Multishot

Multishot refers to the ability to sometimes throw or fire more than one projectile of certain types in a single move.

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

• +1 if you are Skilled
• +1 if you are Expert at your weapon (cumulative with Skilled)
• +1 for your racial bonus, if you are:
  • an elf firing elven arrows from an elven bow
  • an orc firing orcish arrows from an orcish bow
  • in SporkHack, a gnome firing bolts from a crossbow
• +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
  • in SporkHack, a Caveman firing rocks or gems from a sling
• reduced to 1 if you are confused, stunned, or the missile requires a launcher which you aren't wielding

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), or 1 to 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, (i.e. this will not allow you to fire more missiles, only fewer).

You can fire or throw multiple:

• daggers
• darts
• shuriken
• stones / gems / pieces of worthless glass
• crossbow bolts
• arrows

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

You cannot fire or throw multiple:

• spears
• javelins
• boomerangs
• knives
• any other weapon or object

This makes these weapons less attractive for ranged combat.

Throwing, with t, and firing, with f, are equivalent, except that t does not trigger the autoquiver option.

Throwing gold 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.

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/+1 launcher
  • +1 for +2/+3/+4 launcher
  • +2 for +5/+6/+7 launcher
  • +3 for +8/+9/+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. Note that 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.

References

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

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.