Pirate/SpliceHack

In SpliceHack, the Pirate is a role available to the hero that is incorporated from the Pirate role patch by ChrisANG, which in turn is based on the preliminary Pirate patch by Nephi.

Pirates can be humans, elves, drow, gnomes, orcs, infernals, vampires, or merfolk, and can start as neutral or chaotic.

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Starting equipment

Each Pirate starts with the following equipment:

• 1-300 gold pieces
• a +0 scimitar (wielded)
• 2–3 uncursed +0 knives
• a +0 jacket
• a +0 pair of high boots
• 2-4 cram rations
• a snack item
  • 3-9 kelp fronds (¹⁄₄ chance or 25%); otherwise
  • 3-9 bananas
• 3 potions of booze
• a ring of adornment (¹⁄₂ chance or 50%); otherwise, a random ring
• an uncursed +0 grappling hook (¹⁄₂ chance or 50%); otherwise, an uncursed oilskin sack

Any ring that is generated with an enchantment of +0 or lower is given a random enchantment from +1 to +3.

The following racial conditions also apply:

• Elven Pirates have their cram rations replaced with lembas wafers.
• Infernal Pirates have their knives replaced with sacrificial knives.
• Orcish Pirates have their cram rations replaced with tripe rations, and are also given 2 extra stacks of 1-2 food items despite none of the item substitutions affecting their armor or weapons.
• Vampiric Pirates have their cram rations replaced with potions of vampire essence.

Pirates start the game with knowledge of the oilskin cloak, oilskin sack and grappling hook, as well as knowledge of any applicable racial equipment.

The Pirate's default starting pet will be either a parrot called Polly or a monkey, with roughly equal probability for either one.

Intrinsics

Pirate gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• XL 1: Swimming
• XL 7: Speed
• XL 11: Stealth

The Pirate's starting attributes are distributed as follows:

Attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma	Remaining
Minimum attributes	8	8	8	7	7	7	30
Distribution percentages	20%	20%	25%	15%	10%	10%

Skills

Pirates have the following skills available to them:

Pirate skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: short sword, long sword, club, unicorn horn Spells: attack, divination, enchantment
Skilled	Weapons: dagger, axe, morning star, spear, dart, whip Spells: escape Combat: two weapon combat, power attack, disarm, tumbling, sunder
Expert	Weapons: knife, broadsword, scimitar, saber, club, flail, trident, crossbow, firearms Combat: bare hands

Pirates start with Basic skill level in scimitars and knives. They use the intelligence stat for spellcasting, and their role's special spell is cause fear.

Special rules

The primary defining features of the Pirate role are:

1. The existence of "king of the hill" mode, explained in the Quest section, and
2. The lack of sacrifice gifts available for them.

The Pirate can only receive a singular artifact as a gift from sacrifice: The Marauder's Map, which can be read to gain clairvoyance similar to casting the spell at Basic or lower skill. Invoking it will detect the current location of objects and reveal the locations of any other artifacts among those objects. To compensate, the base chance for an object of a particular type to be made into an artifact is raised from ¹⁄₂₀ (5%) to ¹⁄₅ (20%) for a Pirate hero.

The rule regarding sacrifice gifts does not extend to crowning, and the Pirate has a different crowning gift as well: A Pirate that is crowned and not wielding a scimitar as their primary weapon will have the blessed and rustproof +1 Reaver placed at their feet, while a Pirate that is wielding a scimitar when they are crowned will have it transformed into Reaver instead. If the artifact is already being wielded at the time a Pirate is crowned, it will be formally identified—in practice, this requires that a Pirate hero find Reaver in the bones of another (former) Pirate, since they cannot wish for it or obtain it by any means other than those described.

A Pirate hero that attacks with the wielded Reaver will steal an item on each hit, which will only occur ¹⁄₁₀ of the time for monsters and heroes of other roles, and prompts the player if they want to keep the item in their inventory afterward—beware that the the user will be instantly stoned if a footrice corpse is stolen this way, unless they are wearing gloves. Pirates are also the only role that can wield Reaver in the offhand while performing two-weapon combat, with the standard penalties applying.

Pirate heroes that die and leave bones files will always arise as skeletal pirates rather than ghosts under normal circumstances.

"King of the hill" mode is activated for a Pirate that has possession of their quest artifact, detailed further below.

Several dialogs for Pirates are changed, and a slightly different set of alternate item names from Nephi's patch are applied:

Standard	Pirate
potion of booze	potion of rum
cram ration	sea biscuit
sack	ditty bag
oilskin sack	oilskin ditty bag
large box	foot locker
club	belaying pin
zorkmid (unused)	doubloon
gold coin (unused)	piece of eight

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• XL 1-2: Landlubber
• XL 3-5: Sailor
• XL 6-9: Cutthroat
• XL 10-13: Bosun
• XL 14-17: Second Mate
• XL 18-21: First Mate
• XL 22-25: Captain
• XL 26-29: Pirate Lord
• XL 30: Dread Pirate

Gods

The Pirate pantheon is different from most other variants:

• Lawful: Davy Jones
• Neutral: the deep blue sea
• Chaotic: the storm

According to a comment, Davy Jones is explicitly made lawful since "we want something all pirates are opposed to."

All three deities have Reaver as their crowning gift, and a hero that is crowned by them will be given the title of "the Pirate King", regardless of the hero's actual role or gender.

Quest

The Pirate's quest sees them fight Blackbeard's Ghost for The Treasury of Proteus, an artifact chest. The Treasury of Proteus has ¹⁄₁₂ the weight of a regular chest at 50 aum, and grants magic resistance and acts as a luck item while carried. Invoking the artifact restores the hero's energy by an amount equal to half of the difference between their maximum power and current power: if this amount is less than ¹⁄₁₀ of their maximum, then it will restore up to 400 energy.

While the hero has The Treasury of Proteus in their open inventory, it has other effects that can significantly change gameplay:

• While a Pirate hero has The Treasury of Proteus on hand, they are considered "king of the hill", and monster generation will change accordingly. When randomly generating monsters, ¹⁄₅ of them will be groups other pirates who seek to steal the quest artifact and kill the hero (in no specific order)—skeletal pirates will be generated in the dungeon above Gehennom, while damned pirates will be generated within Gehennom, and githyanki pirates will be generated on the Elemental Planes and Astral Plane. These pirate monsters will attack the hero while they are "king of the hill", as well as sharing a mutual grudge with mercenaries.
• The Treasury of Proteus has a ¹⁹⁄₂₀ chance of absorbing and blocking curses while carried—it will then become uncursed if it is currently blessed, and otherwise becomes cursed.
• When a Pirate hero first picks up The Treasury of Proteus, a timer is set to count down each turn, and when the timer reaches 0 it will polymorph its contents, signified by a sea-related message being printed. Normal items inside the container at the time have a ¹⁄₂₀ chance of resisting this effect, while artifacts have a ¹⁹⁄₂₀ chance of resisting.

Losing possession of The Treasury of Proteus will disable these listed effects.

Strategy

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