Random breath
Randomized breath is a damage type that occurs in NetHack, and is always associated with the breath weapon attack type. Random breath attacks always use the AD_RBRE damage type flag.
Contents
Description
A randomized breath attack will select one of the following damage types at random each time the attack is used:[1]
As randomized breath weapons can create magic missiles, monsters with the attack are given intrinsic magic resistance.[2] Similarly, since the attack can also create poison clouds, monsters with the attack are immune to the effects of poison clouds.[3]
The only monster with a randomized breath weapon is the Chromatic Dragon.
History
The random breath damage type is introduced with the Chromatic Dragon in NetHack 3.1.0. From this version to NetHack 3.6.0, including some variants based on those versions, the poison breath is simply a ray of poison. The ability of poison breath to leave trails of poison clouds is introduced in NetHack 3.6.1.
Variants
Some variants of NetHack give randomized breath weapons to other monsters besides the Chromatic Dragon (who may be renamed to "Tiamat" depending on the variant), and may add other damage types as well.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, crystal golems have randomized breath weapons which behave the same as that of the Chromatic Dragon.[4]
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, chromatic dragons and crystal ice golems have randomized breath weapons.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, several monsters have randomized breath weapons. Two of them use randomized breath weapons that select from specific damage types: the Chromatic Dragon selects randomly from fire, frost, lightning, poison, disintegration, and acid, and the Platinum Dragon selects randomly from fire, disintegration, sleep, and lightning.
Three monsters utilize the damage type for weapon attacks or monster spells, and in these instances the attack chooses a random damage type from fire, cold or shock—for magic attacks, this casts fireball, cone of cold or lightning bolt respectively. The monsters with random "breath" weapon and magic attacks are:
- A Tulani Eladrin (weapon and magic)
- A Faerinaal (magic)
- E ancient tempest (magic)
All other monsters with random breath weapons use the same randomly selected damage types as in vanilla NetHack:
EvilHack
In EvilHack, Tiamat retains her randomized breath attack, and the chromatic dragon placeholder monster has two random breath weapon attacks. Both instances use the following damage types:
- magic missile
- fire
- frost
- sleep gas
- disintegration
- lightning
- poison clouds
- acid
- high-pressure water
- dark energy
References
- Jump up ↑ src/mthrowu.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 812: uses all valid breath types up to AD_ACID
- Jump up ↑ src/mondata.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 123: resists_magm function
- Jump up ↑ src/region.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 1004
- Jump up ↑ mthrowu.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 775: uses all valid breath types up to AD_ACID
