Intense pain

Intense pain is a damage type that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack and uses the AD_PAIN flag. It is essentially a stronger form of strength-draining poison that can also cause the victim to scream in pain, and is primarily used by monsters.

Description

A hero or monster hit by an attack that causes intense pain will begin screaming if applicable, awakening any monsters sleeping nearby, before subjecting them to strength-draining poison which behaves as normal—monsters that scream will lose 6 movement points for their next action, while a hero will be unable to spellcast, chat, or read any scrolls or spellbooks other than the syllables of power for two turns. Attacks that inflict pain will not cause screaming against a target that is nonliving, an android, a race of elemental, a Great Old One, or a tomb herd monster.

As with poison attacks, a hero that does not block the pain-causing attack, prevent it with magic cancellation or otherwise avoid it has a ¹⁄₈ chance of the poison triggering, which always deals 6–15 extra damage and has a further ¹⁄₆ chance of decreasing strength by 3-6 points, along with a ¹⁄₃₀ chance of decreasing constitution by 3-6 points. A monster that does not block or avoid the attack has a ¹⁄₈ chance of the poison taking effect, with a further ¹⁄₁₀ chance of being outright fatal and otherwise dealing 6–15 extra damage. Poison resistance blocks the attribute-draining effects of the attack (with a message printed accordingly) and halves the poison damage taken, and magic cancellation can block the poison of melee attack types that inflict intense pain.

The damage dealt by the intense pain attack is mundane physical damage, and applies regardless of whether they resisted the pain or poison, identical to normal poison attacks.

List of monsters

A small handful of monsters have attacks that cause intense pain:

• The ancient of thought has four 6d6 painful sting attacks.
• The jellyfish has a 3d3 painful sting attack that replaces its normal poisonous sting from NetHack.
• The chorister jelly has a 6d6 painful sting attack. Similar to long worms, their bell does not need to be directly adjacent to the player for them to use this attack.
• The desert seer has a 6d6 painful wide gaze attack, but this gaze requires direct eye contact from both parties. As desert seers are normally always generated with a cursed faceless hood covering their face, they will not be able to use this attack unless the hood is destroyed or removed.
• Tongue-puppet monsters have an additional 1d3 tongue attack, on top of their base attack. This attack can have multiple different effects, but has a ¹⁄₆ chance of acting as an intense pain attack.
• The parasitology research path of the Choir, normally followed by neutral Undead Hunters, allows players to gain intense pain auto-attacks by embedding parasites to "sting adjacent enemies". These attacks target up to 2 adjacent monsters per parasite used, making 1 attack roll per 3 parasites used (rounded up), and dealing flat damage equal to the total number of parasites used.

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