Attribute

An attribute shows some capability of the player. Alternatively, "attribute" may refer to properties divined through enlightenment or death.

There are six basic attributes, as in Dungeons & Dragons. A player's attributes can be increased by exercising them.

Strength

Strength corresponds to the ability to have more weight in your inventory. Also, the stronger you are, the more damage you do in melee combat, and the farther you can throw objects.

Dexterity

Dexterity has a multitude of effects, of which the most significant is probably that it affects your chance of hitting monsters, whether in melee combat or with a missile or spell.

Constitution

Having a high constitution increases your healing rate and the number of HP you gain when levelling up and allows you to carry more weight in your inventory.

Intelligence

Intelligence is useful for reading spellbooks, for spellcasting (unless you are a Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest or Valkyrie, in which case it is wisdom that affects your chances of successfully casting a spell) and for encounters with foocubi. Mind flayers have a brain-eating attack that can drain your intelligence; if you are hit by a successful brain-eating attack when your base intelligence is already 3, you die of brainlessness.

Intelligence cannot be exercised but can be increased by drinking a blessed potion of enlightenment or a potion of gain ability. It can also be increased by wearing a helm of brilliance. If you eat a mind flayer corpse, there is a 50% chance your intelligence will be increased by one point (you will get the message "For some reason, that tasted bland." if your intelligence is already at maximum.)

UnNetHack adds the ability to exercise intelligence by fighting a weeping angel's mental reflection (requires that the player does not have reflection).

Wisdom

A Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest or Valkyrie requires wisdom to cast spells. Wisdom is not particularly important to other classes, though it affects how fast your power regenerates (hence is fairly important for wizards) and how much power you gain when levelling up.

Wisdom is one of the easiest stats to maximize. Many activities exercise it, including engraving Elbereth and successful searching. It can also be increased by sleeping with a foocubus and getting the "You will always remember the foocubus" message.

Messages

When your wisdom changes through exercise or abuse you will receive the message:

You feel wise! You must have been very observant.

If it goes up, and:

You feel foolish! You haven't been paying attention.

if it goes down.

Exercising and abusing wisdom

Wisdom is exercised by the following:

• Completing the study of a spellbook (and more so if it refreshes memory of an already known spell)
• Successfully casting a spell
• Chatting to a coaligned priest with a good alignment record but no money
• Donating more than half your gold to a priest, but less than 200 times your level
• Being weak with hunger as a monk on a turn whose number is a multiple of 10
• Being clairvoyant (once every five turns)
• Zapping a wand (except at yourself) or casting one of the following spells that duplicates a wand effect (except at yourself): force bolt, sleep, magic missile, knock, slow monster, wizard lock, dig, turn undead, polymorph, teleport away, cancellation, finger of death, light, detect unseen, healing, extra healing, drain life, and also stone to flesh (which the relevant source claims is a duplicate of a wand effect, even though it isn't).
• Zapping or engraving with a wand of enlightenment (if it is zapped, this is in addition to the exercise from the previous item)
• Attempting to polymorph into a genocided species
• Succeeding in polymorphing into a monster
• In a lycanthropic form, calling upon your brethren for help
• Touching your quest artifact for the first time
• Failing to enter the quest due to being too low a level or (except if you are locked out of the quest as a result) too low an alignment
• Unlocking the quest
• Discovering a trap on an object or door
• Quaffing holy water while not chaotic, nor in an undead or demonic form
• Quaffing a noncursed potion of enlightenment, or getting the effect from a fountain
• Sensing at least one monster or object with the appropriate detection potions, or the equivalent spells
• Detecting gold, food, or the map layout via any means
• Quaffing a potion of gain energy, even if cursed
• Quaffing burning oil, when polymorphed into a monster that likes fire
• Removing erosion from an object using a potion of oil
• Successfully refilling an oil lamp
• Being told a true rumor (more so if it came from the Oracle)
• Getting a non-cheapskate major consultation
• Kicking fruit out of a tree
• Finding a ring in a sink, by kicking or quaffing
• Succeeding in writing a scroll or spellbook, or failing merely because the marker dried out in the process
• Giving a name to all objects of a given type, via #name or when you see the object break (only one exercise for each type of item.
• Being told the amount you will have to pay for using an unpaid item in a shop
• Reading a non-blank scroll
• Getting the "You will always remember the foocubus…" (in addition to the wisdom gain) or "That was a very educational experience!" result from sex
• Sacrificing a corpse
• As a demon, sacrificing a corpse of your own race
• Successfully converting an altar
• Gaining an artifact from your god or from a fountain
• Attempting to turn undead with a receptive god (regardless of whether the attempt succeeds or fails for other reasons)
• Calling demons as a side-effect of melee attack when polymorphed
• Eating a brain, when polymorphed into a (regular or master) mind flayer
• Finding a gem or coins in a fountain
• Gaining abilities from a magical fountain
• Gaining the see invisible intrinsic from a fountain
• Detecting monsters using a fountain
• Casting the teleport away spell using ctrl + t
• Engraving Elbereth with the correct capitalisation
• Trying to open the Castle drawbridge using music (even if the wrong tune is played)
• Finding a trap (except a statue trap that fails to activate), secret door, secret corridor, or unseen monster via searching but not when using a stethoscope
• Eating a non-cursed trident
• Dying and having your possessions identified (a bit late, isn't it?)

Wisdom is abused by the following:

• Casting a spell at a location (such as skilled fireball or cone of cold) while engulfed
• Forgetting a spell due to amnesia
• Being hit by divine lightning when attacking an aligned priest
• Being satiated as a monk on a turn whose number is a multiple of 10
• Being confused or hallucinating (once every five turns)
• Trying to saddle a foocubus
• While trapped, sitting in the trap to extend the length of time you are trapped
• Accidentally triggering a trap while trying to untrap it
• Quaffing a potion of booze
• Quaffing a cursed potion of enlightenment
• Quaffing a potion of oil, except when it's burning and you are polymorphed into a monster that likes fire
• Dipping an object into oil, unless it removes erosion from that object
• Trying to refill an oil lamp while either it or the oil is burning
• Trying to buy a major consultation from the Oracle without enough money
• Trying to write on paper which already has something written on it
• Reading a scroll of amnesia
• Being hit by a mind flayer's intelligence-draining attack
• Receiving the "your senses are dulled" message from an attempt to have sex, in addition to the wisdom drain
• Being blasted by an artifact
• When not chaotic, sacrificing a corpse of your own race
• Failing in an attempt to convert an altar (in addition to the luck penalty)
• In a demonic or undead form, calling upon a non-chaotic god to turn undead (or any sufficiently angry god in any form)
• Throwing an egg at a monster (except if it's a cockatrice egg or it turns to stone upon impact)
• Dipping for Excalibur when not lawful, if you would have got the artifact if you were lawful
• Losing money bathing in a fountain
• Robbing a grave
• Creating undead by engraving on a gravestone
• Attempting to pick up or otherwise acquire a Rider corpse
• Using (non-tonally) a tooled horn, bugle, or leather drum
• Being told a false rumor

Charisma

Charisma is mostly useful for obtaining better prices at shops. It also helps with foocubus encounters, both by increasing the chance of a positive result and by giving more control over whether they remove your armor.

Charisma is a difficult stat to increase, as it cannot be exercised. It can be extrinsically increased by wearing a charged ring of adornment or intrinsically boosted by successfully eating one in a valid polymorphed form. You can also gain charisma by triggering a magic trap, so some players deliberately trigger magic traps until they explode. However, this can be dangerous—many monsters will be summoned, and the towers of flame will reduce your maximum HP unless you have fire resistance. Making sure your potion of gain ability is blessed before quaffing it is probably the easiest and safest way to increase this stat to maximum.

Charisma	Price
3–5	×2
6–7	×1.5
8–10	×1.33
11–15	×1
16–17	×0.75
18	×0.67
19–25	×0.5

Reference: shk.c, line 1910.

Starting attributes

The player's starting attributes depend on the class as follows:

Class	Strength	Intelligence	Wisdom	Dexterity	Constitution	Charisma	Remaining
Archeologist	7\20%	10\20%	10\20%	7\10%	7\20%	7\10%	27
Barbarian	16\30%	7\6%	7\7%	15\20%	16\30%	6\7%	8
Caveman	10\30%	7\6%	7\7%	7\20%	8\30%	6\7%	30
Healer	7\15%	7\20%	13\20%	7\15%	11\25%	16\5%	14
Knight	13\30%	7\15%	14\15%	8\10%	10\20%	17\10%	6
Monk	10\25%	7\10%	8\20%	8\20%	7\15%	7\10%	28
Priest	7\15%	7\10%	10\30%	7\15%	7\20%	7\10%	30
Ranger	13\30%	13\10%	13\10%	9\20%	13\20%	7\10%	7
Rogue	7\20%	7\10%	7\10%	10\30%	7\20%	6\10%	31
Samurai	10\30%	8\10%	7\8%	10\30%	17\14%	6\8%	17
Tourist	7\15%	10\10%	6\10%	7\15%	7\30%	10\20%	28
Valkyrie	10\30%	7\6%	7\7%	7\20%	10\30%	7\7%	27
Wizard	7\10%	10\30%	7\10%	7\20%	7\20%	7\10%	30

First, points are distributed so that the player receives, as a minimum, the number indicated before the backslash. This is always out of a pool of 75 points, and the Remaining column contains the amount of leftover points from this step.

Next, the remaining points are distributed randomly according to the percentage after the backslash. If an attribute is chosen that would raise it above the player's racial maximum, it will try 99 more times to choose a different attribute to raise. If it fails to pick an attribute on all 100 attempts, it will abort this step and any remaining points will be lost.

Third, each attribute has a 5% probability of having a random number from −2 to +4 added to it . These respect racial maximums.

Finally, strength will, if necessary, be increased until the player is unencumbered by their starting inventory. If this is not enough, constitution will be increased similarly.

Maximum attributes

You can increase strength, dexterity, constitution and wisdom through exercise, and adjust all six stats through other means such as potions of gain ability. Some magic items, like the helm of brilliance, gauntlets of power and gauntlets of dexterity, allow you to exceed these maximums. In fact, such items are common in ascension kits.

The maximum stats for each race are:

Race	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Human	18/**	18	18	18	18	18
Elf	18	18	16	20	20	18
Dwarf	18/**	20	20	16	16	16
Gnome	18/50	18	18	19	18	18
Orc	18/50	18	18	16	16	16

Variants

NetHack brass

NetHack brass implements different maximum attributes per role. Find your maximum attributes by looking for your role in the next table, then applying the racial modifiers.For example, humans have +2 to strength. All heroes have a minimum of 3 for each attribute. The entries with the exclamation marks are the spellcasting stats for each role.

Role	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Archeologist	16	10	17	19!	18	19
Barbarian	18/**	18	20	12!	16	10
Caveman	18/**	18	20	14!	16	15
Healer	12	19	19	19	19!	18
Knight	18/50	13	18	17	19!	19
Monk	10	20	20	18	20!	18
Priest	18	15	18	17	20!	18
Ranger	17	21	13	19!	16	19
Rogue	18	20	17	17!	17	16
Samurai	18/50	20	19	15!	15	15
Tourist	17	15	18	19!	19	19
Valkyrie	18/**	16	20	12	17!	16
Wizard	10	19	16	20!	20	18

Reference: src/role.c in NetHack brass 040923.

Racial modifiers

To find your maximum attributes in NetHack brass, after finding your role in the above table, you must apply the racial modifiers of the below table. These racial modifiers apply only to the maximum attributes of each player, not the initial attributes.

An elven Ranger of NetHack brass, for example, can reach 19+1 = 20 in charisma by increasing charisma one more time after a human Ranger would have maxed at 19.

For strength modifiers only, a +1 raises 18 to 18/50, while a +2 raises 18 to 18/** or 17 to 18/50.

Race	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Human	+2	0	0	0	0	0
Elf	0	0	−2	+2	+2	+1
Dwarf	+2	+2	+2	−2	−2	−2
Gnome	+1	0	0	+1	0	0
Orc	+2	0	0	−2	−2	−3

Wizard mode

The wizard mode of NetHack brass supplies the #rrllududab extended command, a code that gives your maximum attributes to you, a reference to the Konami code.

SLASH'EM

Strength

SLASH'EM, mainly due to the changed behaviour of the gauntlets of power, handles strength between 18/** and 25 differently than vanilla NetHack.

strength	to-hit	damage
3–5	−2	−1
6–7	−1	0
8–15	0	0
16	0	+1
17	+1	+1
18	+1	+2
18/01–18/99	+1	+3
18/**	+2	+4
19	+2	+5
20	+3	+6
21	+3	+7
22	+4	+8
23	+4	+9
24	+5	+10
25	+5	+11

Reference: weapon.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 900.

Dexterity

Dexterity now has an impact on AC, and higher Dexterity provides bonuses to AC.

dexterity	AC
3<	+3
4–5	+2
6–7	+1
8–14	0
15	−1
16	−2
17	−3
18	−4
19	−5
20–21	−6
22–23	−7
>23	−8

FIQHack

In FIQHack, strength over 18 is no longer considered a special attribute, and "exceptional strength" of 18/XX does not exist - their numeric equivalents are used instead, as follows:

• Elves: 18
• Gnomes: 19
• Orcs: 20
• Humans: 21
• Dwarves: 21

See also

• hit points
• inventory
• purse
• encumbrance
• weight
• intrinsic

See also

• Drain for gain, which involves manipulating your attributes, and discusses how to do so.

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.