New role based on a “loup du noir” archetype, possibly called the Lycanthrope - you start with a pelt, a new sort of cloak-slot armor that polymorphs you into a specific type of monster when you wear it. You also are inflicted with some sort of delayed lycanthropy - you won’t randomly polymorph into a monster like with standard lycanthropy, but after not using a pelt for a while, you do start feeling the urge to put one on, and if you still refuse, you are eventually compelled to put one on. (It isn’t specified what happens if you get rid of your pelt(s) by the time you would be compelled to wear one; possibly you just die from insanity, or else the addiction is implemented in some other way like continuous worsening HP damage.)

The form you get from wearing a pelt has some boosted stats from the base form - in particular, your carrying capacity and damage would be better than the stat blocks for the monsters suggest.

You could start with either a “default” pelt which is not very good, but can be turned into an ideal one later, or start with a specific animal’s pelt, which you can control with the pettype option. This role never starts with a pet.

Pelts might also work as a standalone concept or one that works with a druid, ranger, or caveman role:

• You can obtain a pelt by using a knife to skin the corpse of some monster that would reasonably have a pelt. This will probably be an occupation, and either its time or success rate will vary based on your knife skill and if you have a role-specific bonus.
• By using some sort of magic (instead of it being inherent to a role), you can transform into the animal whose pelt you are wearing.
• Pelts confer some benefit when worn as a cloak besides the ability to polymorph, which varies depending on the monster species, such as a boost to damage.

A new role (or possibly just a new mechanic attached to something like Infidel) flavored on being a cultist. The key feature is being able to create a summoning circle on the ground and somehow expend corpses inside that circle to summon a pet; better pets can be gained at higher levels or with more powerful monsters’ corpses.

Implement “special abilities” for each role that behave like (or simply are) techniques, but which would probably use the #monster command. These include:

• Monks’ ability continuously doubles their martial arts damage (i.e. x2, x4, etc) for as long as they keep landing hits within one action. Missing or declining to attack breaks this effect.
• Wizards can extract magic from the air, which drains Pw from enemies and gives it to the hero.
• Tourists can throw a party, which pacifies everyone within some range until someone takes damage.
• Barbarians can buff their attack, perhaps by giving any weapon a Cleaver-like arc (though they often get Cleaver anyway).
• Archeologists can detect enchanted treasure (not just all objects) on the level.
• Priests don’t get a new ability because they already have one: turn undead.
• Valkyries can freeze an area near them, freezing water into ice and dealing cold damage to monsters that is higher the closer they are to the hero.
• Samurai can swap places with a hostile monster, dealing some damage and stunning them in the process.
• Cavemen can get a big boost to stone throwing/slinging range and damage, or can get some sort of “primal rage” that boosts speed and doubles all damage.
• Knights can give their steed a free attack after each hit they land on something (which can extend to dragon breathing if they are riding a dragon).

The other half of this idea is to give other unique abilities to each demon boss, but these aren’t specified.

Interestingly, using the #monster command implies that you can only use these abilities when in your normal non-polymorphed form.

In Cocytus (or possibly any levels with a “cold” temperature), corpses rot more slowly.

An object property that confers slow digestion.

To be more true to their source material, jabberwocks should randomly whiffle and burble when you are close enough to see/hear them doing it. Additionally, when Vorpal Blade is used to kill a jabberwock, it should go “snicker-snack!”

Wielding Tempest, in addition to its existing effects, protects you from being paralyzed by lightning on the Plane of Air. Also, when its area-of-effect lightning effect triggers, fog clouds and gas clouds around the center of the effect are destroyed or blown away, “clearing the air”.

Artifact horn of plenty that gives slow digestion when carried and never needs to be recharged; however, it never dispenses potions because allowing the player to get infinite potions is obviously not a great idea.

It’s been noted that an artifact such as this makes it so you never need food again, removes that aspect of gameplay, and should therefore probably only appear very late in the game.

Tourist trap: a trap that vanishes all of your gold, but only if you are a tourist.

When the player is on a water space, track whether they are submerged or swimming on top of the water. By default, entering water without the risk of drowning still puts you at the bottom, but you can use < to ascend to the top.

A primary effect of this is to establish consistency with what you can and can’t interact with while in water - it doesn’t make much sense that monsters standing on an adjacent land square, or monsters flying on an adjacent water square, can hit you in melee when you’re underwater, nor the other way around. If being on top or bottom of the water is tracked, these cases can be prevented, but care would have to be taken so that the hero can’t dive underwater and be completely safe and able to recover with impunity.

One possible mitigation (in addition to blocking an underwater hero from using melee attacks on adjacent monsters that aren’t in the water themselves) would be to make monsters that can’t currently attack the swimming hero avoid getting into melee range. Though this still wouldn’t deal with zapping them with spells from a safe distance.

Eating a wraith’s brain when polymorphed into a mind flayer should give you some experience points.

Wands should require being wielded before they can be zapped; this way it adds a bit more strategy for the player on when to wield a wand and which one, and balances them a bit relative to monsters. On the other end of the change, you now get a turn or two of warning when a monster is about to zap a wand, because they have to wield it.

Greasing your weapon prevents monsters from disarming it with a bullwhip (though the attempt may cause the grease to wear off it, like usual).

If you are an elf, you can read any object with “runed” in the description (e.g. elven spears, daggers, bows, and the runed wand). Though, elves will know the identities of most of these items by default, so they won’t appear “runed”, which might defeat the purpose.

In any case, the message should be something relatively inane, like “Made in [elvish sounding place]”.

The Oracle offers a service in which she reallocates some skills of your choice, costing some amount of money. Perhaps she can only skill you up to skill levels you formerly had before forgetting them, or else she can only make you forget skills (but you get to choose which unlike with amnesia).

A monster that emits non-persistent darkness in an area, just like how various monsters shed light in an area.

Various monsters have been suggested for this effect:

• Black lights are one that already exists; this would invert its current light radius of 1 into darkness.
• A shadow dragon.
• A darkness elemental, which in addition to shedding a radius of darkness, also permanently darkens squares it moves throught by removing the lit state.