Peaceful
Peaceful monsters are those that do not attack you. They can be attacked, but only with a penalty to your alignment. An attacked peaceful monster also becomes hostile: "The dwarf gets angry!". This is acceptable for late game characters, but dangerous for low level characters with low alignment. Pets do not become hostile even if accidentally or purposefully attacked by the player.
Pets can and will attack peaceful monsters with no penalty to the player, other than the chance of the pet being killed.
Note that attacking monsters with spells or missiles does not result in a yes/no prompt, as melee does; the missile will strike whatever is in its path. Before casting spells or firing missiles, it is sometimes advisable to check the status of a monster with the / or the ; key. This is only recommended for some monsters; for example, orcs will often be peaceful towards orcish player characters, and so should be checked, while others, such as rothes, are always generated hostile. Attacking monsters with polearms also does not ask for confirmation, although this appears to be bug C343-305 ("Attacking with an applied polearm ignores the 'confirm' option.")
Also note that the artifact sword Stormbringer will cause you to attack peaceful monsters without offering a yes/no prompt. You receive the message, "Your bloodthirsty blade attacks!" This can be quite dangerous if you blunder into a monster such as a priest or shopkeeper, so it is advisable to wield a different weapon while moving in an area with peaceful monsters.
See Also
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 Information on this page may be out of date.
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