Artifact chaotic helm Helm of the Underworld, modeled after Hades’ helm. Grants drain resistance, invisibility, magic resistance, and passive detection of buried objects (or phasing, if this is too difficult to implement) when worn. When invoked, it does a stronger version of the chaotic turn undead effect (rebuke or tame undead).
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.)
The Heart of Ahriman should do instakill when it is slung and hits a monster with a head who is not wearing a hard helmet. To encourage this, Barbarians should get Basic skill in sling.
To compensate for inevitable cheap deaths, any monsters that are too important to cheaply instakill via this method need to be given hard helms of some sort.
A headless race, “Akephalos/oi”, which has no head and its face on its chest, so it is incapable of wearing helms, and is blinded (and cannot drink potions) if a shirt or body armor is worn.
Also a dullahan/cephalophore race which Knights can play as. They are also headless and cannot wear helms, but they carry their head as an item and can place/throw it elsewhere. Vision is based on where the head is, so it is possible to leave the head somewhere and have the body moving around blindly in a different area of the map.
The Helm of Terror: an artifact which is some unspecified type of helm, which automatically frightens all living creatures that have eyes.
New artifact Apiarist’s Veil, a cloth hat, perhaps an elven helm or fedora, that gives warning of all insects and pacifies nearby bees.
New artifact The Stage Magician’s Gloves: some form of gloves, possibly special-cased to appear white. They allow you to use wands like a stethoscope, with one free zap per turn, and also confer magic resistance when worn. When invoked, if you are wearing a non-cursed hat or helm, you pull a random item or small or tiny monster out of your hat. If not wearing a hat you get YAFM.
Give starting pets some form of protection against zombies’ instakill bite attacks, likely by having them start wearing a hard helm or allowing the player to put one on them.
Helmet (or possibly blindfold) slot artifact named The Masque of the Read Death. Has some mechanic related to sickness.
Boulders falling on the player’s head deal more damage than they currently do, and they don’t really have their damage significantly reduced if the player is wearing a metal helmet.
Party hat, a conical hat which increases Cha by 1 if uncursed, 2 if blessed, and decreases it by 1 if cursed.
Customizable, player-named “hat” armor that uses a similar system to slime molds, except it is 0 AC helm-slot armor. Archeologist fedoras are set to this by default, and the fedora item is removed and replaced with the more generic “hat”, which is hard-set to fedora for Arc’s starting hat.
Rework hard helmet mechanics so that for large objects like boulders, they only take a few points off if anything.
A diving helmet item which confers magical breathing when worn.
