Half-dragon (starting race)

Half-dragons are a new playable race in dNetHack and notdNetHack.

Properties

• Half-dragons may be anachrononauts, archeologists, barbarians, binders, cavepeople, convicts, knights, monks, madmen, nobles, priests, rogues, rangers, samurais, bards (troubadours) or wizards.
• Half-dragons have a draconic breath weapon selected at game start, usable via #ability
  • The breath is randomly selected from fire, frost, lightning, poison, acid, sleep. Female half-dragon nobles will instead get either cold or magic with equal odds, and half-dragon madmen will get a random breath attack ala shimmering dragons if they're female or fire if they're male.
  • It costs 15 energy to use, does not burn nutrition, and does not suffer from spell failure.
  • Base damage is (1+(XL/2))d6 damage, the same as magic missile. This can be upgraded by wearing dragon scale armor that matches your breath weapon, by 50% per matching armor piece worn. For example, a half-dragon with acid breath will get 50% extra damage with their breath while wearing yellow dragon scale mail, or double damage if wearing both mail and a shield.
  • You are granted full immunity to your own breath weapon, which permanently grants the appropriate resistance. This does grant permanent intrinsic magic resistance with magical breath, and does not grant anything to male madmen who have a randomly varying breath attack. This also grants full intrinsic immunity, rather than just resistance, for fire, cold and lightning bearing half-dragons, which fully negates primordial elemental attacks compared to the halved damage they normally deal through resistances. Lightning half-dragons are not immune to being blinded "by the flash" caused by being hit with a lightning bolt.
  • From 14th level, your breath weapon counts as true dragonbreath, so it cannot be reflected by ordinary reflection, only dragonbreath reflection. The exception is if a half-dragon madwoman's random breath weapon becomes disintegration breath, in which case it can be reflected as usual.
• Half-dragons gain 1 bonus AC per 6 levels (starting at level 3), and 1 bonus natural DR per 6 levels (starting at level 6).
• Half-dragons are slower than normal (base speed 8 instead of speed 12).
• Half-dragons gain a bonus to bare-handed and martial arts damage from their claws - they have triple dice size, so they'll deal 1d6 damage instead of 1d2, or 1d12 instead of 1d4 with martial arts
• Half-dragons are counted as dragons for cannibalism and same-race sacrifice purposes.
• Half-dragons gain intrinsic flying at 14th level. ("You feel wings sprout from your back!")
• Half-dragons will start with a pet "tiny pseudodragon" instead of a dog/cat/pony, and the pseudodragon also shares the relevant breath attack/resistance.
  • Knights spawn with "saddled riding pseudodragon", which is 2 steps of growth older and can be ridden.
• Half-dragon madmen and female half-dragon nobles are more humanoid than other half-dragons.
  • On the upside, this increases their maximum dexterity to 18, and increases their base speed to 12.
  • On the downside, they get less bonus AC and DR: 1 bonus AC per 15 levels (starting at level 10), and 1 bonus AC per 15 levels (starting at level 15).
  • Flavor-wise, male half-dragon madmen are half-red-dragon, half-githyanki, female half-dragon madwomen are half-chaos-dragon, half-githzerai, and female half-dragon nobles are the more-human-looking variety of Dark Souls half-dragon.
• Being half-dragon is a mystical status, not just a physical condition, and so half-dragons retain their special abilities while polymorphed, and conversely other characters cannot polymorph into half-dragons.
• Half-dragon bards start with an extra 30 energy. Half-dragon madmen start with exactly 10 energy. All other half-dragons start with exactly 15 energy.
• Half-dragon bards know martial arts.
• Female half-dragons can all train the farm implement weapon skill to Expert level.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Half-dragon bards can create elementals by singing. Half-dragon nobles have more-different stats? Devel changes. Maybe reorganize the page?"

Stats

Character race	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma
Half-dragon	25	10	20	20	20	20