Demo is the author of notdNetHack and is also a contributor to dNetHack
Wielding a beam or ray wand and hitting a monster with it should zap it for a distance of 1 in that direction (so the monster gets hit), and there should be a chance that it does not consume a charge.
Cavemen being illiterate makes a lot of sense, but forcing them to be illiterate is unlikely to make them fun to play when they’re already one of the least fun roles to play. So instead, the role should have mechanics that make them compatible with illiterate and a good choice if one is trying to win an illiterate game in particular. But they can also be prodded towards being illiterate by having them abuse alignment every time they read something (possibly only scrolls and books, not things like fortune cookies).
If the problem of differentiating cavemen as a role, both in flavor (e.g. having no clear inspiration from outside the game that is realized in the game) and in gameplay (e.g. not being good at anything that some other role isn’t already better at) proves intractable, the role should simply be removed.
It should be possible to define anti-spawn regions in a level, like how monsters will not generate in the Sokoban hole corridors but more general. It should still be possible for monsters to appear in specific places within such regions that are specified in the level definition, but monsters specified to appear in random places won’t, nor will any monster that generates after the level is created. This could be done by checking the anti-spawn regions in the makemon_rnd_goodpos function.
Write a Lua script that involves orcs spawning en masse and sacking Minetown - after an ordinary Minetown has already generated, so the attack happens during the game rather than before it. The neat thing about it is that it would be generic enough to be used in any Minetown, rather than being limited to the existing Orcish Town.
In variants that have differently-sized objects and inability to use items of the wrong size: An artifact armor piece, possibly gloves, that allows you to wield things that are one size larger than your current limit.
A spellcasting buff system for Wizards, in which learning a new spell grants you a point on a metamagic skill tree. Most options available on this tree provide incremental buffs to spells you cast with each point invested, with a maximum of 5 points. There are also capstone buffs that are binary.
The exact shape of the tree is not determined, but a list of potential incremental buffs is:
Possible capstone buffs include:
The Nazgul should each have a name and personality that slightly affects its behavior, sort of like the ghosts in Pac-Man.
Create a pool of unique “miniboss” monsters who do not randomly generate, but are eligible to spawn on the throne in throne rooms of sufficiently high level difficulty. The throne room audience could possibly also consist of monsters themed to whichever of the uniques generates in it.
When a god smites you, the pool of possible smites should vary according to the god’s alignment. Some examples:
Add a “coil of rope” object, a tool which can be used to act like a snare, and is dropped by rope golems.
Picking up objects manually should be a free, repeatable action. This is because autopickup is a free action, so it is optimal and tedious (but relevant if you are trying for a low-turncount game) to look at what’s on the square you’re about to move to, go into the options menu and adjust pickup_types and autopickup exceptions so you will pick up the things you want on that square, and repeat constantly every time you would have used the manual pickup command.
However, this does not fix the issue where autopickup will still allow you to pick up objects on squares you are going to be forced off, such as the gray stones on levelporters in Mines’ End.
The Longbow of Diana should put a floor on the amount of multishot arrows fired from it, so you always get a good multishot. The floor should maybe even just be set to the maximum possible multishot you can achieve.
When you wish for an artifact that already exists and fail to get it, the game should either hint at or outright tell you the location where the artifact was generated so you can go track it down.
Do this by saving the X, Y, and Z coordinates at which the artifact was created when it gets generated. If the artifact happens to get uncreated, like as part of level generation, the saved coordinates should be reset, because the artifact is then able to be generated again.
The game should play sounds (if on a supported platform) or at least provide the hook for playing sounds in several scenarios: wielding a cockatrice corpse, experiencing a psychic blast from a mind flayer, and one that plays constantly at low HP which is supposed to be annoying.
Various proposals for things to happen on St. Patrick’s Day:
You can quiver a wand; firing with the “f” command will then zap your quivered wand instead of throwing the wand.
If you try to teleport or kick the swap chest too many times, it changes from an object to a hostile monster (a green m) that is super strong, but if you somehow manage to kill it, it drops 2 random items that were inside the swap chest.
Archeologists see value indicators on weapons and armor that are not fully identified to get a vague idea of what they are. Examples given are “an extraordinary [weapon]” for a +4 weapon or “an average [weapon]” for a +0 weapon. At higher experience levels they may be able to identify the exact enchantment automatically. This is flavored as appraising the age and quality of antiques.
A slightly different implementation may make it non-guaranteed to see this, with the odds dependent partly on experience level but also on intelligence and luck.
A third proposal is that it doesn’t happen automatically, but they can get this indicator or identify the enchantment of a weapon by rubbing their touchstone on it.
A “slotlocks” option, taking a string which specifies the inventory letter slots you really do not want newly-acquired items to go into, such as the ones you usually reserve for key pieces of gear.
As an example, if you have OPTIONS=slotlocks:aGHsdy, no inventory items will
be placed on any of those letters until they are the only remaining open slots.
Once that happens, the first open slot in the string, “a”, will be filled,
unless you already put something in that slot, in which case “G” will be
attempted, and so on.
Adjusting items to different slots is not affected by slotlocks since it’s presumed you are deliberately putting an item in that slot.
A cloak which, if worn by a light-emitting monster, blocks them from emitting light. Also applies to the player if they are carrying a light source or polymorphed into a light-emitting monster.
If the Minetown Watch are hostile and subdue you (reducing you to 0 or low HP, or possibly only if you chat to them to surrender), they throw you in jail instead of simply killing you. This probably takes the form of a special jail level where you start out having regained your HP but have lost most or all of your possessions. The jail level is staffed with more watchmen (it could also be guards, but those are specifically guarding vaults).
There could be a variety of ways to escape:
Saddles can have object properties that apply to the animal wearing the saddle.
Monks are given some benefit or ability that enables them to get more benefit out of the ring of increase damage. This could be:
You should be able to jump to the location of a saddled pet, which causes you to attempt to mount it. If you fail the mount check, you fall off to a random adjacent square and may take extra damage on top of the normal amount for failing to mount a steed.
Add a system for casting ritual spells: more powerful and more expensive spells which have some esoteric effects you can’t get otherwise. The main differences between ritual and normal spellcasting are that they consume valuable, hopefully non-renewable components, take a number of turns to cast instead of taking effect instantly, and may require you to be in or set up certain circumstances.
Various ritual spells that have been proposed:
Ritual spells come in spellbooks like usual, but aren’t stored in your spell list. Instead, reading the spellbook prompts you if you want to begin its ritual and tells you the necessary ingredients and circumstances you need to satisfy as preconditions. If you meet all the conditions and answer yes, you initiate the ritual. (For simplicity, this should probably burn up / expend all the components instantly.) You cannot begin a ritual while in the process of casting another ritual; this should probably be implemented as a precondition.
Apart from the component cost, rituals act as a constant drain on your Pw until the ritual is complete. If something distracts you in the middle of the ritual, you can go take care of it and then resume the ritual as long as you have the Pw left to finish it. (You could also drink gain energy during the ritual.) The only way for a ritual to fail, possibly backfiring with bad effects, is for you to run out of Pw while it is incomplete.
In addition to its preconditions, each ritual also has some postconditions: common to all rituals is that you have been casting the ritual for at least some length of time, but there may be others, such as standing on the square where you began the ritual, or have another item, or kill a monster, or something. There may also be other conditions such as “moving off the space where the ritual started breaks and halts the ritual”.
Every time you stop casting a ritual (whether it succeeded or failed), it increments the spellbook’s spestudied field; the book will eventually disintegrate after casting it a certain number of times.
An Alchemist role, revolving around potions and alchemy, and likely requiring overhauls of several systems.
The invoke effect of the Philosopher’s Stone is heavily debated.
A really great Alchemist implementation would probably involve a full alchemy overhaul which adds herbs and fungi, harvesting ingredients from corpses, cooking, and interesting ways to combine everything. The challenge with making this is how to make the other stuff useful for other roles and not just the alchemist, and at the same time not overcomplicating the game with the new additions.
A Rogue-aligned artifact (either a first gift or a crowning gift) that is some sort of small blade whose invoke effect allows you to teleport behind nearby enemies and attack them, perhaps with bonus backstab damage for a short time. Or more powerfully, you instantaneously warp behind and backstab several different enemies within a radius of 10 or 12 from you all at once.
Horror Brand, an artifact weapon whose stats (including presumably its base item type) are randomly generated each game or even combines random aspects from various artifacts, like shambling horrors.
When an artifact wish fails due to the artifact already existing, communicate this clearly to the player, and then let them use the wish for something else.
You can buy indulgences from coaligned priests, which will remove or reduce god anger or negative alignment.
New clerical monster spell (possibly also a player spell) that creates a region of black storm clouds between the caster and target and moves across the map towards the target. The clouds block vision, can strike anything in or near them with lightning (though not intelligently), wet items on the floor beneath them and in the inventories of monsters beneath them, hit things with gusts of wind if those are implemented, and can spawn temporary lightning monsters that vanish when the cloud does.
Another variant of this idea is as a static cloud that can be targeted like a stinking cloud, probably as a level 7 spell (depending on how bad the lightning is).
Wearing gauntlets of dexterity allows you to quick-draw a wand (zapping any wand in your inventory as a half action, similar to applying a stethoscope - it costs no time but can only be done once per action).
Also, they allow you to use a container in inventory as a half action. For balance, you should probably only be able to do one half-action thing per turn.
If you get crowned on an altar, it becomes a throne which will give you one guaranteed wish, and then has no effect other than to make you feel very comfortable there. Not specified what will happen if the altar is in a temple with a priest tending it.
Some way to do a giant mass-cancellation which cancels every monster on the level without a chance of resistance or a saving throw, but also uncontrollably cancels every item on the level, including the player’s inventory and items in containers.
Dipping Frost Brand into water potions (or possibly any freezing-eligible potion, which is most of them) should freeze and shatter the potion. Likewise for Fire Brand, which should boil potions and ignite (but not explode) oil it’s dipped into.
By wielding a floating eye corpse and either applying it at monsters or hitting monsters with it, you can paralyze the monsters, provided they can see you. As a potential downside, you might paralyze yourself if you stumble or fall into a pit while wielding it while non-blind.
New artifact short sword, which is the first sacrifice gift for Rogues. It does extra damage based on the amount of gold carried in your inventory (or possibly your opponent’s inventory, though this would make it no better than a normal short sword on many monsters). The damage bonus eventually runs into diminishing returns so that the damage bonus doesn’t get too ridiculous.
A dungeon feature that massively improves your spellcasting success rates while you are standing on it.
Change the Rogue’s special spell to knock rather than detect treasure.
In variants that have the Pirate role, this would free up the spell of detect treasure to be their special spell.
Remove the player’s Intelligence as a factor in determining the outcome of a foocubus interaction. Instead, use Intelligence (or possibly Wisdom) rather than Charisma as the determining factor in whether they are able to say no to having a piece of armor removed.
Croesus generates wearing a random gold amulet (probably not change or strangulation, though).
Add whales, which can engulf you. Several of them spawn on the Plane of Water.
Sustain ability also gives stun and confusion resistance, and prevents you from studying books.
An artifact T-shirt that provides free action when worn, but only if no armor is worn over it.
Drinking booze reduces your memory retention of spells.
Lightning spells:
Give potions more side dipping effects:
Gillyweed: comestible that grants temporary intrinsic magical breathing when eaten.
Resistance rings, if worn while using barehanded ungloved combat, get a damage bonus of the elemental type they provide resistance to.
Generalize health food stores into a special type of role-specific shop. This shop isn’t an actual shop; it signals the level generator to transform it into a different specific type of shop depending on the player’s role. The role-specific shops contain role-helpful items like health food does for Monks. They can be found randomly generated with probability around 5%. If a role doesn’t have a specific type of shop associated, the shop becomes a general store instead.
Spell that creates temporary weapons and armor made of energy: good base stats, but no magical properties, and vanish after some amount of time. Not defined whether they should be enchantable; probably they should but the enchantment will vanish along with the rest of it.
New artifact: The Trident of Poseidon. Chaotic (only because Poseidon is in-game). While carried, grants magical breathing, swimming, and protects items from water damage. When wielded, confers water walking. Double damage versus aquatic monsters, and gets a damage bonus versus all that scales with the amount of water squares adjacent to you. Invoke to get an UnNetHack-style flood.
Give a YAFM when near or chatting to a hallucinogen-distorted leprechaun: “They’re after me lucky charms!”
Homemade tins give the minimum of the corpse’s nutrition and 50 nutrition. This is to prevent silliness like a killer bee corpse giving 5 nutrition when eaten but magically giving 50 after being tinned.
Status effect that temporarily lowers all attributes to 3.
Frost lamp, a tool which gives out a radius 3 cold aura. Water and lava within the radius freeze and then revert once out of the radius. Fiery monsters take damage from being in the radius. Eventually runs out and has to be recharged.
Very powerful artifact armor that cannot be removed without dying. If you take it off, polymorph out of it, or have it removed by a monster, you die.
Reflavoring of Heaven or Hell mode: everything explodes when it gets hit by anything. A.k.a. “HackSplosion”.
Demon lords that accept a bribe don’t actually go anywhere. They get out of the way to the stairs if they were previously in the way, but otherwise they have their movement points set to 0 and cease warping for as long as they are peaceful.
Artifact shield of reflection that reflects thrown or fired projectiles.
Add a mechanic like applying a scalpel to a monster to cure its ills to give healers a way to heal monsters that isn’t tied to magic.
Kicking a lightweight object into a wall will cause it to “rebound” or “clatter” (for wooden objects) off the wall, not just “Thump!”. The object might move a couple spaces.
Monster spell that creates a wall, or possibly just a boulder, to block the hero’s progress.
A Necromancer role which includes: creating skeleton armies, binding the undead via rituals similar to the Binder, launching rocks that contain small petrified animals that transform into undead animals, bone chains, and encrusting undead minions with different jewels to grant them different powers.
The Watch should start with a small amount of gold, and throw it at a player of the opposite gender while the player is disrobing.
It should be possible to enchant dragon scales into dragonhide gear that is not scale mail.
