Skeleton (monster class)

This article is about the monster class in EvilHack. For the monster in NetHack and other variants, see skeleton.

The skeleton is a monster class that appears in EvilHack, and is represented by the lowercase z glyph (z). Skeletons are designated internally by the macro S_SKELETON.

The class contains the following monsters:

• z small skeletal hound
• z skeletal pont
• z skeletal hound
• z skeleton
• z skeletal horse
• z large skeletal hound
• z skeletal warhorse
• z skeleton warrior

Common traits

All skeletons are chaotic-aligned undead creatures that are magically-animated and made of bone: they are unbreathing and count as being thick-skinned, since they lack any organs or other organic parts—except for the skeleton warrior, they are all mindless. Skeletons possess cold resistance, sleep resistance, poison resistance, death resistance, drain resistance, immunity to sickness, and stoning resistance; they are also immune to lycanthropy and have a vulnerability to fire.

The skeleton and skeleton warrior are humanoid and have weapon attacks, with the traits of the skeleton from vanilla NetHack split between them:

• Both skeletons retain the low 8 speed, medium size and nutrition values.
• The weaker skeleton of EvilHack shares the same base AC and weight, generates with similar armor as a minimum, and has a weapon attack that is half the strength of the vanilla skeleton. Unlike the vanilla skeleton, they can generate randomly and will often appear in small groups.
• The skeleton warrior retains the monster level and difficulty of the vanilla skeleton, along with the same exact weapon attack and slowing attack, but has a higher weight and better base AC. Skeleton warriors also generate randomly, and appear deeper in the dungeon—including within Orcus-town, the only level where normal skeletons in NetHack appear—and can also be created by polypiling if there are enough items made of bone in the affected pile(s).

The other skeleton monsters are domestic animal-like undead that act as skeletal counterparts to the growth stages of the dog and horse, sharing the same attacks, speed and similar AC.

Chatting to any skeleton monster will freeze the hero in place for a few turns regardless of hostility, and free action will not prevent this.

Generation

Of the skeleton monsters, only skeletons and skeleton warriors are generated randomly.

History

The skeleton monster class first appears in version 0.9.0.

Encyclopedia entry

See the encyclopedia entry for skeleton.