Rogue/SLASH'EM

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In SLASH'EM, the Rogue, abbreviated as Rog, is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.

Rogues can be humans, orcs, doppelgangers, lycanthropes, or vampires, and are always chaotic.

Starting equipment

Each Rogue starts with the following equipment:[1]

Orcish Rogues receive an orcish short sword in place of a short sword, a set of orcish daggers in place of regular daggers, and are given two additional stacks of 1-2 random comestibles.[5]

Rogues have a 1⁄100 chance of their primary weapon and projectiles being generated as poisoned.[6]

Rogues start with knowledge of the oilskin sack and any applicable racial equipment.[7]

The Rogue's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.

Intrinsics

Rogues gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:[8]

Attributes

The Rogue's starting attributes are distributed as follows:[9]

Attributes Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom Charisma Remaining
Minimum attributes 7 10 7 7 7 6 31
Distribution percentages 20% 30% 20% 10% 10% 10%
Mean w/ standard deviation (human) 14.10±2.29 17.52±1.00 13.72±2.18 10.41±1.77 10.41±1.77 9.07±1.70

Skills

Rogues have the following skills available to them:[10]

Rogue skills
Max Skills
Basic
Skilled
Expert

Rogues start with Basic skill in short swords as well as the skill schools of what ranged weapons they generate with (i.e. either firearms, or darts and daggers). They use the intelligence stat to cast spells, and their special spell is detect treasure.[11]

Techniques

Rogues can learn the disarm technique by reaching Skilled in any weapon, and also gain the following techniques at the listed experience levels:[12]

Level Technique
1 Critical strike
15 Cutthroat

Special rules

Rogues get a +1 bonus to multishot when throwing daggers.[13]

Rogues can perform backstabs, granting +1d(XL) bonus damage when they attack a fleeing monster with a weapon while they are in their base form and are not twoweaponing.[14]

Rogues have an XL⁄60 chance of gaining a bonus to untrap floor traps, and gain a separate bonus if carrying their quest artifact.[15] They also have double the normal chance of disarming container traps, and gain 3 times the level multiplier when calculating their chance of disarming door traps.[16][17]

Rogues have a higher chance of unlocking doors and containers with lock picks and credit cards, and have a lower chance of breaking lock picks when using them.[18][19][20][21][22][23]

Rogues are charged twice the normal price when purchasing items from a shop, applied after charisma adjustments and before additional upcharges for an angry shopkeeper and/or a purchase made in the black market.[24] They are the only role that do not take an alignment penalty for stealing from a shop or gain an alignment bonus for pacifying an angry shopkeeper.[25][26]

Rogues can steal gold from monsters with the #borrow extended command, which steals 25-50*XL gold if successful and has a chance of angering a peaceful monster.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:[27]

  • XL 1-2: Footpad
  • XL 3-5: Cutpurse
  • XL 6-9: Rogue
  • XL 10-13: Pilferer
  • XL 14-17: Robber
  • XL 18-21: Burglar
  • XL 22-25: Filcher
  • XL 26-29: Magsman/Magswoman
  • XL 30: Thief

Gods

Main article: Religion

The Rogue pantheon is based on the Newhon pantheon of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.[28] Their guaranteed first sacrifice gift is the Bat from Hell.[29]

Quest

Main article: Rogue quest

The Rogue's quest sees them fighting the Master Assassin for The Master Key of Thievery, an artifact skeleton key. The quest is notorious for a high amount of shapeshifter monsters, item-stealing monsters, and traps, as well as the quest nemesis being quite difficult to reach.

While carried, The Master Key of Thievery grants warning, teleport control and half physical damage, and applying the Master Key of Thievery to unlock doors will always succeed. Rogues carrying The Master Key of Thievery also gain a bonus to disarming traps on the floor. Invoking The Master Key of Thievery and selecting an adjacent door or container removes all traps from that object.

Strategy

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Detail where needed to match the layout of other NetHack/SLASH'EM role strategy sections and distinguish its information from those."

Early game

Rogues that start with daggers and darts are far stronger in the early game than those that start with a pistol: bullets are consumed rapidly, mulching on both hits and misses, so pistol-wielding Rogues must rely on their short sword as their primary source of damage. Furthermore, the pistol's damage is unreliable and lower than one might expect, as unenchanted bullets are highly variable in damage output—barring lucky finds in shops, they will often run out of ammo long before they can multishot with their pistol, and are better off with the standard Rogue strategy of building and curating a stack of daggers. Players not averse to metastrategy might consider start scumming for darts and daggers in the starting inventory.

Rogues that start with daggers and darts will want to immediately poison one of their projectile stacks using the starting potion of sickness; daggers can be poisoned in SLASH'EM and are usually the better choice, since they do not mulch and are more reliable as a primary damage source. Rogues that do not start with poison resistance will want to be careful of monsters throwing their poisoned daggers back at them, but most early weapon-throwing monsters are slow enough that a diligent Rogue can take advantage of the speed system (which functions as in NetHack 3.4.3) to out-maneuver and finish them off in time. The darts can be useful to take out monsters with passive erosion attacks such as green molds and acid blobs, but are fairly weak overall.

All non-atheist Rogues will want to find an altar as soon as possible and sacrifice for the Bat from Hell, which is the strongest single weapon available. Rogues planning to twoweapon may want to continue sacrificing for another artifact, since SLASH'EM allows a twoweaponing hero to wield an artifact in the off hand; the best artifact candidates available for them are Serpent's Tongue, Doomblade, Fire Brand, and Frost Brand. A fortunate Rogue who finds an early wish and has the HP to survive the stronger artifact blasts of SLASH'EM may also consider the Necromancer quest artifact The Great Dagger of Glaurgnaa, which grants slotless magic resistance while carried and can drain levels from monsters on each hit.

The Rogue's starting gold can be used to buy decent equipment in early shops, including Minetown and the Mall (though Rogues are charged twice as much), and can also be used to attempt a protection racket: the Gnomish Mines are guaranteed to have several hostile monsters regardless of the hero's race, so Rogues are not as poorly-positioned for it as they would be in NetHack. The Mines also remain a plentiful source of daggers as well, and both Elbereth and backstabs function as in NetHack 3.4.3, making it very easy to scare monsters and rack up damage at range. The starting blessed scrolls of teleportation are particularly useful for escaping tough situations, since they provide controlled teleportation in SLASH'EM.

Rogues can use their oilskin sack for early credit cloning, and can upgrade it to a bag of holding with a single potion of gain level; the potion can be identified either by monster use, or by dipping the sack into every potion with a base cost of 300zm potion they can find. The starting gold and oilskin sack also mean that the Rogue's theft ability is not terribly useful: additionally, the amount that can stolen is typically low and not worth the risk of angering peaceful monsters, much less the strong monsters that generate with high amounts of gold (such as shopkeepers).

Mid-game

Since backstab damage works as it does in NetHack 3.4.3, players may opt for their Rogue to use a shield as is commonly done in that version, relying on their dagger skill and primary weapon to make the most of it; lycanthrope and doppelganger Rogues will likely default to this due to their inability to twoweapon. Non-lycanthrope Rogues will get a lot of mileage from a shield of reflection, while lycanthrope Rogues and others that have reflection accounted for will prefer the elven shield or even a small shield. Unlike NetHack, twoweaponing in SLASH'EM is also a more attractive option in its own right: Rogues can pair the Bat from Hell with Doomblade as mentioned previously, and can also use other artifacts such as Serpent's Tongue and Stormbringer in the off-hand, or even strong non-artifact weapons such as a silver saber, silver long sword or crysknife.

The assault rifle is one of the best firearms for a hero: it can be retrieved from the Castle barracks with some difficulty, and uses bullets like most other firearms; Rogues are also one of two roles that can achieve Expert in firearms, which gives a chance of up to two extra shots fired per round. As barracks do not randomly generate in SLASH'EM, Rogues may want to raid Fort Ludios for ammunition. Elven daggers and dark elven daggers are made easy to amass for Rogues by upgrading normal daggers and orcish daggers. However, do not further upgrade them to great daggers, as they will no longer stack and stacks of great daggers made by upgrading cannot be re-merged once thrown.

Late game

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Does having skilled or expert in firearms give extra damage per hit?"

Rogues that reach the late game should have their Bat from Hell, assault rifle bullets and daggers all well-enchanted: those willing to devote the time and resources can reverse genocide for gypsies and wish for a few stacks of silver daggers to use in Gehennom: storms of +7 'backstabbed' silver daggers are extremely powerful weapons against the demon lords and princes, all of whom are mandatory encounters in SLASH'EM, and render a Rogue nigh-unstoppable in the end game when utilized alongside the Bat from Hell and rifle.

A rogue with Expert in firearms that fires +7 bullets from an assault rifle will fire 5-9 shots per round (average 7) and do 1d20 + 7 damage per hit (average 17.5), for an incredible average of 122.5 damage per round: using silver bullets for special occasions (like the aforementioned demon rulers) adds an additional 73.5 average damage. Rogues capable of twoweaponing can wield two assault rifles simultaneously and deal upwards of 200 or more damage with well-enchanted bullets—this can easily wipe out high-level covetous monsters such as demon princes and arch-liches before they get a chance to warp away.

A good ascension kit for a Rogue is:

References

  1. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 174
  2. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1168
  3. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1172
  4. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1184
  5. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1373: non-caster orcs get extra food
  6. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1602: non-chaotic heroes never start with poisoned weapons
  7. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1185
  8. ↑ attrib.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 88
  9. ↑ role.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 343: Rog attributes and distributions
  10. ↑ u_init.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 591
  11. ↑ role.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 349
  12. ↑ tech.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 136
  13. ↑ dothrow.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 187
  14. ↑ uhitm.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 960
  15. ↑ trap.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3272
  16. ↑ trap.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3826
  17. ↑ trap.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3885
  18. ↑ lock.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 399
  19. ↑ lock.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 403
  20. ↑ lock.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 410
  21. ↑ lock.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 502
  22. ↑ lock.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 506
  23. ↑ lock.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 513
  24. ↑ shk.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 2350
  25. ↑ shk.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 590
  26. ↑ shk.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 1229
  27. ↑ role.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 322
  28. ↑ role.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 332
  29. ↑ artilist.h in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 254
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