Lance

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Name	lance
Appearance	lance
Damage vs. small	1d6
Damage vs. large	1d8
To-hit bonus	+0
Weapon skill	lance
Size	one-handed
Base price	10 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	180
Material	iron

A lance is a weapon in NetHack. It is meant to be used while mounted and gives a chance dependent on your lance skill of jousting a monster on a successful attack, granting additional damage, stunning the victim, and often causing it to be pushed back a square if it is not already dead. This will sometimes cause your lance to break.

A lance can also be applied to attack two squares away (a knight's jump away or even diagonally if sufficiently skilled). However, there is a to-hit penalty for applying the lance when the wielder is at basic skill level or lower. It is possible to stay a knight's jump away from monsters who are able to throw missiles and use spells and breathweapons to attack them with the lance without them being able to retaliate.

Jousting

When attacking an adjacent monster in melee with a lance while mounted, there is a chance that you will joust the monster.

• You deal an additional 2d10 damage (2d2 if the lance is your secondary weapon).
• The monster is stunned. Stunning monsters seems to reduce the frequency of their attacks, or at least make them attack less. It also seems to hamper their use of special attacks (e.g. breath weapons) and teleport.
• The monster is pushed back one space, unless it is too heavy (huge or larger), that space is occupied or deadly (e.g. a lava pool), or it cannot move (e.g. it is trapped).
• Your lance has a chance of breaking. High luck will significantly reduce this chance. Your lance cannot break when jousting an unsolid monster. Artifact lances will never break (they also don't exist). Enchantment and beatitude do not affect the chance of the lance breaking.

Your chance of jousting is determined solely based on your lance skill (the worse of lance or twoweapon if you are using two weapons):

Rank	Jousting Chance
Unskilled	20%
Basic	40%
Skilled	60%
Expert	80%

Strategy

Jousting can cause your lance to break; as lances are difficult to come by, it will be hard for you to find a replacement should yours break. High luck reduces the chance of breakage. Early in the game, you should probably only apply your lance at range, and switch to another weapon or fall back when opponents close.

A deadly jousting tactic is to let the monster close to applying range, then apply the lance on it until it moves adjacent, then hit it normally. Since at high skill levels a joust is nearly guaranteed, the monster will be pushed back for another round of lance thrusts, then will move adjacent again only to be jousted and so on until the monster is dead, usually without ever having an opportunity to attack.

With their jumping ability, even low skill Knights in an open space can make particularly good use of the strategy of keeping just enough distance between themselves and an opponent to apply their lance, denying it an opportunity to retaliate.

Lance skill

Lance
Max	Role
Basic	Priest, Tourist
Skilled	Samurai, Valkyrie
Expert	Knight

How skill affects range when applying a lance:

       ESUSE
       SXXXS
       UX@XU
       SXXXS
       ESUSE

The '@' is where your character is standing. Spaces marked with a 'X' are too close to be hit, spaces marked with a 'U' can be hit even while unskilled, spaces marked with a 'S' can only be hit when skilled, and spaces marked with an 'E' can only be hit when expert.

The lance is the only weapon to use lance skill, and there are no artifact lances.

Encyclopedia entry

With this the wind increased, and the mill sails began to turn 
about; which Don Quixote espying, said, 'Although thou movest
more arms than the giant Briareus thou shalt stoop to me.'
And, after saying this, and commending himself most devoutly
to his Lady Dulcinea, desiring her to succor him in that trance,
covering himself well with his buckler, and setting his lance
on his rest, he spurred on Rozinante, and encountered with the
first mill that was before him, and, striking his lance into
the sail, the wind swung it about with such fury, that it broke
his lance into shivers, carrying him and his horse after it,
and finally tumbled him a good way off from it on the field in 
evil plight.
        [ Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miquel de
          Cervantes Saavedra ]

References

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

"Determine the effect of stunning on monsters and include it here (and at stun)"