Cannibalism

In NetHack, cannibalism is the act of eating a monster of your own race.

Description

A character that eats a corpse, tin or egg of the same species as them - including their current form if polymorphed - will gain the aggravate monster intrinsic and lose 2–5 points of Luck. This includes eating brains as a mind flayer. However, if you are an orc or a Caveman, cannibalism is considered natural for you, and you will not be penalized. Contracting lycanthropy will further extend the cannibalism restriction to beasts similar to your wereform even when you're still in your original form, but not to lycanthropes of your type.

Whether you are exempt from cannibalism rules altogether depends solely on your base form: orcish heroes and Cavemen will never be affected by cannibalism, but a human polymorphing into an orc could not safely eat orc or human corpses. If you polymorph into a monster with a digestion attack, using that attack is not considered cannibalism.

Strategy

Cannibalism is generally a bad idea - while the aggravate monster intrinsic can be dealt with, the Luck penalty will take significant time to recover from, and eating corpses from your own race is avoidable enough that it is mostly not worth considering. Dwarves and gnomes can readily identify members of their race via glyph and/or monster name, as can elves; human characters will have some slight difficulty due to sharing a glyph (@) with elves. Anything represented by an @ that isn't obviously an elf is human—this includes werecreatures and doppelgangers, but not Medusa (who should not be eaten regardless, lest you turn to stone). The Keystone Kops (represented by a K) are also humans, and are the only non-undead monsters that use a different glyph.

Human characters who are not Cavemen should only use blessed tins of nurse meat to fully restore their HP in emergencies, where being a live cannibal is preferable and easier to recover from than dying with a "clean" conscience.]

Pets

Humanoid pets will generally avoid cannibalism unless they are starving. Undead, orcs, kobolds, and ogres do not care; conversely, elves will not commit cannibalism even if they are starving. Pets that do commit cannibalism suffer no ill effects, even if they would normally avoid it.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, drow are considered elves for the purpose of cannibalism: either race will incur penalties for eating the other. Similarly, doppelgangers are considered human, and incur penalties for eating anything human. SLASH'EM introduces several non-obvious human monsters, most notably gibberlings and grimlocks.

Player vampires and lycanthropes are exempt from penalties for cannibalism. Committing cannibalism when you are exmempt gives an alignment bonus: the message produced is "You honour the dead" for cavepeople, and "You feel evil and fiendish!" for othersTemplate:Refsc.

Polymorph restrictions are not applied: only explicitly eating the corpse of your base race is considered cannibalism.

All pets (not just humanoids) refuse to eat the corpses of monsters represented by the same letter as themselves, unless they are starving. This can lead to some amusing results: a pet human will gladly eat a Keystone Kop corpse, for example.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, if you are a non-cannibalistic race or role and have a high alignment record, you have a wisdom-based chance of being warned if you are about to eat something of the same race as you.

Messages

You feel a deep sense of kinship to <foo>! Eat anyway?

This prompt may appear if you are non-cannibalistic and about to eat the corpse or tin of a monster of your race.