Hobbit

h hobbit
Difficulty	2
Attacks	Weapon 1d6

h hobbit
Difficulty	2
Attacks	Weapon 1d6
Base level	1
Base experience	13
Speed	9
Base AC	10
Base MR	0
Alignment	6 (lawful)
Frequency (by normal means)	2 (Quite rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	500
Nutritional value	200
Size	Small
Resistances	None
Resistances conveyed	None
A hobbit: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. is omnivorous. can pick up weapons and food. has infravision. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	monst.c#line439

A hobbit, h, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The hobbit is a small, omnivorous humanoid with a single weapon attack.

Generation

Randomly generated hobbits are sometimes peaceful towards lawful player characters, and always peaceful towards dwarves. Hobbits are always generated with one of a dagger, an elven dagger, or a sling and a set of flint stones, with an equal chance for each weapon; they also have a ¹⁄₁₀ chance of receiving an elven mithril coat, and a separate ¹⁄₁₀ chance of receiving a dwarvish cloak.

Strategy

While a hobbit is not too dangerous on their own, a weaker early character should not approach them without some caution - a hobbit with an enchanted dagger can be an unwelcome and possibly lethal surprise. Hobbits have a tendency to throw their daggers at you when you are in range, making disarming them trivial, and can usually be felled easily with your own ranged attacks.

Hobbits are useful as potential early sources of a mithril-coat, daggers to fill your quiver, or an elven dagger to name and turn into Sting. Lawful characters will want their pets to handle peaceful hobbits to avoid alignment record penalties.

History

The hobbit first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.

Origin

Hobbits are a fictional race of people that appear in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels set in Middle-Earth, and have since appeared in the works of other fantasy authors including Terry Brooks, Jack Vance, and Clifford D. Simak. Occasionally known as halflings in Tolkien's writings, hobbits are humanoids that are closely related to humans, if not an offshoot of humanity - they stand at anywhere between two and four feet, with the average height of a hobbit being roughly half the average human height. Hobbits have feet with naturally tough leathery soles and curly hair on the top, and tend to live barefoot; they traditionally make their home in underground "hobbit holes" with windows built into the sides of hills on pastoral countrysides, while some also live in cottage houses on the surface. Hard-working, orderly and peaceful, hobbits enjoy many "creature comforts" and have a particular love of food and drink - but they are also naturally curious and enthusiastic collectors, and sometimes prefer a bit of trouble to a lot of boredom.

Hobbits debut in 1937 children's novel The Hobbit, where the titular protagonist Bilbo Baggins is thrown into an unexpected adventure when the wizard Gandalf arrives at his doorstep in the small town of Hobbiton. In the sequel to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Pippin Took, and Merry Brandybuck are a group of hobbits who all play key roles in fighting to save their world of Middle-earth from evil. The Lord of the Rings identifies Hobbiton as part of the homeland of the Hobbits: a larger rural region in the northwest of Middle-earth called the Shire. Another hobbit village named Bree is found east of the Shire, where they co-exist with regular humans. Tolkien hints that there may be other hobbit settlements, though they are never visited within the story.

The origins of the name and idea are subject to debate, with the most likely antecedents including 1922 Sinclair Lewis novel Babbitt and 1927 Edward Wyke Smith children's book The Marvellous Land of Snergs. Many of Tolkien's British reviewers imagined hobbits to be rabbit-like in appearance - though Tolkien emphatically rejected any relationship between hobbits and rabbits and emphasized hobbits' humanity, scholars have noted several lines of evidence to the contrary. As with many other beings and creatures from the setting, hobbits also appear in Dungeons & Dragons, where they are referred to as halflings for legal reasons.

Messages

<The hobbit> asks you about the One Ring.

You chatted to a peaceful or tame hobbit.

<The hobbit> complains about unpleasant dungeon conditions.

As above, but the hobbit is at least 10 HP down from its maximum; this rarely occurs in practice, hobbits rarely generate with more than 10 HP total.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

As of commit 5902ace, hobbits now complain about any damage if they have less than 11 max HP.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, hobbits are added as a playable race.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, Nazgul will attack any hobbits they see (and vice versa) as part of Nephi's grudge patch.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, hobbits may appear in the court of a throne room ruled by a gnome king/queen or a dwarf king/queen.

EvilHack

In EvilHack, hobbits are added as a playable race. EvilHack also adds hobbit pickpockets, and hobbits can also appear as player monsters and undead such as zombies and mummies.

Standard hobbits generate with the same items as in vanilla NetHack, using the same probabilities, but are given sling bullets in place of flint stones.

SlashTHEM

In addition to SLASH'EM details, the Geek quest in SlashTHEM uses a pair of hobbits to spell out "May the force be with you" on the home level, rather than a random humanoid as with most of the other letters; this is done to prevent the generation of dwarves that may dig through the walls of the level prematurely.

Encyclopedia entry

Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more
numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace
and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-
farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not
and did not understand or like machines more complicated
than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a handloom, although
they were skillful with tools. Even in ancient days they
were, as a rule, shy of "the Big Folk", as they call us, and
now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find.

[ The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien ]