Caveman/dNetHack
| Roles in dNetHack |
|---|
| Roles in notdNetHack |
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, the Caveman or Cavewoman, sometimes referred to informally as the Caveperson, is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.
Cavepeople can be humans, dwarves, gnomes, half-dragons, or chiropterans, and can start as lawful or neutral. In notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, they can also be ents of either alignment, always-neutral etherealoids, or always-neutral salamanders in addition to the listed races.
Starting equipment
Each Caveperson in dNetHack starts with the following equipment:
- a +1 club (wielded)
- a +2 sling (alternate weapon)
- 10-22 flint stones
- 18-33 uncursed rocks
- +0 leather armor
- 3-6 torches
Cavepeople in notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack are given a +1 spear instead of a club.
Cavepeople start the game with knowledge of any applicable racial equipment.
The Caveperson's default starting pet is a little dog called Slasher.
Intrinsics
Cavepeople gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:
Attributes
Cavepeople have 75 points to distribute among their starting attributes like most other roles unless they are descendants, who have 65 points to distribute.
The Caveperson's starting attributes are distributed as follows:
| Attributes | Strength | Dexterity | Constitution | Intelligence | Wisdom | Charisma | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum attributes | 10 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 30 |
| Distribution percentages | 30% | 20% | 30% | 6% | 7% | 7% | |
| Mean w/ standard deviation (human) | 18/01.61±2.48 | 13.19±2.16 | 16.43±1.76 | 8.90±1.40 | 9.21±1.49 | 7.90±1.40 |
The means and standard deviations were calculated for NetHack via simulation, whose source code can be found on the role article's talk page, and assumes that all given roles are played as humans—non-human races will have different attribute means as a result of different attribute maximums. Due to the variance in distribution of attributes among roles and races, these calculations may not be wholly accurate to this set of variants.
Skills
Cavepeople have the following skills available to them before racial adjustments:
| Caveperson skills | |
|---|---|
| Max | Skills |
| Basic |
|
| Skilled | |
| Expert | |
| Master |
|
Cavepeople start with Basic skill in clubs, slings and bare-handed combat. They use the intelligence stat to cast spells, and their special spell is dig.
Special rules
Cavepeople do not suffer any penalty for cannibalism and gain a +1 bonus to alignment record each time they eat a corpse or tin of their race. "Penalties" for this purpose include the aggravate monster property given from eating domestic animal corpses and the nausea from eating tripe rations.
Cavepeople can wield weapons as though they are one size larger than normal, meaning that a medium-sized Caveperson can wield medium-size two-handed weapons (e.g. a normal two-handed sword) in one hand.
Cavepeople using breath weapons granted from a worn dragon scale shield have 4⁄5 of the standard timeout duration, which normally can last up to 100 turns.
notdNetHack
In addition to the above, Cavepeople in notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack can additionally apply rocks to knap soft gemstones into new spear points, or spearheads. The following gems apply these effects when used as spearheads:
- dilithium crystal: doubles damage
- turquoise: Hitting an enemy warps the player nearby
- morganite: regeneration
- citrine: bright light, blinding on hit
- amber: slow monster
- jet: shrouds you in a black mist - AC and DR protection (based on enchantment)
- opal: reflection
- chrysoberyl: immunity to sickness
- garnet: 2x fire damage, fire resistance
- amethyst: telepathy
- jasper: +d8 damage
- violet fluorite: sleeping attack, sleep resistance
- blue fluorite: +d8 magic damage, drain Pw if it hits you, half spell damage
- white fluorite: energy regeneration
- green fluorite: curse resistance
- obsidian: ignores DR
- agate: free action
- jade: stinking cloud, poison resistance
- luckstone: +7 to-hit
- loadstone: +2d4 damage, weldproof
- touchstone: +3d5 study
- fossil dark: 2x damage drain xp
- silver slingstone: Sears silver-haters
Rank titles
The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:
- XL 1-2: Troglodyte
- XL 3-5: Aborigine
- XL 6-9: Wanderer
- XL 10-13: Vagrant
- XL 14-17: Wayfarer
- XL 18-21: Roamer
- XL 22-25: Nomad
- XL 26-29: Rover
- XL 30: Pioneer
Gods
The Caveman pantheon is based on the mythology of Mesopotamia (sometimes known as Babylon).
Quest
The Caveperson's quest sees them fighting the Chromatic Dragon for The Sceptre of Might, an artifact bone mace—in notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, the base item is changed to a bone spear. The Sceptre of Might grants magic resistance while carried, and while wielded it also sets the wielder's strength to 25. It has +5 to-hit and deals double damage against monsters of a different alignment from the artifact, and hostile monsters that are struck by the artifact are knocked back, stunned and lose 10 movement points. Invoking The Sceptre of Might toggles hungerless conflict on or off, and conflict caused by the artifact ends once it leaves the main inventory.
Strategy
A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:
"Detail to match the layout of other NetHack and dNetHack role strategy sections if possible."
