Attribute

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An attribute shows some capability of the player. Alternatively, "attribute" may refer to properties divined through enlightenment or death.

There are six basic attributes, as in Dungeons & Dragons. Most of a player's attributes can be increased by exercising them.

Strength

Main article: Strength

Strength corresponds to the ability to have more weight in your inventory. Also, the stronger you are, the more damage you do in melee combat, and the farther you can throw objects.

Dexterity

Main article: Dexterity

Dexterity has a multitude of effects, of which the most significant is probably that it affects your chance of hitting monsters, whether in melee combat or with a missile or spell.

Constitution

Main article: Constitution

Having a high constitution increases your healing rate and the number of HP you gain when levelling up and allows you to carry more weight in your inventory.

Intelligence

Intelligence is useful for reading spellbooks, for spellcasting (unless you are a Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest or Valkyrie, in which case it is wisdom that affects your chances of successfully casting a spell) and for encounters with foocubi. Mind flayers have a brain-eating attack that can drain your intelligence; if you are hit by a successful brain-eating attack when your base intelligence is already 3, you die of brainlessness.

Intelligence cannot be exercised but can be increased by drinking a blessed potion of enlightenment or a potion of gain ability. It can also be increased by wearing a helm of brilliance. If you eat a mind flayer corpse, there is a 50% chance your intelligence will be increased by one point (you will get the message "For some reason, that tasted bland." if your intelligence is already at maximum.)

UnNetHack adds the ability to exercise intelligence by fighting a weeping angel's mental reflection (requires that the player does not have reflection)[1].

Wisdom

Main article: Wisdom

A Healer, Knight, Monk, Priest or Valkyrie requires wisdom to cast spells. Wisdom is not particularly important to other classes, though it affects how fast your power regenerates (hence is fairly important for wizards) and how much power you gain when levelling up.

Charisma

Charisma is mostly useful for obtaining better prices at shops. It also helps with foocubus encounters, both by increasing the chance of a positive result and by giving more control over whether they remove your armor.

Charisma is a difficult stat to increase, as it cannot be exercised. It can be extrinsically increased by wearing a charged ring of adornment or intrinsically boosted by successfully eating one in a valid polymorphed form. You can also gain charisma by triggering a magic trap, so some players deliberately trigger magic traps until they explode. However, this can be dangerous—many monsters will be summoned, and the towers of flame will reduce your maximum HP unless you have fire resistance. Making sure your potion of gain ability is blessed before quaffing it is probably the easiest and safest way to increase this stat to maximum.

Charisma Price
3–5 ×2
6–7 ×1.5
8–10 ×1.33
11–15 ×1
16–17 ×0.75
18 ×0.67
19–25 ×0.5

Reference: shk.c, line 1910.

Starting attributes

The player's starting attributes depend on the class as follows:[2]

Class Strength Intelligence Wisdom Dexterity Constitution Charisma Remaining
Archeologist 7\20% 10\20% 10\20% 7\10% 7\20% 7\10% 27
Barbarian 16\30% 7\6% 7\7% 15\20% 16\30% 6\7% 8
Caveman 10\30% 7\6% 7\7% 7\20% 8\30% 6\7% 30
Healer 7\15% 7\20% 13\20% 7\15% 11\25% 16\5% 14
Knight 13\30% 7\15% 14\15% 8\10% 10\20% 17\10% 6
Monk 10\25% 7\10% 8\20% 8\20% 7\15% 7\10% 28
Priest 7\15% 7\10% 10\30% 7\15% 7\20% 7\10% 30
Ranger 13\30% 13\10% 13\10% 9\20% 13\20% 7\10% 7
Rogue 7\20% 7\10% 7\10% 10\30% 7\20% 6\10% 31
Samurai 10\30% 8\10% 7\8% 10\30% 17\14% 6\8% 17
Tourist 7\15% 10\10% 6\10% 7\15% 7\30% 10\20% 28
Valkyrie 10\30% 7\6% 7\7% 7\20% 10\30% 7\7% 27
Wizard 7\10% 10\30% 7\10% 7\20% 7\20% 7\10% 30

First, points are distributed so that the player receives, as a minimum, the number indicated before the backslash. This is always out of a pool of 75 points, and the Remaining column contains the amount of leftover points from this step.

Next, the remaining points are distributed randomly according to the percentage after the backslash. If an attribute is chosen that would raise it above the player's racial maximum, it will try 99 more times to choose a different attribute to raise. If it fails to pick an attribute on all 100 attempts, it will abort this step and any remaining points will be lost.[3]

Third, each attribute has a 5% probability of having a random number from −2 to +4 added to it [4]. These respect racial maximums.

Finally, strength will, if necessary, be increased until the player is unencumbered by their starting inventory. If this is not enough, constitution will be increased similarly.

Maximum attributes

You can increase strength, dexterity, constitution and wisdom through exercise, and adjust all six stats through other means such as potions of gain ability. Some magic items, like the helm of brilliance, gauntlets of power and gauntlets of dexterity, allow you to exceed these maximums. In fact, such items are common in ascension kits.

The maximum stats for each race are:[5]

Race Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom Charisma
Human 18/** 18 18 18 18 18
Elf 18 18 16 20 20 18
Dwarf 18/** 20 20 16 16 16
Gnome 18/50 18 18 19 18 18
Orc 18/50 18 18 16 16 16

Variants

NetHack brass

NetHack brass implements different maximum attributes per role. Find your maximum attributes by looking for your role in the next table, then applying the racial modifiers.For example, humans have +2 to strength. All heroes have a minimum of 3 for each attribute. The entries with the exclamation marks are the spellcasting stats for each role.

Role Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom Charisma
Archeologist 16 10 17 19! 18 19
Barbarian 18/** 18 20 12! 16 10
Caveman 18/** 18 20 14! 16 15
Healer 12 19 19 19 19! 18
Knight 18/50 13 18 17 19! 19
Monk 10 20 20 18 20! 18
Priest 18 15 18 17 20! 18
Ranger 17 21 13 19! 16 19
Rogue 18 20 17 17! 17 16
Samurai 18/50 20 19 15! 15 15
Tourist 17 15 18 19! 19 19
Valkyrie 18/** 16 20 12 17! 16
Wizard 10 19 16 20! 20 18

Reference: src/role.c in NetHack brass 040923.

Racial modifiers

To find your maximum attributes in NetHack brass, after finding your role in the above table, you must apply the racial modifiers of the below table. These racial modifiers apply only to the maximum attributes of each player, not the initial attributes.

An elven Ranger of NetHack brass, for example, can reach 19+1 = 20 in charisma by increasing charisma one more time after a human Ranger would have maxed at 19.

For strength modifiers only, a +1 raises 18 to 18/50, while a +2 raises 18 to 18/** or 17 to 18/50.

Race Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom Charisma
Human +2 0 0 0 0 0
Elf 0 0 −2 +2 +2 +1
Dwarf +2 +2 +2 −2 −2 −2
Gnome +1 0 0 +1 0 0
Orc +2 0 0 −2 −2 −3

Wizard mode

The wizard mode of NetHack brass supplies the #rrllududab extended command, a code that gives your maximum attributes to you, a reference to the Konami code.

SLASH'EM

Strength

SLASH'EM, mainly due to the changed behaviour of the gauntlets of power, handles strength between 18/** and 25 differently than vanilla NetHack.

strength to-hit damage
3–5 −2 −1
6–7 −1 0
8–15 0 0
16 0 +1
17 +1 +1
18 +1 +2
18/01–18/99 +1 +3
18/** +2 +4
19 +2 +5
20 +3 +6
21 +3 +7
22 +4 +8
23 +4 +9
24 +5 +10
25 +5 +11

Reference: weapon.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 900.

Dexterity

Dexterity now has an impact on AC, and higher Dexterity provides bonuses to AC.

dexterity AC
3< +3
4–5 +2
6–7 +1
8–14 0
15 −1
16 −2
17 −3
18 −4
19 −5
20–21 −6
22–23 −7
>23 −8

FIQHack

In FIQHack, strength over 18 is no longer considered a special attribute, and "exceptional strength" of 18/XX does not exist - their numeric equivalents are used instead, as follows:

See also

References

See also

  • Drain for gain, which involves manipulating your attributes, and discusses how to do so.