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).
Make the Wizard of Yendor naturally magic-resistant, so that he cannot be defeated trivially by a death ray, but compensate by removing his Double Trouble ability. The current state of affairs is somewhat like a lottery in whether you will be facing him with magic resistance or get unlucky enough for him to duplicate, leading to a lot of variance in how hard the ascension run is.
If the Wizard of Yendor has magic resistance and is immune to death rays, he will never cast Double Trouble.
The dunce cap inhibits spellcasting (on top of the low intelligence it provides; not specified if it should entirely block spellcasting or just make it very difficult) but also provides magic resistance when worn. This is to add diversity of non-artifact magic resistance builds for non-spellcasters, and also to allow people to give magic resistance to pets that are incapable of wearing cloaks.
MR should cut the duration of temporary elemental vulnerability that you get by having a monster cast it at you.
Randomize the set of “critical” extrinsics and the base items that provide them in each game. I.e. instead of every game having a cloak of magic resistance, ring of free action, and amulet of reflection, the game could have a ring of reflection, a cloak of free action and an amulet of magic resistance.
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.
Track a “magic resistance-less” conduct. It’s not actually broken by obtaining magic resistance at any point; it is only broken when magic resistance changes or negates an effect such as a polymorph trap or touch of death.
Ring that provides magic resistance, but hinders your own spellcasting while you wear it by increasing your spell failure rates. Additionally, it gradually drains your magic energy while being worn. If you have no energy, the ring stops providing magic resistance.
An artifact often gifted to Barbarians which provides magic resistance and half spell damage but prevents Pw from regenerating. Or assign these properties to the Heart of Ahriman, which makes it good for Barbarians as they rarely cast spells.
All Riders have intrinsic player-style MR, making them immune to death rays, but summon insects and summon nasties don’t work on the Astral Plane.
Make Quest nemeses death-magic resistant.
Split curse resistance off from magic resistance. Curse resistance is granted only as an extrinsic by a couple of artifacts, including Magicbane, and ‘‘maybe’’ some mundane item that isn’t any good otherwise (a mummy wrapping?), and behaves like Magicbane’s curse resistance does currently (“You feel a black aura surround the [item].”) Half spell damage without curse resistance no longer helps limit the number of cursed items, and a curse may still manage to bypass resistance, with current probabilities. There could also be an amulet versus curses.
Split up the effects of magic resistance, as it is too extensive. It protects against magical force, death magic, teleportation, polymorph, etc.
