User:EasterlyIrk/mspelltable
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In dNetHack and notdNetHack, monster spells are generally handled in a much more complex fashion compared to vanilla NetHack: there are several more spells available for monsters, and many of them are exclusive to specific monsters.
Contents
Description
Monster spellcasting can be divided into three broad categories: magical casting, divine casting, and psionic casting. In addition to basic spell lists, many spellcasting monsters also have specific lists of spells that they can cast with varying probabilities - these lists are consistent for a given monster type, and vary between monster types; monster spell type is also a factor for interactions with various items and madnesses. While any spell can in theory be compatible with any form of of casting, many spells are exclusive to a single casting category in practice, due to the lists they appear on.
Most regular spellcasting monsters have a cooldown on their ability to cast spells frequently, while much stronger casters (including most unique spellcasters) are able to cast without any cooldown. A character polymorphed into a monster can cast that monster's spells as part of their attack chain if they have the appropriate amount of energy: relatively unique or niche spells are replaced with fallbacks.
Spell targeting & damage
Spell targeting requirements vary based on the exact spell. Single-target spells (single-target direct damage spells, some buffs & debuffs) require being targeted at a specific monster. This means effects like displacement can throw off their targeting, causing the spell to miss entirely. However, does not apply to spells that target a location, including terrain manipulation spells, area of effect spells, summoning spells, or buffs and debuffs that apply in an area.
The base damage dealt by monster spells is found in each monster's stat blocks, but is not directly shown to the player via in-game lookup. For most hostile casters, that damage is 0d6. Some low-level monsters (like various Rilmani & Elvenqueens) use d4s instead, and very powerful casters may use d8s (Mahadeva, Illurien of the Myriad Glimpses), d10s (Wizard of Yendor), or even d12s (Demogorgon). The number of dice rolled is equal to the number in the statblock plus (the monster's level)/3, capped at 10 extra dice. Expect most relevant hostile casters near the end of the game to be around 8d6 damage per spell, or high level boss monsters to be dealing around 10d6.
Unless otherwise specified, all spell damage dealt is magical in nature and is affected by half spell damage. The exceptions to this are some spells that deal partially or entirely physical damage, like Geyser or Ice Storm, which use half physical damage for the physical component. Spells that rely on the damage dealt for the duration of status impairments, energy drain, or other effects will still take into account half spell damage for those effects.
Summoning spells
Summoning spells also often have special requirements to be cast, and their summoned creatures follow specific rules. With the exception of the Yellow Dead spell, no more than one summon spell can be cast on a single global turn, or round. This prevents more than one spellcaster from spawning enemies. This is designed to prevent summon swarms from getting out of hard. In addition, spellcasters can only summon a collective total level of monsters equal to their level. They can exceed this limit with a single summon spell, but will not be able to cast more until their total number of summoned creatures drops below that limit. Similarly, most summon spells are blocked by the effects of dimensional locks, but this causes them to fail rather causing them to not be cast in the first place.
In addition, most summon spells mark the spawned monsters as 'summoned'. Summoned monsters will typically naturally vanish after enough time from when they are summoned, but some are permanently summoned and don't naturally expire. However, any monsters summoned will always vanish as soon as their caster vanishes. This means that even if a high-level caster manages to summon a massive swarm of enemies, killing the caster will immediately cause the summons to vanish. The items that any summoned creature spawned with will also vanish - they may be used while they exist, and any effects of summoned items will not be undone, but the items themselves will cease to exist once the monster they spawned with does. This prevents them from being very effectively farmed for any items they have.
Lastly, with the exception of Summon Sphere, Time Duplicate, and Double Trouble, no summon spells function in the Anachrononaut quest.
Spellcasting categories
dNetHack sorts all forms of spellcasting into four categories - magical, divine (or clerical), psionic and elemental. Magical spellcasters usually include various demon casters and magicians. Divine spellcasters largely consist of clerical monsters, including those from NetHack. Psionic spellcasters are typically eldritch and/or extraplanar beings such as star spawn and certain insight monsters, but are exceedingly rare outside of specific branches or quests. Elemental casters are typically very element-aligned monsters, such as Oona, ancients of ice, and certain Eladrin forms. Elemental casters do not cast typical monster spells, but will always cast either a ranged or melee version of their element.
List of spells
Spells with specific base damages are called out, and them and any other specific numbers are decoupled from the expected spell damage formula. Elemental spell effects are given in a table below the list of specific spells, due to their nature as combination ray & melee spells.
| Single-Target Offensive | |
|---|---|
| Psi Bolt | Direct damage, capped at 50. deals half damage and caps at 25 if you have magic resistance. Against monsters, checks monster MR instead. |
| Pain Bolt | Direct damage, always deals half damage capped at 75. No effect on mindless monsters. Against players, inflicts screaming for damage⁄10 turns (rounded up). Against monsters, they always lose (6 + damage⁄10) movement points instead. |
| San Bolt | Identical to pain bolt, but with sanity loss instead of screaming. Against players, deals sanity damage equal to damage + drunkard score⁄10, halved on a succesful sanity loss save. Against monsters, always confuses and crazes if rn2(damage) > the target's level. |
| Doubt Bolt | Identical to pain bolt, but inflicts you with doubt instead of screaming. Against players, increments your doubt timer by the damage dealt. Against monsters, targets are made doubtful and inflicted with the apostasy madness, if rn2(damage) > the target's level. |
| Barf Bolt | Identical to pain bolt, but makes you vomit instead of scream. Against non-ediate players, causes vomiting for 15 + 5d4 turns. Against monsters, targets lose damage⁄20 movement points. If they are not inediate and rn2(damage) > (the target's level * 3), they will also vomit for 3 turns. |
| Babble Bolt | Identical to pain bolt, but with intelligence drain and amnesia instead of screaming. Against the player, if they don't have fixed abilties, targets lose 1 point of intelligence and abuse wisdom & intelligence. This never kills via brainlessness. Players then lose damage⁄10 percent of all spell memories and are made to babble for a number of turns equal to damage dealt. Against monsters, confuses them and sets their spell cooldown timer to the same number of turns. |
| Crush Bolt | Identical to pain bolt, but with mental attribute damage instead of screaming. Damages the highest of your intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, and abuses all of them. This can kill you via brainlessness. In addition, deals sanity damage equal to (25 - that attribute's value), halved on a successful sanity loss save. If you lost intelligence, you forget damage⁄10 percent of all spell memories. If you lost wisdom, you lose energy equal to the damage taken. If you lost charisma, you are made to babble for the next (damage) turns. Having fixed abilities will prevent the actual attribute loss and abuse, but will not protect versus the sanity damage or the secondary attribute-specific effects. |
| Open Wounds | Direct damage, capped at 60. Deals half damage and caps at 30 if you have magic resistance. Against monsters, checks monster MR instead. |
| Magic Missile (monster spell) | Elemental spell attack that deals magic damage. |
| Cone of Cold (monster spell) | Elemental spell attack that deals cold damage. |
| Lightning Bolt (monster spell) | Elemental spell attack that deals shock damage. |
| Sleep (monster spell) | Elemental spell attack that puts targets to sleep. |
| Disintegration Ray | Elemental spell attack that attempts to disintegrate the target. This is ranged only, and will be replaced with Psi Bolt if cast at a target in melee range. |
| Aura Bolt (monster spell) | Elemental spell attack that deals either holy or unholy damage. If the player casts it, it chooses either holy or unholy damage based on your alignment record - positive is holy and negative is unholy. If your alignment record is between 4 and -4 ('strayed' to 'aligned'), then this spell will always fail. If a monster casts it, it always deals unholy damage for unholy monsters and holy damage otherwise. |
| Drain Life (monster spell) | Drains one level from the target, and is entirely blocked by drain resistance. Always fails versus non-adjacent targets. Against the player, drains one experience level with everything that entails. Against monsters, lowers their current level by 1 and drains 2d6 max hp. |
| Arrow Rain | Throws projectiles of a random type at the target. The projectile type is randomly chosen and not specific to caster - mostly likely arrows, daggers, or spears but almost any conceivable mundane projectile is possible. The number of projectiles thrown is equal to the number of damage dice rolled rather than the damage itself, but the to-hit and damage dealt per projectile are identical to the caster throwing them at you normally. |
| Disintegration | Directly zaps the target with a disintegration beam from the heavens. This attempts to disintegrate the target, starting with armor, like a normal disintegration beam or melee attack. This beam also deals a flat 19 or 20 damage instead of the expected spell damage. |
| Lightning | A lightning bolt strikes the target, dealing 8d6 shock damage. The damage is negated entirely by shock resistance or reflection and reduced by half spell damage. If not reflected and the target lacks extrinsic shock resistance, will damage wands carried in open inventory. Against the player only, blinds them for d100 turns (negated by blindness resistance). |
| Fire Pillar | A pillar of fire erupts underneath the target, dealing 8d6 fire damage. The damage is negated entirely by fire resistance and reduced by half spell damage. If the target lacks extrinsic fire resistance, will destroy a scroll, a spellbook, and a potion (one of each, if possible) carried in open inventory. |
| Geyser | A geyser erupts underneath the target, dealing up to 8d6 physical damage. If the target is wearing water walking boots (specifically that kind of boots, other sources of water walking do not count), they may reduce this damage and gain a speed boost instead depending on their dexterity score (for the player), or base movement speed (for monsters). If the score or speed is 11 or higher, they avoid all damage and instead gain 12, 8, or 6 movement points for score or speed above 24, 18, or 14. No bonus movement is granted for score or speed between 11 or 14. For targets with score or speed under 11, they instead take 8d6, 4d6, or 1d6 for score or speed below 4, 7, or 11 respectively. If no water walking boots were worn, the target's inventory is affected by water damage. The inventory damage is avoided by worn mud boots (the randomized item appearance), or any normal source of water damage prevention. |
| Steam Geyser | Identical to Geyser, but deals an extra 3d6 fire damage (not reduced by half physical or spell damage, but negated by fire resistance). If water walking boots were worn, this is reduced to 1d10 damage for failed dodges or no damage at all for a successful dexterity or movement speed check. If water walking boots were not worn and the target lacks extrinsic fire resistance, also attempts to destroy a single potion carried in open inventory. |
| Acid Rain | A torrent of burning acid rains down upon the target, dealing 8d6 acid damage, unresisted by half spell or physical damage. If a wide-brimmed hat is worn (sedge hat, wide hat, witch hat or war helm), this spell and all of its effects are entirely negated. Otherwise, the damage is negated by acid resistance. If the acid is not avoided via proper headgear, then the target's inventory is damaged. If the target lacks extrinsic acid resistance, their wielded weapon, offhand weapon, and a random exposed piece of worn armor are all eroded by acid, and one random potion in open inventory boils away. This has no effect if they have nothing to erode or boil, or if the gear is corrodeproof. After this, the target's entire inventory is afflicted by water damage (blocked by grease etc. as normal), and you are blinded for 50 turns (reduced to 10 turns with acid resistance, negated by blindness resistance). |
| Rain | Similar to acid rain, but without the acid damage or corrosion. The target takes 8d6 damage if it is a fire elemental or otherwise always on fire monster (salamanders, hellfire colossi, etc.), and 0 damage otherwise. The target's inventory is still afflicted by water damage. None of these effects apply if a wide-brimmed hat is worn. |
| Blood Rain | Identical to normal rain, but with an added item-cursing and sanity damage effect. Any applicable water damage may unbless or curse items in addition to dilution or damage. If a wide-brimmed hat protects the target, the hat is unblessed (if blessed) or cursed (if uncursed). Against the player, also deals 2d6 sanity damage (1 sanity on a successful sanity loss save), or 1d4 (0 on a successful save) if protected via hat. |
| Ice Storm | Deals split physical and cold damage, 4d8 of each. The physical damage is reduced by half physical damage and the target's average DR value, and the cold damage is negated by cold resistance and reduced by half spell damage. If the target lacks extrinsic cold resistance, one random potion in open inventory may freeze. |
| Hail Flurry | Identical to Ice Storm, but the damage dealt is based on the original spell damage rolled. Half is dealt as physical, half as cold, and both factor in half physical or spell damage. The damage is split up after the original reduction from half spell damage from the spell's original casting, so it can be reduced greatly. |
| Starfall | Identical to Ice Storm, but with increased physical damage, silver damage, energy drain. The physical damage is buffed to 8d8 damage, and if the target is silver-hating adds an extra 4d20. The 8d8 and potential 8d8 are reduced by half physical damage and average DR as before. In addition, the target loses 4d8 energy (if the player), or has their spellcasting cooldown increased by 4d8 turns (for monsters). The cold damage and inventory freezing are unchanged. |
| Pyro Storm | Identical to Ice Storm, but deals fire and physical, 2d12 each, instead. The inventory damage is replaced with a potential to boil a single potion, burn a scroll (1/6 of the time), and burn a spellbook (1⁄10 of the time), if the target lacks extrinsic fire resistance. This also clears slime on the target. |
| Mother's Gaze | Speeds up the attacker, slows down the defender, and deals extra insight-scaling damage if the target lacks shock resistance. The attacker always regains 12 movement points upon casting the spell, and the defender must pass a monster MR check or lose insight⁄11 movement points. Monsters are instead frozen for that many turns, capped at 7. If the target lacks shock resistance, the normal spell damage is replaced with insight⁄11d6 damage, capped at 10d6, unresisted by half spell damage or any other effects. With shock resistance, the normal damage is dealt instead. |
| Holy Light | Deals minor holy and shock damage, and shines sunlight on struck targets. Against holy-hating targets deals 6d7 holy damage, and no holy damage otherwise. Against non-shock resistant targets deals 1d7 shock damage, and no damage otherwise. If the target lacks extrinsic shock resistance, this damages wands in open inventory. If the target is a troll, attempts to instantly petrify the target, prevented by stone resistance. Against gremlins or hunting horrors, the sunlight kills them instantly. |
| Death Touch | Kills the target via death magic, if possible. This will always miss outside of melee range. This has no effect on nonliving or demonic targets, targets standing on a Circle of Acheron ward, or targets that inherently resist death magic (including via having Ose bound). Against the player, will deal 8d8 damage if above 100 hp, or instantly kill the player otherwise. If you're hallucinating, this has no effect. If you have magic resistance or rn2(your level) > 12, you will resist and take only 8 damage. Against monsters, they resist and take no damage if they have player-style magic resistance or pass a monster MR check, and die instantly otherwise. |
| Earth Crack | If the target is not standing on top of a pit, spiked pit, hole, or trapdoor, causes an earthquake centered at the target. This earthquake does not summon monsters and has radius attacker level⁄6, capped at 8. If the target is standing in or above one of the listed traps, the trap will snap shut on them. If the target is not actually trapped in the trap on their square, nothing happens. This has a 12⁄attacker level chance to deal a quarter of the normal damage. Otherwise, it deals damage equal to 1⁄4 of the target's current health, affected by half physical damage, and wounds both legs by 50+1d100 turns. This is also considered a death effect, so any and all damage is blocked by Ose. |
| Plague | Inflicts sickness upon the target unless they are immune. Against the player, attempts to inflict sickness upon the player and deals no damage. The turns to live is set to 20 + 1d(Constitution) turns, or reduced to 1⁄3 of its current value if the player was already sick. Against monsters, has a {{frac|10} chance to kill outright and deals the normal damage plus 1d12 bonus damage otherwise. Monsters immune to sickness still take the the normal damage, but the player is entirely unaffected if they are immune to sickness. |
| Filth | A cascade of filth pours onto the target. This greases hands, weapons, and offhand weapons, as well as blinding, inflicting vomiting, and inflicting illness on targets. First, grease is applied to the hands for player targets only, potentially inflicting glib. This effect is blocked by having no free hands in the first place, and otherwise has a 2⁄3 chance to apply glib for for 1d20 + 9 turns. Next, if the target is wielding a weapon in their main or offhand, there is a 1/20 chance to coat it in gunk, covering it with filth poison, greasing it, and inflicting glib for another 1d20 + 9 turns. Against monsters, this replaces glib with them immediately dropping their weapon. These effects are rolled independently for each weapon slot, and have no effect if the target is not wielding a weapon in that slot. After this, there is a 2⁄3 chance for the filth to blind the defender by covering their eyes with gunk, causing them to be blind until they wipe their face. This lasts for 1d20 + 9 turns, and is blocked by a worn blindfold. If cast by Demogorgon, this effect will never occur. After this, player targets vomit, causing them to be unable to move and potentially causing monsters near them to flee. Clockworks and androids are immune to vomiting. Lastly, non-sickness immune targets are sickened, with a time to live of 20 + 1d(Constitution) turns for players or a 1⁄10 chance to kill outright for monsters. This has no effect on players that are already ill. After all of these effects, all targets take a total of 1d10 damage, potentially reduced by half physical damage, instead of the base damage of the spell. |
| Turn to Stone | Petrifies targets. Against players, begins delayed stoning. This is blocked entirely by petrification resistance, or reduced to 1⁄10 with a lizard corpse in open inventory. Against monsters, they are instantly turned to stone if they lack stoning resistance. However, if they have an item that would cure stoning in open inventory, such as potions of acid or lizard corpses, they will consume it instead of being petrified. |
| Slimify | Slimes targets. Against players, they begin to turn into slime with 10 turns to live. Against monsters, they are turned into a green slime instantly. Against either players or monsters, has no effect if the target is immune to sliming due to slime resistance, being fiery, or anything else that would normally block sliming. |
| Silver Rays | Strikes targets with silver rays, trying to deal damage of a type they are vulnerable to. Tries twice to strike targets with rays, targeting touch AC but otherwise behaving like normal ray, beam, or breath attacks for accuracy, despite being a single-target effect. Damage dealt is applied for each ray that hits, dealing no damage if neither ray connects. The rays deal 1d20 damage each of a type and will both choose the first type available, and damage is always reduced by half spell damage. The types possible are silver, unblessed, unholy, holy, fire, shock, cold, and acid damage. Fire and cold are prioritized if the target has the other resistance, being placed just after silver in the priority list, due to fire/cold damage having a 3⁄2 damage multiplier against those targets generally. Unblessed, unholy, and holy damage also deal an extra 1d8, 1d9, or 1d7 damage respectively per ray. Fire, cold, shock, and acid damages can also damage inventory items. Fire damages potions, scrolls, and spellbooks, cold and acid damage potions, and shock damages wands. If none of these damage types apply, the rays become physical damage instead, being reduced by DR and half physical damage on top of the reduction from half spell damage. |
| Golden Wave | Washes over targets with golden light, trying to deal damage of a type they are vulnerable to. Functions identically to Silver Rays, but replaces the two 1d20 damage rays with a guaranteed 2d12 damage of varying type. Damage type is chosen by the same rules and has the same bonuses, reductions, or side effects as Silver Rays. |
| Spatial Fling | Flings targets in a random direction, hurtling them 8 spaces. This functions similarly to hurtling from throwing items while levitating or in zero gravity, but does not apply a movement penalty to player targets. However, in addition to being thrown back, monsters are stunned and have lose 10 movement points. This movement will never launch you directly at the spellcaster if they're already adjacent to you, but otherwise has no directional restrictions. |
| Spatial Rend | Space warps into blades around the target, dealing damage equal to the base damage of the spell. This damage is capped at 100, and reduced by both half spell damage and half physical damage. |
| Red Word (spell) | Red truths are whispered to the target, potentially driving them insane. Against the player, deals sanity damage and causes you to panic. The sanity lost and number of turns are the same and are based on the amount of clothing you are wearing. Each filled armor, ring, amulet or blindfold slot has a penalty of 1, with cloaks counting for 3 instead. Certain kinds of armor apply extra penalties. The penalties are identical to the ones constantly applied by the nudist madness, but are one-time and independent of actually having that madness. If you have no equipment on, or already have the knowledge of the Red Word, this has no effect. Against monsters, this crazes them, causes them to flee, and causes them to begin to disrobe and throw their armor away. Deaf monsters are immune to this affect, and all monsters have a chance to resist based on monster MR. |
| Area of Effect Offensive | |
| Fira | Creates a radius 1 explosion centered on the targeted square. This deals fire damage equal to the base damage of the spell, capped at 60, dealing damage and destroying inventory items subject to the same rules as normal fiery explosions from spells of fireball or other sources. |
| Firaga | Similar to Fira, but creates 3 explosions instead. Each explosion deals damage equal to the base damage of the spell, but caps at 30 instead. In addition, each explosion is randomly shifted up to one tile away from the targeted square. This means that the explosions will always include the targeted square but may not be centered on it. The explosions follow the same other rules as Fira. |
| Blizzara | Identical to Fira, but deals cold damage. |
| Blizzaga | Identical to Firaga, but deals cold damage. |
| Thundara | Identical to Fira, but deals shock damage. |
| Thundaga | Identical to Firaga, but deals shock damage. |
| Acid Blast | Identical to Fira, but deals acid damage. |
| Flare | Causes 4 physical damage explosions around the target square. The base damage of the spell is capped at 60, and the first three explosions deal 1⁄3 of the capped value, with the final explosion dealing the full capped damage. The first three explosions are also randomly shifted like Firaga, Blizzaga, or Thundaga, and are all radius 1, but the final explosion is radius 2 and is always centered on the target square. The explosions are colored as cold, fire, or physical damage, but are always physical damage. |
| Prismatic Spray | Causes 7 randomly typed explosions around the target square. The base damage of the spell is reduced to 1⁄10 of its former value, and then capped at 7, with each explosion dealing this capped damage. The explosions are all randomly shifted like Firaga, Blizzaga, or Thundaga. The damage types are chosen randomly out of fire, cold, shock, acid, poison, disintegration, or physical. Disintegration damage does not negatively impact items, but does check disintegration resistance for dealing damage. |
| Hypnotic Colors | Causes a hypnotic, paralyzing gaze at all monsters in line of sight that the caster is hostile towards. This gaze has a 1⁄3 chance to hit, regardless of AC, and paralyzes for 2d6 turns. This otherwise applies like any other paralysis gaze, and as such is entirely blocked by by being blind, the caster being blind, or gaze resistance, counting as a miss. In addition, the paralysis effect is resisted by free action, but resisting the gaze like that still counts as a successful hit. On successful hits, targets are mesmerized and pulled one square towards the caster. |
| Drop Boulder | Drops a boulder on the player. Has a 1⁄4 chance to drop a heavy iron ball instead. The iron ball can weigh either 480 or 640 aum, equal odds for each. This does damage equal to what the object would normally deal when hitting you. Wearing a hard helmet reduces this damage to a maximum of 2, and the damage is reduced by half physical damage in either case. If the spell targeting missed you, the item will drop to the ground harmlessly on the square it targeted, regardless of any monsters standing on that square. If cast against monsters directly, this spell is replaced with Psi Bolt instead. |
| Terrain Manipulation | |
| Poison Gas | Creates a cloud of poison gas on the targeted square. This cloud has a random radius, from radius 1 to radius 3, and deals 1d3+1 damage per turn. It otherwise behaves identically to any other cloud, such as the ones from the scroll of stinking cloud. |
| Solid Fog | Creates a cloud of solid fog on the targeted square. This is always radius 3. Clouds of solid fog deal no damage, but reduce the movement speed of any targets inside it, both player and monster, to 1⁄3 of their normal value. This is applied after any other movement speed effects. If cast by a Plumach Rilmani, this prevents them from casting any other spells for the next 1000 turns. |
| Tremor | Causes an earthquake centered at the targeted square. This earthquake does not summon monsters and has radius attacker level⁄6, capped at 8. |
| Earthquake | Causes an earthquake centered at the targeted square. This earthquake summons monsters only if targeted at the player, and has radius attacker level⁄3, capped at 24. |
| Healing & Buffs | |
| Cure Self | Heals the caster by 1d8 per dice per damage die of their normal casting. This cannot go above their maximum health. If cast by Chaos, heals him for 999 hit points. If cast by a summoned Elven Wraith, also heals their summoner by the same amount. If cast by the player, always heals 3d6 hit points. |
| Mass Cure Close | Identical to Cure Self, but also heals all monsters within 3 squares that are peaceful to the caster, potentially including the player. |
| Mass Cure Far | Identical to Mass Cure Close, but does not heal the spellcaster themselves. |
| Recover | Cures the caster of various ailments, including blindness, paralysis, sleeping, confusion, stun, berserk, disrobing, and slowness. If cast by the player, is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Haste Self | Permanently gives the caster intrinsic speed, for either players or monsters. For monsters, this also cures slowness. |
| Mass Haste | Identical to Haste Self, but applies to both itself and all monsters within 3 squares that are peaceful to the caster, potentially including the player. Instead of the effects of Haste Self, players affected gain 100 + 1d10 turns of very fast speed. |
| Protection | Gives all monsters within 3 squares that are peaceful to the caster, not including the caster itself, temporary protection up to the damage done. This protection functions identically to the protection spell when applied to players, and applies as negative stacks of study for monsters. When cast by peaceful monsters, only applies to the player if the caster is also tame. |
| Time Stop | Temporarily pauses time, granting the caster 1d4 extra turns of health regeneration and reduced any cooldowns or timeouts by the same amount. Any Uvuudaums on the level also benefit from the same effect - time is paused for everybody, but only the caster and Uvuudaums may benefit from it. If cast by the player, is replaced with Psi Bolt if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Invisibility (monster spell) | Permanently gives the caster intrinsic invisibility. |
| Summoning | |
| Summon Sphere | Summons a random elemental sphere. This has equal odds to summon a flaming sphere, freezing sphere, or shocking sphere. This is blocked by the active effects of a dimensional lock, or due to the summoned monster being extinct or genocided. If this spell is cast by the player or a tame monster, the sphere is generated tame. The sphere is always generated adjacent to the caster or as close as possible, and has a initial summon duration of 1d3 turns per spell damage die the caster possesses. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. |
| Summon Nasties | Summons up to player level⁄3 taken from the nasties list. This is a much expanded list from the vanilla counterpart, and uses similar rules. 9⁄10 of casts, or always when cast outside Gehennom, will use this summon list and quantity. If in Gehennom, has a 1⁄10 chance to instead summon demons identical to the Wizard of Yendor. This has a 1⁄20 chance to summon a demon prince, 5⁄20 (1⁄4) chance to summon a demon lord, and otherwise summons a random normal demon 16⁄20 (7⁄10) of the time. If a normal demon is summoned, there's an additional 1⁄4 chance to summon two of them. The monsters summoned will always match the alignment of the caster in either case. If generic monsters are summoned rather than demons, they are marked as permanent summons. Demons generated via the secondary casting method are not summoned and will not disappear when the caster dies. In either case, this still counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. |
| Summon Angel | Summons a random Angel monster, with alignment matching the summoner. If this is cast by an maddened angel or an alienist, it becomes Summon Alien instead. If this is cast by a fallen angel, it becomes Summon Devil instead. If this is cast by Lamashtu or one of her faction, then the summoned angel also becomes part of her faction. However, this is moderately unlikely to do either of those last two options, since Summon Angel will never be cast if the caster is located in Gehennom. Summoned angels are marked as permanent summons. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Summon Alien | Summons a random alien, choosing randomly from a list. The list includes shoggoths, hounds of Tindalos, hooloovoos, shambling horrors, stumbling horrors, wandering horrors, master mind flayers, edderkops, aoa, hunting horrors, byakhees, bebeliths, weeping angelss, and uvuudaums. Summoned aliens are marked as permanent summons. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Summon Goatspawn | Summons a random spawn of the Black Goat, choosing randomly from a list. The list includes giant goat spawn, swirling mists, ice storms, [thunder storm]]s, fire storms, deminymphs, dark young, and blessed. Summoned spawn are marked as permanent summons. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Summon Devil | Summons a random major demon, devil, or elemental depending on the alignment. Contrary to the name, the monster summoned is actually dependent on the caster's alignment. Chaotic casters get a random major demon, neutral casters get a random elemental, and lawful casters get a random devil. Alienist casters cast Summon Alien instead of any of these options. Summoned monsters are marked as permanent summons. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Summon Tannin | Summons a tannin. When cast by Pale Night, has a 1⁄6 chance to summon a teraphim tannah, otherwise a shalosh tannah. When cast by any other casters, always summons an akkabish tannah. Summoned tannin are marked as permanent summons. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Insects | Summons insects around the targeted square. Random insect class monsters are chosen, but this is replaced with arachnids if casted by a drow monster or player, and replaced by snakes if the first class chosen was genocided or extinct. Up to attacker level⁄2 creatures are created, minimum 3, and are spawned as close as possible to the target location. These creatures are marked as permanent summons. If they are spawned on the Astral Plane or Moloch's Sanctum, their base level is raised by 1d3 + 3 and their maximum health by 20 + their level. |
| Raise Dead | Summons undead monsters around the targeted square. Up to level difficulty⁄10 + 1d5 monsters are summoned. The monsters summoned are either pulled from nearby dead corpses and resurrected as zombified versions of that corpse, or randomly spawned with the same rules as normal graveyard spawns if lacking in corpses. If the caster is a non-fallen angel of any kind, the zombies are considered holy undead and will not grudge with living monsters like normal undead. Despite being a summon spell, created monsters are not marked as summons and will not naturally expire. This is not blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Psi Bolt if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Yellow Dead | Summons random Carcosa-aligned monsters, either undead or not, around the targeted square. Has even odds to generate a pack of mostly undead monsters with some Carcosan court attendants mixed in, or vice versa. If mostly undead monsters are chosen to generate, uses the same rules as Raise Dead but picks from the following list for summoned monsters: coiling brawns, fungal brains, dream leech humans or star-elves, or fulvous undead of the same races used for mummies. If mostly normal Carcosan attendants are chosen, uses the same rules as Summon Monsters but picks from the following list: byakhees, coiling brawns, fungal brains, skeletons, dream leech humans or star-elves, fulvous Madmen or Bard player monsters, Psurlon long worms or purple worms, flaxen starshadows, and Carcosian courtiers. All monsters spawned in either case are always set to a minimum level of 15, and their maximum health adjusted accordingly. This is not marked as a summon spell, and so created monsters are not marked as summons and this does not count against the number of summon spells in a global turn. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Time Duplicate | Summons a clone of the caster. This summon only lasts for 1d4 + 1 turns, and has identical attributes to the caster but generates with no inventory. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Double Trouble | Summons a clone of the Wizard of Yendor. The new Wizard is not marked as a summon, and has a random appearance before they take their first move. They appear as one of: human, marid, vampire, red dragon, troll, umber hulk, xorn, xan, cockatrice, floating eye, guardian naga, or trapper. If there's already more than 1 Wizard of Yendor in existence, no more will be summoned. This counts as a summon spell, and is blocked by the effects of a dimensional lock. If cast by the player, is replaced with Open Wounds if there are appropriate targets available, otherwise is replaced with Cure Self. |
| Debuffs | |
| make visible | |
| aggravate | |
| darkness | |
| stun you | |
| confuse you | |
| paralyze | |
| blind you | |
| nightmare | |
| drain energy | |
| evil eye | |
| curse items | |
| vulnerability | |
| weaken stats | |
| weaken you | |
| sterility curse | |
| mummy curse | |
| Cancellation (monster spell) | Identical to the effects of zapping the target with a wand of cancellation. This is not the same as the player zapping themselves when cast against the player, but rather the effects of any other monster zapping the player. |
| destroy armor | |
| destroy weapon | |
| strangle | |
| incarcerate | |
| punish | |
| nail to the sky | |
| Trapping Spells | |
| make web | |
| beartrap (monster spell) | |
Strategy
Managing line of sight
Monsters casting at the player out of your range are one of the most lethal types of hazard in dNetHack. If you are unable to quickly silence the caster, casters without cooldown (or even with) can easily get out of hand. This is most prevalent in Gehennom, where casters capable of summoning more hostiles can quickly bog you down so that you'll never reach them. The solution to this is to carefully manage your lines of sight, as most casters will not try to cast spells at you if they cannot see you.
Monsters try to determine your position based off where they last saw you. If they can still see or sense you, and they're not crazed, they will always know where you are, before your location is blurred via displacement. If they lose sight of you, but you haven't actually moved since they last saw you (they might have moved, or a light source was turned off or on), they will also know where you are. Otherwise, they will remember the previous location they saw you in as your current position, and consider it a valid targeting position until they attempt to attack it and fail.
The issue here lies with the 'attempt to attack'. Specifically, when casting spells, if the monster failed to cast the spell due to you being not there (either due to attacking a displaced image, or because you simply moved away and they were attacking a remembered location, they will realize their mistake and no longer try to cast spells at you. However, this only applies if the spell actually failed because you moved. Summoning spells, buffing spells, or area of effect attack spells will not fail on attacking a square you're not on, because they require a target location instead of target monster/player. This means that even after breaking line of sight, a caster will always get at least one more cast off, and if that cast does not fail possibly even more.
The safest way to avoid this situation is to preemptively avoid line of sight with enemy casters, or minimize the time you spend in line of sight otherwise. With luck, most casters will fail once and not try to attack you again and you can wait for them to come closer. Sessile casters, like embraced drowesses, can't be baited like this but will still respect the typical targeting rules.
In most situations, breaking line of sight is doable by walking around a corner. On some situations, this is not possible - for example, if you're camped on a warded upstair fighting a boss monster, and you'd really rather not leave. In that situation, it's possible to break line of sight via boulder fort to minimize the number of casters targeting you, or just deal with the casters another way (ranged attacks, conflict, etc.).
Blocking spellcasting
As in NetHack, cancellation can remove a monster's casting ability if successful. Monster spellcasting can also be blocked via the following methods:
- Antimagic rifts block magical casting for several turns, which includes the character's own casting if they use intelligence as their spellcasting attribute. The base duration of an antimagic rift is 50 turns, with additional rifts adding an amount of turns equal to 1⁄10 of the previous duration rounded down, i.e. 50 turns, then 55, 60, 66, etc.
- Catapsi vortices block psionic casting for several turns, which includes the character's own casting if they use charisma as their spellcasting attribute. The base duration of a catapsi vortex is 100 turns, with additional vortices adding an amount of turns equal to 1⁄10 of the previous duration.
- Misotheistic pyramids and misotheistic fragments block clerical casting for several turns, which includes the character's own casting if they use wisdom as their spellcasting attribute. The base duration of misotheistic pyramids and fragments are 33 turns, and additional pyramids and fragments add an amount of turns equal to 1⁄10 of the previous item's duration, which is shared between both item types. If a misotheistic item is used anywhere that your god's influence can be felt normally, your god will have their anger increased by 1 and smite you. If used by a Binder that is Void-aligned (i.e., not using a helm of opposite alignment), or else it is used within Gehennom or another area where the gods' influence is already blocked, your god will not be angered; the Void in particular cannot become angry by any means.
- If a misotheistic pyramid is used, you are given a form of darkvision that overrides all other sight-based intrinsic forms of vision for that duration, while excluding x-ray vision and other senses such as smell.
- If a misotheistic fragment is used, it will cause 'Shattering' for the duration of that effect, which gives monsters that are killed a 1⁄2 chance of "fracturing": this resurrects the monster and applies the 'fractured' monster template, making them unbreathing, undead and always hostile while boosting their current level by 4, and also gives them a weakness to the Elder Sign ward. Fractured monsters will remain fractured regardless of whether Shattering is active, and have the same 1⁄2 chance to resurrect when killed unless they are cancelled.
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