Noncorporeal

In NetHack, a noncorporeal or incorporeal monster is any being that lacks a physical or material form.

Description

A noncorporeal monster is defined by the pointer noncorporeal(ptr) within mondata.h, and the list of noncorporeal monsters consists solely of the ghost monster class, i.e. the ghost and shade.

All noncorporeal monsters are immune to sliming and intelligence drain attacks. They are considered vegan to consume, presumably due to lacking any flesh in the first place. Noncorporeal monsters are ineligible to function as steeds.

Noncorporeal monsters can move through and over moats, lava, doors, diagonal gaps, and walls of any kind—both monsters also possess flight and phasing, which combined will enable most if not all of these in practice. A noncorporeal monster is unaffected by either a drawbridge or its portcullis being opened, closed or destroyed while they are on the square of either dungeon feature, and is also unharmed by falling boulders or rocks from a scroll of earth. A boulder can be moved through a noncorporeal monster, provided nothing else would block that boulder's path normally.

Rules for monster starting inventory and item usage check if an intelligent monster is noncorporeal when generating that monster with a scroll of earth (which noncorporeal monsters will not receive in practice) or deciding if they should read one.

Incorporeal heroes

There is a check for a noncorporeal polyself when dealing with a hero that is buried in solid rock, as well as one for when the hero is subjected to intelligence drain or else has a boulder or rocks from a scroll of earth fall on them—these are generally fail-safes that should not occur in practice, as neither of the noncorporeal monsters are valid forms to polymorph into even in wizard mode.

Variants

Variants of NetHack often introduce additional noncorporeal monsters.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, all ghost monsters and shades (which are given their own monster class) are noncorporeal.

Noncorporeal monsters do not take any extra skill-based precision damage from crossbow bolts fired using a crossbow, as they are assumed to lack discernible weak points. Similarly, noncorporeal monsters take doubled damage rather than being instantly killed or destroyed when hit by the rending armor-shredding attacks of Demogorgon and Blibdoolpoolp, graven-into-flesh, since they do not have a physical body.