Polymorph

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Polymorph refers to the magic that changes one creature into a different species, or changes an object to another object of the same type. A polymorph that affects you or a monster does not polymorph items carried in your or its inventory, although see below for effects on armor. Shapeshifters have a similar but slightly different power.

Several things can polymorph you, monsters, or objects:

• ring of polymorph
• spellbook of polymorph
• wand of polymorph
• polymorph trap
• potion of polymorph
• eating the corpse of a chameleon

→ Polypiling is the practice of aiming polymorph at a pile of junk, hoping to produce better or rare items.
→ Polymerge combines stacks of items into golems.

When a creature is wearing body armor, a shirt and/or a cloak, and becomes something LARGE or bigger, a non-humanoid MEDIUM or bigger, or a winged gargoyle or marilith (wings and extra arms don't fit), the armor will burst apart. When this happens to a monster, a distinctive sound results, which may warn you that a polymorph trap is present on the level. When a creature becomes too small for its armor, the armor falls to the floor, also creating a distinctive noise. An exception is when you are wearing a dragon mail (such as silver dragon scale mail) and get polymorphed into a dragon (in this case, a silver dragon) where your armor will "merge" with the dragon and not be destroyed, though the cloak and shirt will still be.

Monster versus adventurer polymorphs

NetHack treats the situation differently depending on whether you (as the adventurer) or a monster polymorphs.

When a monster polymorphs, the change is permanent. For example, if you change your pet dog into a dragon, it will never become a dog again (except by chance from a later polymorph).

If you polymorph, the change is temporary; you will eventually return to your old form. The polymorph will time out. If your health reaches zero while polymorphed, you will also return to your old form instead of dying.

An interesting case of this is lycanthropy. If you have this condition, you will sometimes polymorph into a canine (a jackal, for example). There is also a monster in the game called a werejackal, which in its human form will also sometimes become a jackal. As the jackal, either you or the monster can summon allied jackals as help. (If you summon them, then you keep the jackals as pets.) The similarity ends when as the jackal, you or the monster lose all of your health. You will become your normal race again, while the monster will die without transforming back into a human.

SLASH'EM changes the behavior from vanilla NetHack. In SLASH'EM, monster polymorphs behave more like player polymorphs in that monsters who are killed while polymorphed will revert to their original form. Polymorphed items will also return to their original forms after a certain amount of time.

SLASH'EM

SLASH'EM features a new monster, the genetic engineer, whose attack polymorphs you.

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

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