Paralyze (monster spell)
Paralyze is a monster spell that appears in NetHack.
Description
Paralyze is a melee-range spell that can be used by any monster of at least level 5 with the ability to cast clerical spells.[1][2] The spell is only used against the hero, and when cast it will inflict paralysis upon them:[3] the effect will last for a number of turns equal to the caster's level plus four, which can be halved by the half spell damage property[4]—an active source of free action or magic resistance will reduce the duration of the effect to at most one turn.[5]
Strategy
Despite the low level that the paralysis spell can be accessed at, hostile clerical casters are not especially common: the most frequent examples will be the hostile aligned priests found in Moloch's Sanctum, at which point a hero will ideally have a ring of free action and/or a source of magic resistance to guard against the spell. This also applies to the high priest of Moloch, who must be fought for the Amulet of Yendor within Moloch's temple and will be backed up by the evil god aiming bolts of lightning at an attacking hero.
There are some instances where a hero will have to fight a hostile clerical caster at a much earlier juncture: Monks will have to contend with at least one hostile clerical caster in their quest nemesis Master Kaen whenever they undertake their quest; Priests will encounter a hostile priest of Moloch in the massive graveyard on their quest's locate level.
Messages
- You are frozen in place!
- You were hit by the paralyze spell.
- You stiffen briefly.
- As above, but you have magic resistance or free action and were only frozen for 1 turn.
Variants
xNetHack
In xNetHack, free action completely negates this spell.
Due to a bug in version 9.0, this spell produces no messages, and magic resistance offers no protection against it. This makes it crucial to obtain free action, as otherwise the aligned priests of Moloch's Sanctum and the Astral Plane can easily stunlock your character forever. This bug was fixed in commit d73e9e0 and should not affect future versions.
