When a mind flayer removes the grease from your helm, its round immediately ends because it has to clean off its tentacles before attacking again.
Occasionally when fighting in melee with a weapon you are Expert in, not twoweaponing, and there is no special artifact effect already in play, you get some special benefit of that weapon type. ( Ideas:
Occasionally when you try to attack a python in melee, you instead swap places with it and get the message: “It slithers around you; S, @ = @, S.” (replacing the @ with the hero’s glyph if they are different). This is a reference to multiple variable assignment in the Python language.
If the hero can be represented by S themselves, the displacement never happens, because S, S = S, S is not syntactically correct in some versions of Python (though it is in current versions).
Weapons have a very small chance per hit of breaking, to make it a memorable event when it happens.
Wielded wood and plastic weapons (and possibly glass) block passive shock attacks, since they are non-conductive. Plastic could block 100% of the time and other materials less so, mainly to give a fringe benefit to a material that’s normally pretty underpowered.
The passive attack only gets blocked if you actually used the weapon to make your attack: if you’re polymorphed into something with a weapon attack and a bite attack, for instance, the bite will still subject you to the passive shock.
Parrying Dagger, an artifact dagger which when wielded may automatically counterattack an incoming melee weapon attack, deflecting it so it doesn’t hit and making an attack with itself that does sneak attack damage.
Jousting is treated as a bonus action which does not cost the player anything, and does not strictly require making a melee attack. In order to joust, you must be 1) riding while wielding a lance, and 2) move in the same direction twice in a row with an enemy lined up at the end of the 2nd move. When this happens, the enemy is attacked automatically.
Wearing the “fencing gloves” type of gloves gives you a +1 to-hit bonus in melee combat.
Barbarians who go into berserk mode start attacking multiple targets in an arc as if wielding Cleaver.
You can apply an equipped small shield (or possibly other types of shields) to attack a monster with a shield bash. This could be treated either like a blunt weapon attack, or more likely as a special effect which has a chance of stunning the target. Stunning odds could be higher for either more martial-based roles, or could use a shield skill and scale with that.
Piercers can actively perform their falling attack from an adjacent space, rather than passively waiting for the player to step onto their space. After falling, they can only make a weak claw attack against the player, and instead of engaging will try to pathfind to a wall. Once they get adjacent to a wall, they return to the ceiling and become able to use their falling attack again.
A further change to make them more interesting than just discovering them and hitting them would be to make them too high to hit in melee while on the ceiling, unless the player is in a Huge form or larger.
More flavorful messages that get printed when you make a critical hit. Suggested ones include “You cut off foo’s arm!”, “You plunge your sword into the heart of foo!” “You cut off the head of foo!”, “You bash foo’s skull into pieces with your weapon!”
There may be some trickiness in implementing these, as most messages assume something about either the player’s weapon or the monster’s body.
Add a monster spell, only cast at range 2 or 3 away from the player (not adjacent). A successful cast means the monster makes a single melee weapon attack against you. (Probably any passive attacks by the player should not happen.)
When attacking certain amorphous monsters (could be just puddings and gelatinous cubes, but also maybe jellies and other blobs) in melee, it is possible for your weapon to get stuck in the monster, yanking it out of your possession and putting it in the monster’s inventory. Unless, of course, the weapon is cursed.
When a creature is completely surrounded by enemies that have hands, or is completely surrounded by enemies that have hands except for squares it can’t safely move to (like walls, or water that it would fall into), every attack made against that creature is an automatic critical hit. This is to make it more difficult to just wade through a sea of monsters while ignoring most of their hits, and incentivize having pets to surround an enemy with.
Possibly, do a lesser version of this (critical hits only some of the time) when a creature is almost but not completely surrounded. Though it should probably require a certain amount of adjacent enemies or something; two opponents facing off in a straight, empty passageway shouldn’t count as “almost completely surrounded” by the walls.
Several issues have been pointed out with this system if implemented naively: getting “surrounded” by two monsters in a corridor or being surrounded instantly with summon nasties or a cursed scroll of create monster could pretty much spell instant death. The original idea was that being surrounded basically amounts to being held down so that all hits have maximum accuracy.
Revamping melee weapons:
hash(monster id + (turns / 10)) % 10 == turns % 10, lose HP due to bleeding on this turn.)Revamped combat system:
Scare system that works on the player: the game tracks a list of monsters (or monster IDs) you are currently scared of and for how much longer you are afraid of that monster. You cannot attack a monster you are scared of in melee, nor can you use a ranged attack towards it when you can detect it in the line of fire, nor can you move directly towards it. (Trying to do any of these things won’t cost a turn.)
Wielding a one-handed weapon with nothing in the offhand will double the damage bonus from Strength (but not weapon damage or other bonuses).
The player can shove things, dealing no damage but pushing the monster back. The monster can resist and fail to be shoved; it will resist a lot if the terrain you’re trying to shove it onto is bad for it (like water). You can only shove if you have hands, and you cannot do it to small or tiny monsters. Possibly an AT_SHOV attack should also be introduced for monsters to shove the player.
One-and-a-half-handed weapons that are capable of being used either one-handed or two-handed. They default to two-handed if the player is not wearing a shield or twoweaponing. They have better damage stats than pure one-handed weapons, but the damage is reduced if it is used one-handed.
If your legs are unwounded and free, Skilled or better martial arts has a chance of dealing a kick instead of a punch. This has a small to-hit penalty but has better damage. If you want to always punch, you can either attack with F or set an option which prevents you from kicking.
At some skill level (Skilled or Expert or maybe even Master) martial arts gives you two attacks.
When you are polymorphed into a monster with a stealing attack, you shouldn’t be able to make a normal attack and also steal something at the same time. Perhaps the stealing attack should only be made when you are barehanded, though this could interfere with martial arts.
Hitting monsters with a non-cursed unicorn horn cures them of status afflictions. Hitting them with a cursed horn gives them status afflictions.
You can apply a spear to hit things two spaces away like an unskilled polearm.
Allow configuration of a list of monsters that the player should be prompted to confirm fighting before automatically attacking by moving into them. Fighting with F bypasses this check.
Also, possibly add an option to make this behavior happen for any monster.
While wielding a polearm, moving orthogonally towards an enemy that is 3 spaces away (making it 2 spaces away, after the move) makes a free attack on that monster.
Warn the player before they melee a monster with passive attacks.
Bows might break, like boomerangs, when you whack things with them in melee. (Will require an AI rewrite so 500 gnomes don’t break their bows on you.)
Expert and higher martial arts lets you hit twice, but only if your first attack hits and you are wearing no shield.
While wielding a polearm and attempting to move in a direction where there is a monster 2 spaces away (and no monster 1 space away), attack with the polearm instead of moving. Also attempt an attack for monsters 2 spaces away diagonally if polearms are Expert. To hit a monster a knight’s move away, it still has to be applied. If preceded by the m key prefix, move into the space normally and don’t try to attack.