips over ailments that do not apply (for curing) or else cannot be applied (for inflicting). The status ailments cured or applied in order of priority are: blindness, deafness, stunning and confusion, sleep, paralysis, cancellation, and plague.
Strategy
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"Detail to match the layout of other NetHack role strategy sections if possible."
