User:Phol ende wodan/YANI/IRC archive

This page is an archive of YANIs. Feel free to use and implement them as you see fit.

My YANIs

Spells

• Reduce level of turn undead to 2 or 3.
• Add lightning as level 5 attack spell, at Unskilled and Basic has the same effect as a wand of lightning, at Skilled and Expert explodes on its first target
• Spell of repair: level 3 matter spell. If wielded weapon is eroded, fixes its erosion. Otherwise, target a random piece of worn armor and fix any erosion it has. At Unskilled, the erosion will only be repaired 1 level at a time; at Basic, 2 levels; at Skilled, 3 levels; and at Expert (maybe) the item will be erodeproofed.
• Cure blindness is a pretty useless spell, and should probably be removed or its effects folded into some other spell like extra healing or clairvoyance. Alternatively, if see invisible is nerfed so that it cannot be granted permanently, this could be folded into a "spell of true sight", which grants temporary see invisible as well as curing blindness and blocking (but not curing) hallucinations like Grayswandir's wield effect.
• Spell of shove: level 4 or 5 escape spell. At Unskilled and Basic, it fires a beam that pushes the first monster it hits back one space (as if receiving a staggering blow, but doing no damage); at Skilled and Expert, it fires a shorter-range beam in all eight directions. Seems like it could be pretty fun, what with shoving monsters into moats to drown them and things like that.
• The spell of clairvoyance grants a few hundred turns of intrinsic clairvoyance when cast at Skilled. This makes it useful for Samurai in particular.

Talismans

Talismans are slotless amulet-class objects that can be "activated" for their effect, which expires after several thousand turns. Once a talisman runs out, it either turns into a non-magical talisman (which cannot be restored to its magical state) or disintegrates, I'm not sure which. Once activated, they cannot be switched off to conserve their lifetime. They can, however, be charged to extend their life by a few hundred turns while activated. There is no limit to the number of talismans a player can have active at once.

Talisman types include:

• Magic resistance
• Flying
• HP regeneration (hungerless)
• Power regeneration
• Astral vision
• Drain resistance
• Luck
• Warding (magic cancellation)
• Clairvoyance

Something would probably have to be done so an ascension-ready player can't fire up a bunch of talismans at once before entering the Planes or Moloch's Sanctum.

Artifacts

• New artifact dagger "The Barrow-blade of Cardolan": has some flat bonuses, some additional bonuses versus undead, and instakills all W, ghosts, and shades. It is either lawful or unaligned. Could also be a short sword, since there are currently no artifact short swords, but for flavor it should be a dagger.
• When the player kills a giant spider with an elven dagger and Sting has not yet been created, the dagger is converted into Sting automatically. Sting is made of rustproof steel, instead of wood (this would be tricky to do because of base items; you would still want to be able to create it by naming an elven dagger, but Sting in the lore is made of steel or at least metal, not wood). Sting has bonuses versus spiders, in addition to its bonuses against orcs.
• Add a non-weapon non-quest artifact that is a guaranteed first sacrifice gift for Monks.

User interface or other technical things

• The xlogfile shows which turn a conduct was first broken on, rather than compacting all conducts into a bitmask
• Option to bring up the prompt to type-name an item any time it would normally be prompted, even if the object is already type-named. The example given is that if you price-id an object and then later see a monster use it, you then have the option to add this new information immediately.
• The scroll of remove curse auto-identifies if it removes a visible curse from one or more objects (i.e. the player can compare his inventory before and after reading it and see that the curse is gone).
• When the player is prompted to rename an object or a level that already has a name and submits an empty string, ask the player for confirmation to remove that name entirely: "Remove old name? [yn] (n)"

New monsters and monster behavior

• Rat king (not the SLASH'EM unique Rat King), based on the real-life rat king. It is a purple r, not much faster than a rock mole, but has several bite attacks (possibly scaling the amount by monster level). Each bite has a small chance of conferring disease. Its level corresponds to the number of entangled rats, so a slashing attack could sometimes cut off one rat, which then appears on the floor as a new rat, and make the rat king lose a level.
• Aggravate monster from a ring (and only from that) gives pets a special behavior: as they are aggravated, they will attack enemies with no regard to their current HP or the enemy's level, basically ignoring the checks that exist.
• Green slimes have an engulfing attack that guarantees to start the sliming process (assuming the player isn't unchanging, on fire, etc).
• New demon lord who spellcasts, favoring touch of death and summon nasties. However, the only thing it summons and gates in are incubi and succubi.
• Small mimics (but not large or giant ones) can mimic the floor, looking like nothing in the same way a trapper or lurker above does.
• Wandering hostile priests of Moloch occasionally generate in Gehennom.
• Hostile conflict angels don't appear on the Astral Plane any longer, but A and @ are now immune to conflict on the Astral Plane.

Additions to the list of items that certain monsters might death-drop:

• Adult female dragons drop eggs (more so than the usual oviparous drop odds)
• Killer bees occasionally drop lumps of royal jelly

Short form

• Breaking an amber stone (e.g. when fired from a sling and hitting a monster) has a chance to release a random a.
• Artifactless conduct: increment whenever an artifact enters the player's inventory (since the player never has to pick up an artifact).
• Petless conduct: increment when the player starts with a pet or tames a monster. Can be accidentally broken by the taming effect of a magic trap; this bothers me. One solution is to have magic traps not tame if the player's pettype is 0, but I don't like that mixing of options and gameplay. In any case, polyselfless is another example of a conduct that can be broken accidentally and is far more likely.
• Applying a blessed whistle (either type) will unparalyze pets in range.
• The player gets hunger-free regeneration while asleep and wearing an amulet of restful sleep.
• When the hero #sits in a corner while wearing a dunce cap, give YAFM and exercise wisdom.
• When breaking an identified wand of nothing, give YAFM: "Predictably, nothing happens."
• At some skill level (Skilled or Expert or maybe even Master) martial arts gives you two attacks.
• If your legs are unwounded and free, Skilled or better martial arts has a chance of dealing a kick instead of a punch. This has a small to-hit penalty but has better damage. Attacking with the F command will always punch.
• Asmodeus and Baalzebub have a chance of returning hostile to their levels (not a certainty; if they always came back there'd be no reason not to kill them off) when the player is on the way back up with the Amulet. Flavor-wise, this is because the player only paid for safe passage down, and now the player has their coveted Amulet.
• Similar to object properties, a small fraction of wearable items are generated with a "trendy" attribute, which is not hidden from the player. Trendy items have an increased base price and add one charisma when worn.
• Reading a blessed scroll of fire allows you to select a spot to center the blast of fire, similar to the selection for a scroll of stinking cloud or the advanced fireball spell. The damage of this scroll is also increased somewhat from what it is now, about four times the current damage, to make it worthwhile to use.
• New shop type "thrift shop". Contains items priced at a steep discount but which aren't very useful on their own. Examples include negatively enchanted or eroded (not necessarily cursed) weapons and armor, blank scrolls, magical tools with zero or one charges left.
• Whenever a diluted potion of acid would be created (i.e. by wishing or polypiling) it immediately explodes in an alchemic blast.
• Objects thrown at cloaked or hidden monsters pass right through the square as if no monster is on the square.
• Rangers have a role bonus which decreases the overall probability a projectile will break.
• New container trap effect, a loud alarm that wakes nearby monsters. (Exploding chests already wake nearby monsters, but the chance of it happening is miniscule unless your Luck is below -7; this was proposed as one of the common effects even at high Luck.)
• The Platinum Yendorian Express Card is made out of literal platinum instead of plastic.
• Flip the blessed and cursed effects of the scroll of create monster, with the argument that if beatitude influences an object's effects at all, blessing should amplify them and cursing should reduce them. However, consistency along these lines conflicts somewhat with the current behavior of objects, which is that blessing generally always gives the player a better effect and cursing gives them a worse one. The create monster scroll is in a weird place because both its blessed and cursed effects could be considered beneficial in different contexts.
• A blessed scroll of destroy armor should allow the player to select which piece of armor to destroy. If they decline to choose, it selects a random piece of armor like the uncursed scroll.
• Tins of "pureed monster" or "soup made from monster" do not break foodless conduct. Possibly change tin behavior so the preparation method can be discerned before eating it, or just display the preparation when the tin is opened, e.g. "You succeed in opening the tin. It contains a puree that smells like newts. Eat it?" This doesn't have to reveal every preparation method, so that greasy fried food remains a danger.
• You can scare off the Vault guard by telling him your name is one of the demon lords. This has the same effect as if you couldn't say anything, so you're still trapped in the vault after he flees. -1 alignment penalty for lawful lying still applies.
• Add "candelabrum" as a new randomly generated tool. It can hold 3 candles and gives a light radius of 2 with one candle, 3 with two candles, and 4 with three candles. The Candelabrum of Invocation's unidentified description is now "ornate candelabrum".
• When an egg gets very, very old, it cracks and releases a small stinking cloud. If it happens to be carried by the player, the cloud centers on the player. When it is within 100 turns of cracking, the player can throw it and it will release the stinking cloud wherever it shatters.
• Rolling boulder trap hit chance and damage is based on dexterity and not AC, for how much you can jump out of the way. Only high dexterity will allow you to dodge the boulder entirely.
• When killed by a monster that brings you back as something else (zombie, vampire, green slime), you don't die; you continue playing in that form with permanent intrinsic unchanging. This might make it actually beneficial to get killed by a vampire.
• Brass knuckles: gauntlet-slot armor, increases bare hands and martial arts damage

YANIs from IRC

This section is an attempt to list YANIs that come up on several NetHack-related IRC channels, so they don't end up ignored and forgotten.

Attribution will be listed whenever possible. I make no claim to any of the ideas in this section. Feel free to add any other YANIs from IRC to this page.

How these are retrieved: I log the #nethack, #nethack-dev, and #hardfought channels, and perhaps also some variant channels in the future. (If people are discussing YANIs on channels not listed here, let me know!) The logs are searched for strings like "yani", "yet another", and "feature request", with some surrounding context.

Idea	Variant(s)	Source
Monks, or anyone skilled in martial arts, can kick weapons out of an enemy's hand		Tarmunora, NeroOneTrueKing
Dragon scales can be enchanted into dragonhide gear that is not scale mail	GruntHack	Demo
The Watch start with a small amount of gold, and will throw it at a player of the opposite gender while the player is disrobing		Demo, Grasshopper
Engraving with Fire Brand burns the engraving as a wand of fire does.		Tarmunora
New headstone messages: I'll just hit this thing a couple more times, it'll die. I don't need to unburden myself, they're only soldiers, I've been killing soldiers, it'll be fine. Maybe if I press this key a bit harder I'll hit for more damage next time.		Chris, jonadab, Grasshopper
Blank spellbooks in flooded libraries generate with the "number of times read" counter full, so they can't be polypiled into readable books.	dNetHack	NeroOneTrueKing
Add a high level monster spell "raise dead", which resurrects nearby corpses as hostile monsters.		Grasshopper
When attacking into a pit or falling while fumbling and wielding a pointy weapon, you have a chance to fall on your weapon.		bezaban
Boots of shock resistance, which have a thick rubber sole to prevent you from being grounded		Grasshopper
Improved alchemy in general and an alchemist role		Demo
Scroll of detect magic shows magic fountains on the level as well as magical items. Fountains discovered this way are then displayed as "magic fountain" when near or farlooked.	GruntHack	aosdict
New monster: green cube, which combines the abilities of a green slime and gelatinous cube: both sliming and paralysis.		Grasshopper
Merge the P and b monster classes, on the grounds that puddings and blobs are both classes of amorphous monsters that are sparsely populated. This was followed by a long discussion with several people about monster class rearrangement in NetHack Fourk.		jonadab, Grasshopper, bug_sniper, aosdict, Tarmunora, FIQ
Necromancer patch / necromancer class added to dNetHack, including: creating skeleton armies, binding the undead via rituals similar to the Binder, launching rocks that contain small petrified animals that transform into undead animals, bone chains, encrusting undead minions with different jewels to grant them different powers	dNetHack	introsp3ctive, Demo
Opening a cursed bag of holding does not tell you what has disappeared, or it just says "Things have disappeared from the bag!" without describing them		AmyBSOD
Role whose quest artifact's base item is a helm of opposite alignment. (This is apparently in Slash'EM Extended, but so are probably half the things on this list and I'm not going to bother cross-checking everything.)		jonadab
Conflict affects things in a radius. The ring of conflict is a chargeable item, affecting this radius.		jonadab
Monster status "discord", which causes a monster to be seen as a target and be attacked by other enemies. On the player, discord is the same as wielding Stormbringer. Discord is available through the spellbook of discord.	Fourk	jonadab
Applying a stethoscope tells the target's gender, and the hunger status of pets.		Grasshopper
Easter eggs as an actual item, in addition to monster and chicken eggs.		Grasshopper
The Bell of Opening is carried by your quest leader, who gives it to you when you return to them with the quest artifact. This solves the problem of making a game unwinnable by permanently changing alignment, since you can also get it by killing the quest leader.		jonadab, Grasshopper
Leprechauns steal anything made of gold, in addition to plain gold pieces. (In vanilla, the only gold item is the gold ring, but variants have other gold items.)		FIQ
Add rumors to FIQHack warning about dragons, which can be fairly dangerous.	FIQHack	rumflump
Allow wishing for non-objects: Time: decreases the turn count a bit Luck: increases Luck by 1 point Intrinsics: gives you any intrinsic (that you can actually get in your normal form. Can't wish for intrinsic reflection, drain resistance, etc. Intrinsics normally only possible by eating jewelry are not decided.) Attributes: increases whichever attribute. Maybe a d4 or d5 increase so it's not inferior to a blessed potion of gain ability. World peace or just Peace: pacifies monsters on the level, subject to normal resistances Polymorph: you polymorph Friends: same effect as a successful cast of create familiar Terrain features: already wishable in wizard mode, the justification is "If the player wants to wish for lava, why not let them have lava?" Happiness: gives you a blessed potion of booze		aosdict, AmyBSOD
More acid resistance sources in FIQHack, to balance yellow dragons' exploding acid breath. Possibly a ring of acid resistance.	FIQHack	ais523, FIQ
Asmodeus should wield an artifact called the Ruby Rod.	dNetHack	zombifier
Pets on the Astral Plane always go with you when you ascend, regardless of whether they're adjacent or leashed to you.		AmyBSOD
Roditaur: new humanoid monster that has an oversized rat's head and four arms. Has a powerful bite attack and four weapon attacks.	SLASH'EM Extended	jonadab
Add "numeric prefix" as a hallucinatory monster.		ChrisE
Gehennom should be half as long, 10-12 levels, and should be mostly or all unique levels that are randomly chosen from a larger set		Duam
Oilskin cloaks should be MC3 instead of MC2.		jmr
Dragon eggs can be used as special types of thrown missiles. Black dragon eggs specifically have a disintegration effect.		Wooble
Level sounds on every level with a branch stairs. For spoiled players, the main benefit of this is to help locate the stairs to Vlad's Tower.		aosdict, jonadab
Chicken eggs identify as such when you formally ID them, and all eggs of a known type stay identified for the rest of the game.		Grasshopper, jonadab
Gauntlets and boots of reflection		Tangles
Water walking boots protect inventory from water and protect against drowning attacks		jonadab
The timeouts for intrinsic invisibility and see invisible from eating a stalker corpse should be very long.	SporkHack	jonadab
See invisible operates on a scale that determines what level of invisible monsters the player is allowed to see. (A low-level monster that drinks a potion of invisibility should be visible even with weak see invisible, an arch-lich casting disappear should require very strong see invisible.)		NeroOneTrueKing
Asmodeus and Baalzebub demand gold proportional to their difficulty or monster level, not the player's wallet. Possibly, if the player does not pay, they remain on the downstairs and will not move until the player has paid, which allows the player to return with the requisite amount of gold.		jonadab, zombifier
Several small spellbook additions: The thick spellbook weighs more than other kinds. The thin spellbook weighs less. Reading a dusty spellbook has a chance of making you sneeze (if you are in a form with a nose), which wakes up monsters. Reading a silvery spellbook as a silver-hater makes you "not able to handle" the book and drop it		aosdict, raisse
Instead of pushing pets out of the way as they do other monsters, the Riders can trample over pets, instakilling them.		AmyBSOD
Net gnomes - wield tridents and have a sticky attack (the net), which causes subsequent attacks to hit automatically		Grasshopper
Players can polymorph dungeon features by zapping a polymorph beam down at it, with some special cases: Headstones can be created by polymorph and are more likely than other outcomes, but cannot be polymorphed into anything else. Trying to do so only polymorphs its epitaph. Polymorphing an altar angers that altar's god and any attendant priest since you effectively destroyed their altar Fountains either cannot polymorph into anything besides headstones or have a very limited chance of becoming something else; this is to prevent the player from being able to generate a bunch of thrones from fountains.		raisse, aosdict, jonadab, AmyBSOD
You can wear an empty bag over your head to blind yourself, but this sets charisma to 6.		Grasshopper
When invisibility is about to time out, give the player a warning message "You thought you saw yourself for a moment" ("You seem to unfade for a moment" if you can see invisible, "You feel introspective for a moment" if hallucinating.		raisse, aosdict

YASI list

Some ideas are not intended to be taken seriously. But they might still find some use if listed here.

Silly Idea	Variant	Source
New "farmer" role: starts with seeds and a spade, has other tools available like sickles and scythes.		jonadab
Opening a cursed bag of holding does not destroy the items, but it redistributes them around the level, or perhaps the entire dungeon.		Grasshopper, AmyBSOD
Dropping a ring of polymorph control down a sink, then a ring of polymorph, turns the sink into a regularly erupting geyser.		FIQ
The Mazes of Menace are located on the moon Titan, to mess with day/night and moon phases.		rumflump
Donkeys that carry around the player's loot. If you kick a pet donkey, you get the YAFM "You kick your own ass!"		jonathanhanes, Grasshopper
Playable race that doesn't have teeth and can't eat anything unless polymorphed into something that can.		aosdict
New scroll label CONULATION (apparently it is CONGRATULATIONS minus GRATS?)		aosdict
Potion of un-dilution. Does nothing when quaffed or thrown. Only effect is that when you dip a diluted stack of potions into it, they become undiluted.		aosdict
Trap which pushes the player one level higher, like a potion of gain level.		aosdict
Oilskin sack of cancellation, which cancels items that you put into it.		AmyBSOD
Priest players, if they are at XL 30 (with the "High Priest(ess)" rank title), can kill their own high priest and take over, becoming the new high priest.		aosdict
If you genocide @, you only die if you have showrace turned off so your symbol is a @. If you have showrace turned on, you live, but if you ever turn it off again that game, you die.		Wooble