User:Chris/dNetHack/Rule Changes

Race changes

Human

• Accelerated skill slots -- humans get 1.5x the amount of skill slots compared to other races

Gnome

• Low-light vision -- light radius is doubled
• Gnomish racial equipment added
  • all gnomes start with gnomish pointy hats
  • gnomes begin with an aklys instead of bullwhips or clubs
  • gnomes begin with crossbows instead of bows
• Gnomes get an extra damage +1x weapon damage with crossbows

Elf

• Major low-light vision -- light radius is tripled
• No longer has infravision
• Can still use Elbereth at its' full potential (like in vanilla)

Vampire

Based heavily on the Vampire Patch, with the following changes

• Gets new perks as they level up -- cold resistance and halved nutrition consumption at level 10, polymorph control at level 21
• Can see any monster with blood despite being blind or monster is invisible

Crowning

• You can no longer become crowned before finishing your role quest.
  • In order to be formally acknowledged as having completed the quest, you must speak to your quest leader while carrying the quest artifact.
• a luckstone is now also required.

Changes to alignment record

• Many transgressions now reduce your maximum alignment record in addition to reducing your current record.
• The hod sephirah may appear to attack characters who earn many such reductions.

Ability scores

• Score drop from abuse can no longer be cured with a unicorn horn. Makes sustain ability more useful, coupled with some new potential nasty stuff in Gehennom.
• Constitution and Wisdom changes apply HP/Pw changes that they would have given for level ups retroactively, discouraging drain for gain and making high bonuses more effective lategame
• Constitution/Wisdom co-relation with HP/Pw gains at level ups slightly changed -- you get +4 bonus HP at 19-20, +5 at 21-22, +6 at 23-24, +7 at 25 con. You get +N bonus Pw from level up where N is Wis/4
• Dexterity contributes to AC. The formula is (score-11)/2.
  • As a rule, dex bonuses are not cumulative with body armor base AC, but penalties are.
    • Some body armors allow up to 1/2 of the dex bonus to contribute to AC.
      • Specifically: leather armor, studded leather armor, chain mail, scale mail, banded mail, and bronze plate mail.
    • Dex bonuses are fully cumulative with leather jackets and mithril coats.
• characters with a natural strength limit of 19+ will have to go through the stages of 18/01 to 18/** before moving higher.

Eating Corpses

• Changed how gaining intrinsic resistances from food works
  • You have a shot at all resistances a corpse can give.
  • Fire, Cold, Shock, Sleep, Acid, Displacement, Drain resistances time out.
    • (Resistances received from leveling up and from crowning do not time out).
  • Use the self-examination command (Ctrl-X) to receive clues about your current resistances.

Tweaked skills

• Expert gives +5 to-hit and +5 damage (-2 to hit and +2 damage for twoweapon fighting)
• Expert riding gives +2 to-hit and +5 damage
  • In vanilla, high skill levels give diminishing returns rather than escalating bonuses.
• Crossbows now function differently. High crossbow skill does not grant multiple shots, instead it increases the damage dealt by a single crossbow bolt.
  • at basic or lower, does 1x(bolt+enchantment) damage.
  • at skilled, 2x(bolt+enchantment) damage.
  • at expert, 3x (bolt+enchantment) damage.
  • at all skill levels, adds 3x the damage bonus from skill (-5 restricted, -2 unskilled, +0 at basic, +2 at skilled and +5 at expert)
  • This extra damage is precision based, and so does not apply against amorphous, stationary, or incorporeal monsters; which are assumed to lack discernible weak-points.

Dungeon features

Iron bars

• Break when struck by force bolt spells or wands of striking.
• Can be eaten by some monsters (Malcolm Ryan).

Trees

• Chopping down a tree no longer produces fruit.

Bugs/exploits removed

• Fixed Astral Call bug (based on Patric Muller's patch)
• Fixed Artifact ID bug. Or removed that feature.

Quest artifacts

• Can no longer be wished for by ANY class
• Only your quest nemesis will deliberately steal your quest artifact, other monsters may steal the amulet and invocation items.
  • The QA is therefore a much more dependable source of extrinsics.

Traps

• Can be cancelled (Malcolm Ryan, tweaked). Zapping a wand of cancellation downwards while standing on a magical trap will disarm it. This applies to magic traps, teleporters, level telporters, and polymorph traps. The original patch also included magic portals, dnethack removes this aspect.

• Breaking certain wands can create traps (adapted from UnNetHack)

Hallucination

• Now affects how objects are seen as well, until you pick it up (James).

Misc

• quaffing potions of booze now permanently slightly lowers the chance of moving in the wrong direction when confused or stunned (three potions per XP level). Dwarves outside the mines now carry potions of booze.
• switching between primary and secondary hand no longer takes time.