Dragon rider

Dragonmaster is a new role in SpliceHack. Dragonmasters are competent melee fighters and middling spellcasters. They are most known for their ability to tame dragons as most roles would tame domestic animals, and their inability to wear dragon armor. Dragonmasters begin the game with a saddled tame baby dragon as a pet. Only humans, elves, drow, and changelings can begin the game as Dragonmasters.

Starting inventory

Each Dragonmaster starts with the following:

• A blessed +1 broadsword
• A blessed +1 scale mail
• 2 food rations
• 2 tripe rations

Intrinsics

Dragonmasters gain intrinsics at these experience levels:

• Level 7: Speed
• Level 15: Poison Resistance
• Level 16: Sleep Resistance
• Level 18: Fire Resistance
• Level 19: Cold Resistance
• Level 21: Shock Resistance
• Level 23: Disintegration Resistance

Skills

Max	Skill
Basic	Weapons: dagger, knife, axe, pickaxe, short sword, long sword, two-handed sword, scimitar, club, flail, hammer, trident, bow Spells: attack spells, matter spells
Skilled	Weapons: saber, crossbow Combat: two-weapon combat
Expert	Weapons: broad sword, mace, morning star, polearms, spear, lance, bare hands Combat: riding

Techniques

Dragonmasters can make use of the following techniques:

• Level 1: Dragon Blitz: This technique grants all tame dragons a number of bonus movement points equal to 75 plus twice the technique level.
• Level 7: Dragon Call: This technique teleports all dragons on the level to the location of the player. It also summons a baby red dragon ¹²⁄₁₃ of the time, and a random dragon ¹⁄₁₃ of the time. The dragons summoned by this technique will be peaceful half the time. Note that using this technique at high levels can be dangerous, since one could end up accidentally summoning an elder dragon.

Pet dragons

Dragonmasters begin the game with a tame baby dragon as a pet. This baby dragon is selected randomly from all dragon types except black. Dragonmasters gain a number of benefits from their relationship with dragons.

General

• Dragonmasters can tame any dragon as one would tame a domestic animal, with the notable exception of SpliceHack's elder dragons.
• Dragonmasters can ride their pet dragons without reducing their tameness.
• Each turn a pet dragon spends adjacent to a Dragonmaster, they provide the Dragonmaster with one point of passive energy regeneration.

Assistance

Pet dragons will assist a Dragonmaster when adjacent to them in times of need.

• Dragons will free stuck Dragonmasters.
• Dragons will nudge sleeping Dragonmasters awake.
• Red dragons and baby red dragons will exhale on the Dragonmaster to cure them of sliming.

Restrictions

• Dragonmasters are incapable of wearing dragon scales or dragon scale mail.
• Eating a dragon corpse is considered cannibalism.

Strategy

Conducts

Due to their preexisting reliance on pets, Dragonmasters are a good choice to go for the conducts of pacifist and never hitting with a wielded weapon.

Early game

General

Dragonmasters excel in the early game. Their pet dragon, although slow, is strong enough to take care of most monsters for them. Dragonmasters can afford to hang back and let it do the fighting for them. Dragon blitz can be abused to defeat large groups of monsters extremely quickly, including soldier ants and rothes. Enormous Care should be taken when bringing dragons into shops, since they are likely to attack and get killed by shopkeepers.

Objectives

Be on the lookout for anything that can be used to improve AC. Additionally, finding a wand of speed monster should be a priority, since one zap transforms their pet from a strong sidekick into a terrifying destructive force. Finally, pick up as many food items as possible in order to be prepared for taming dragons later in the game.

Mid game

General

Dragonmasters struggle in the mid game. Their pet becomes much less useful, and their lack of powerful intrinsics and inability to wear dragon armor hurts them. Finding strong items in general can be a struggle. While the Dragonmaster quest is not terribly difficult, the reward obtained from it is mediocre. Sharur is very weak as far as artifact weapons go, and can usually be invoked immediately for an additional pet.

Objectives

Find as many items as possible to increase AC, and enchant your armor. Prioritize items that will grant magic resistance, since gray dragon scale mail is not an option. One potential strategy is to use dragon call repeatedly to build up a small army of pet dragons, then use them to kill shopkeepers and loot shops.

Late game

If they are adequately prepared, Dragonmasters have a strong late game. The increased presence of dragons means that numerous powerful pets are readily available, and those with pet red dragons will be safer from delayed instadeaths via sliming. The plane of air generates with five random dragons spread throughout the level, potentially providing the Dragonmaster with pets to take through the planes.

Quest

The Dragonmaster quest sees you fighting Slipscale the Betrayer and his pet white dragon Voanairruth in an attempt to obtain the artifact mace Sharur.

Other variants

SLASH'EM Extended version 2.60 ported the Dragonmaster role, but uses a different implementation. They only gain intrinsic speed at experience level 7 and need to gain resistances either from eating corpses or being a race that gains them via leveling; to make up for that, they have a higher than average chance of acquiring intrinsics when eating dragon corpses. Dragonmasters' ability to tame dragons with thrown food is present in this variant as well. However, they are able to wear dragon scale mail and indeed gain bonuses from doing so: when wearing dragon scales/scale mail, tame dragons can never spontaneously rebel, and when wearing a dragon scale shield, tame dragons cannot be untamed by various other forms of untaming (e.g. frenzy attacks used by monsters or the scroll of enrage). To top it off, the dragonmaster can reach grand master two-weapon combat skill, as well as grand master in broadsword, scimitar, saber, spear, javelin and lance.