Human (monster)

@ human
Difficulty	2
Attacks	Weapon 1d6

@ human
Difficulty	2
Attacks	Weapon 1d6
Base level	0
Base experience	6
Speed	12
Base AC	10
Base MR	0
Alignment	0 (neutral)
Frequency (by normal means)	0 (Not randomly generated)
Genocidable	No
Weight	1450
Nutritional value	400
Size	Medium
Resistances	None
Resistances conveyed	None
A human: has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. is omnivorous. is not a valid polymorphable form. is a human. is strong. can pick up weapons and food. can be seen through infravision.
Reference	monst.c#line2277

A human, @, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. It serves as the base monster for the corpse left by human characters, human zombies or human mummies.

Generation

Standard humans are not randomly generated.

A human zombie or human mummy will leave an aged human corpse behind upon death; player humans that are killed and leave bones will have a human corpse atop their grave, unless they were killed by certain monsters, stoned or else disintegrated. Humans can be generated by zapping a wand of undead turning at a human corpse that is not left by a human zombie or mummy, or else selecting humans while reading a cursed scroll of genocide.

The Wizard of Yendor may create a clone of himself in the guise of a human via the Double Trouble monster spell, which is one of the few instances a player can encounter the monster without creating one themselves.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Per commit 524ae27c, human corpses generated as part of fake bones on traps have a ²⁴⁄₂₅ chance of being replaced with a player monster corpse.

Murder and monster humans

Strangely, killing any standard human, even a hostile one, will be considered murder for a lawful character. This occurs because the following conditions must be met for murder penalties to apply:

• The player must not be chaotic
• The monster killed must be of human type
• The monster killed must not be a player monster
• The monster killed must not always be generated hostile
• Killing the monster must produce a non-positive change in alignment record for the player

For a non-chaotic character, the first four conditions are always met, since humans are not always generated hostile. However, they are also not guaranteed to be peaceful: they will always be hostile to a lawful character, and have a 50% chance of being peaceful to a neutral character. Because of the way alignment gain works, killing a hostile human will be considered murder for lawfuls, since killing a cross-aligned "sometimes peaceful" monster adjusts the player's alignment record by malign - this represents the monster's alignment, which in the case of the neutral human is zero and thus neither positive nor negative. The human is the only monster for which these conditions can align.

For a neutral character, killing a hostile human will not be considered murder, as the alignment gain from killing a co-aligned "sometimes peaceful" monster is max(3, malign), or 3 - killing a peaceful human will still be considered murder as normal.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

Per commit cd91d063, killing standard humans no longer incurs murder penalties.

History

The human first appears in NetHack 3.0.0.

Encyclopedia entry

These strange creatures live mostly on the surface of the earth, gathering together in societies of various forms, but occasionally a stray will descend into the depths and commit mayhem among the dungeon residents who, naturally, often resent the intrusion of such beasts. They are capable of using weapons and magic, and it is even rumored that the Wizard of Yendor is a member of this species.