Multishot

Multishot is to the ability to sometimes throw or fire more than one projectile of certain types in a single move. One must be careful with this tactic as the first projectile may kill the enemy, allowing the next to proceed to hit a pet or peaceful monster.

Calculation

The multishot counter starts at 1, and is modified as follows:

• +1 if you are Skilled at your weapon, unless:
  • you are fumbling, or
  • your dexterity is less than 7, or
  • you are:
    • a Wizard
    • a Priest
    • a Healer not throwing knives
    • a Tourist not throwing darts
• +1 if you are Expert at your weapon (cumulative with the above, and not subject to its qualifications)
• +1 for your racial bonus, if you are:
  • not disqualified from the Skilled bonus for the reasons list above, and
  • an elf firing elven arrows from an elven bow
  • an orc firing orcish arrows from an orcish bow
  • a gnome firing bolts from a crossbow
• +1 for your role bonus, if you are:
  • a Caveman throwing spears or firing appropriate ammo from a sling
  • a Samurai firing ya from a yumi
  • a Monk throwing shuriken
  • a Rogue throwing daggers (of any variety)
  • a Ranger not throwing daggers
• if firing a crossbow with less than 18 strength (16 if a gnome), reduced to a number between 1 and itself, inclusive (so e.g. a counter of 3 would be rolled to d3).
• reduced to 1 if you are confused, stunned, the missile requires a launcher which you aren't wielding, or isn't a weapon at all (e.g. meatballs)

Racial bonuses are based on your starting race, not your current race. For example, a human polymorphed into an orc will not fire an extra orcish arrow from his orcish bow, but an orc polymorphed into a mountain centaur will get the bonus.

The actual number of missiles fired is d(multishot)—that is, between 1 and your multishot counter, inclusive—but no higher than the number of missiles in the stack.

You may cap the number of missiles fired or thrown with a numeric prefix such as "1fh" in vi-mode or "n1f4" otherwise to fire one missile to the left. You will fire the lesser of the number of missiles you chose and the number you would otherwise have fired; in other words, this will not allow you to fire more missiles, only fewer.

Eligible missiles

You can fire or throw multiple:

• any kind of daggers
• darts
• shuriken
• any kind of stones, gems, or pieces of worthless glass
• crossbow bolts
• any kind of arrows
• any kind of spears, including javelins
• boomerangs
• worm teeth, knives, stilletoes, scalpels, or even crysknives

You can fire multiple stones/gems/glass, crossbow bolts or arrows only if you are wielding the appropriate launcher.

Throwing with t and firing with f are equivalent, except that t does not trigger the autoquiver option. Throwing gold pieces is an exception; you can throw t an arbitrary amount, but fire f only one piece. The gold will always miss monsters, but has a chance of angering priests and shopkeepers. (This does not break atheist conduct.) Throwing gold down dark corridors can substitute for a way to detect monsters.

Monsters

For monsters, the multishot calculation is:

• +1 if the monster is a lord (see below)
• +2 if the monster is a prince (see below)
• +1 if the monster is a player monster
• +1 if the missiles are non-cursed elven arrows
• +1 if the missiles are any type of arrows and being launched from a non-cursed elven bow
• If the launcher matches the missiles and is non-negatively enchanted, add ¹⁄₃ of the launcher's enchantment, rounded down.

At this point, the multishot counter is set to a random value between 1 and itself, inclusive.

• Add the race and role bonuses for players, as above.
  • An orc is any monster represented by o for this purpose.
• +1 if the monster is a Ninja throwing darts or shuriken firing or ya from a yumi

The terms "lord" and "prince" refer to the M2_LORD and M2_PRINCE flags in monst.c, represented by "is a lord to its kind" or "is an overlord to its kind" on the monster's wiki page. Player monsters are neither lords nor princes.

SLASH'EM

SLASH'EM calculates multishot differently, giving additional bonuses for elven bows, elven arrows, and enchanted launchers. The SLASH'EM multishot calculation is:

• Base of 1
• +1 if you are Skilled or higher at your weapon
• +1 if you are Expert at your weapon
• +1 for your racial bonus, if you are:
  • an elf firing an elven arrow from an elven bow
  • an orc firing an orcish arrow from an orcish bow
• +1 for your role bonus, if you are:
  • a Samurai firing ya from a yumi
  • a Rogue throwing daggers (of any variety)
  • a Ranger with any missile weapon
• 33% of +1 if you are firing with a non-cursed elven bow
• 33% of +1 if you are firing non-cursed elven arrows
• ¹⁄₃ of enchantment of launcher (bow, crossbow, sling), rounded to the nearest integer, thus:
  • +0 for +0 or +1 launcher
  • +1 for +2 to +4 launcher
  • +2 for +5 to +7 launcher
  • +3 for +8 to +10 launcher, etc.
• reduced to 1 if you are confused, stunned, or the missile requires a launcher which you aren't wielding

Given that elven Rangers start out with a +2 elven bow and elven arrows, an elven ranger will shoot d6 arrows ¹⁄₉ of the time, d5 arrows ⁴⁄₉ of the time, and d4 arrows ⁴⁄₉ of the time, for an average of just below 3 arrows per turn, making them a potent choice in SLASH'EM's challenging early game. There is no multishot bonus for drow firing dark elven arrows from a dark elven bow.

Finally, firearms in SLASH'EM are a special case with a complex rate of fire calculation based on type of firearm and skill level of the user.

UnNetHack

UnNetHack grants +1 to the multishot counter when firing arrows from the Longbow of Diana.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.1. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-361}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.