Enhance Minetown with a bunch of new NPC denizens:

• Dwarven trainer: found in a largish room.
  • Chatting to him makes him ask if you want to train, for a fee. If you say yes and pay it, he shouts “Defend yourself!” and begins to fight with you. This lasts until you chat with him again. While you are in this training fight, neither of you deal damage to the other one, though you can still deal damage normally to other things.
  • If you don’t want to train, he offers to teach you how to disarm for a large sum of money. Disarming is a technique you can use with the #disarm command after you have learned it from him. Possibly, it unlocks a “disarming” skill that you can’t get elsewhere. When you use the disarm command, you are prompted for a direction to pick an adjacent monster. The monster must be wielding a weapon, and you must have some minimum amount of skill in your weapon (which can be martial arts). The chance of success is 20% base, +1% per point of Luck (or -1% per negative Luck), +5% for every skill level above Unskilled you are in either your weapon skill, or the disarm skill, +2% per level you have over the monster, and -2% per level the monster has over you.
• Elven enchantress: Mutually exclusive with the trainer. Chatting with her prompts you for an item to enchant.
  • Items that are not naturally enchantable with enchant scrolls get refused.
  • Artifacts or items at their maximum enchantment get refused; she gives a line about how it is already surrounded by powerful magic and she dares not attempt it.
  • If the item is damaged, it gets repaired, for a modest amount of money per level of damage.
  • If the item is undamaged but not blessed, it gets blessed, charging a slightly higher amount of money.
  • If the item is blessed and undamaged, its enchantment is increased by 1, charging a larger amount of money that scales in direct proportion to the preexisting enchantment on that item.
  • She possibly fooproofs the item if it’s at maximum enchantment.
• Dwarven innkeeper: also found in a large room.
  • Chatting to him has him offer you an ale, for either 5 zorkmids or the appropriate buy cost of a potion of booze, and accepting produces the effects of an uncursed potion of booze, as well as identifying the potion of booze. 50% of the time, he also gives you a random rumor as if from an uncursed fortune cookie. (Criticism of this is that on-demand confusion makes several early-game challenges involving confused effects of scrolls trivial.)
  • He will also offer you a room to stay the night if the Watch is not angry at you, for either $50 or the cost of a potion of full healing. Accepting fully heals you (or produces the effects of an uncursed potion of full healing, without identifying the potion since one wasn’t involved). Not specified how it should deal with the time you are sleeping, whether that means literally putting you to sleep or something else.
• Old gladiator: found 1/3 of the time, possibly in the inn; chatting to him produces some old battle stories and a request for an ale (same price as if you were buying it yourself). The first time you buy him an ale, he will teach you a random weapon skill. Subsequent times he only thanks you drunkenly for the drink.
• Aged traveler: found 1/3 of the time, possibly in the inn, mutually exclusive with the gladiator; chatting to him has him offer to tell you the depth of the Oracle level for 50 zorkmids, or offer to “teach you some things he’s learned in his travels” for 1000 zorkmids, which acts like a blessed potion of gain level, but is not available after you get it once. Alternatively, he could teach you several random item identities.
• Dirty drunk: found 1/3 of the time, possibly in the inn, mutually exclusive with the gladiator and traveler.
• Bar brawler: found in the inn, interacting with him in any way will make him angry and start a fight. You’re allowed to fight but not kill him (which would anger the Watch), and you can pacify him by putting him to sleep, paying him off, beating him close enough to death to make him give up, or whatever. If the fight breaks out in the inn you owe the innkeeper money for broken furniture.
• Criminal or mugger: chatting to them makes them aware of you and they will try to steal from you later.
• Merchant: Wanders around Minetown, slightly weaker than a shopkeeper. Will sell you food rations at the standard price. Criticism of this is that an unlimited source of food rations is unbalancing and makes a delicatessen obsolete. To add balance, he might have a limited quantity of them to sell, but then he is still kind of pointless.
• Beggar: Has one randomly generated item, which he will sell at either its standard price or a discount. Most of the time this won’t be useful, but occasionally it could be something good.
• Bureaucrat: sits alone in a small room. Chatting with him makes him sneer at you, “I’m busy”. However, if the Watch is angry, he will offer to take a large amount of gold from you to pacify them.

A secondary proposal is to make some of the denizens who teach you things actually useless a random amount of the time. For instance, the gladiator is a liar who’s good at spinning stories and not much else, or the aged traveler is a charlatan who gives misinformation, abusing Wisdom or sapping your experience points.

Weapons have a very small chance per hit of breaking, to make it a memorable event when it happens.

• Blessed, positive enchantment, or an artifact: never breaks.
• Uncursed and +0: 1/32000 or 1/32768 chance of breaking.
• Cursed or negative enchantment: 1/1000 chance of breaking.
• Chance is multiplied by 20 if the weapon is thrown and did not hit a monster.

Blows that do 10 or more points of damage have a 1/1000 chance of knocking a worn helm off the target’s head (presumably onto the floor beneath them, but it could also be sent flying as well.)

Spell of disarming, a level 2 attack (possibly matter) directional spell, which disarms the first monster it hits, causing the weapon to drop. At Skilled and above, it makes the weapon go flying in the direction the spell was directed.

Grandmaster skill in martial arts allows you to shatter enemy weapons like two-handed weapons do.

Monks, or anyone skilled in martial arts, can kick weapons out of an enemy’s hand.