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

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.

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.

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.

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).