Sharply reduce the chance of thrown potions (and only potions) missing monsters, in order to make throwing them a more viable strategy; currently most thrown potions miss and shatter at the target monster’s feet.
There should be a way for the player to throw a potion in such a way that it deliberately smashes on the ground at a monster’s feet, rather than hitting the monster.
If you have high enough natural to-hit (i.e. not considering Luck), you should be able to consistently shoot small ammo through iron bars.
Make enchantments on launchers relevant without making them overpowered by adding their enchantment to damage (because projectiles already add their enchantment to damage): the enchantment determines the likelihood of getting +1 to multishot, unaffected by role or skill. This chance is given as either enchantment/(enchantment + 1), or enchantment/8.
If the enchantment is negative, the same formula is used on the absolute value of the enchantment to determine if multishot should be decreased by 1. If it is decreased to 0, you fail to shoot anything and waste your action.
Throwing “attack” potions (sleep, paralysis, blindness, etc) should either always hit the target, or hit the floor at the target’s feet (causing vapor effects) if it fails the to-hit roll.
Weapons have a very small chance per hit of breaking, to make it a memorable event when it happens.
New artifact Gauntlets of Throwing: unspecified base type, adds +1 to the multishot cap for thrown missiles only (not ammo fired from a launcher). When multishooting, only one actual item is thrown; the rest are temporary summoned copies of the one thrown with the same stats, which vanish after their flight is complete.
Ammo shot from launchers (but not thrown ones) should receive a damage bonus based either on Dexterity or on the launcher’s enchantment to compensate for the Strength-based damage bonus for thrown missiles or melee weapons.
Remove most specific skills for ranged weapons, reducing them to a set of bow, crossbow, sling, and “thrown” (including darts, boomerangs, thrown rocks, etc). When wielded, missiles are always treated as unskilled.
When priests attempt to throw edged weapons at something, the weapons/ammo often slips in the wrong direction as if they were cursed (even if they aren’t actually). Blunt weapons such as sling ammo or throwing Mjollnir might not have this restriction.
Artifact gloves that allow you to shoot your fists in a direction when you F-attack in that direction, letting you do your normal barehanded melee attack at a distance. This does not harm you; they automatically return afterwards.
Projectiles of any sort that pass over a web space may stop there and drop on the space, getting “caught in the web”.
Ring of increase range, which makes all beams, rays, and projectiles you fire travel farther than normal. Possibly chargeable.
Potion of marksmanship: grants a temporary +10 increase in accuracy, but only for ranged combat.
Certain monsters can intercept [some of] the missiles you shoot at them. This can involve catching arrows and other non-ammo things like spears, maybe even Mjollnir. It might be a good candidate to put on certain boss monsters or other “skilled combat” monsters such as the Yendorian Army.
If you are sufficiently skilled at a ranged weapon you are using (perhaps only Expert, possibly Skilled some of the time), you can shoot at non-tame monsters behind your pets and the ranged attack will pass through your pets’ squares silently without hitting them. (If there is no apparent non-tame monster behind the pets, it could either be assumed that you’re trying to hit the pets so the attack would hit them, or more generously it would just continue to pass through them.)
Objects flying through the air do not interact with a mimic that is currently mimicking something; they just pass through as if it weren’t there.
A Yendorian Army monster will never hit another Yendorian Army monster with a ranged attack, to cut down on them killing each other, and also because they ought to have good enough skill and discipline to avoid friendly fire.
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.)
The closer someone is to iron bars when attempting to shoot ammo through them, the lower the chance is of it hitting the bars.
Disable multishot if the player is shooting point-blank.
Allow all ranged attacks to be targeted at an arbitrary space. The space does not necessarily have to be in line with anything, but it should be hittable by your attack under normal circumstances, so it can’t be out of range. The ranged attack will fly along Bresenham’s line algorithm to reach its target.
If the player shoots or zaps something and there is a submerged or hiding monster the player doesn’t know is there in the way, it just flies past without interacting.
Players’ thrown items should, if they miss a monster, continue flying behind it. (It works this way for monsters.)
There should be three ways to interact with potions: drinking them, getting them splashed on the exterior of your body (e.g. having them thrown at you and hit you), and inhaling their vapors. These should all be fully symmetric between the player and monsters and have noticeable effects for most if not all potions.
The key missing one to implement is the “topical” potion effects. Currently, the only potion with topical effects is acid, and thrown potions only do vapor effects to the monster they hit, which is often weak and ineffective. Topical effects would probably be best implemented as working the same as quaffing the potion, or a bit weaker. This would also be useful for buffing potions that monsters throw at the hero: the vapor effects of, say, a potion of blindness are so short that it doesn’t make much sense for the monster to throw it rather than doing something else, but if blindness splashing in your eyes causes a significantly longer duration, it makes more sense.
Objects thrown at hidden monsters (whether the monster is hiding under something or an undetected mimic) pass right through the square as if no monster is on the square.
Bodkin arrows that have heavyshot (from DynaHack): instead of multishooting, they deal double or triple damage depending on how many you would have multishot otherwise.
“Piercing” object property, eligible on ammunition, which makes them not stop flying or break when they hit a monster, continuing on to possibly hit more monsters behind it.
Invoking the Longbow of Diana gives a temporary buff of “piercing”, in which all your projectiles (not only those fired from the bow) pierce through monsters and continue flying.
Frisbees, a plastic weapon using boomerang skill. Deals only 1d2 damage, but can fly in a straight line at extremely long range. Frisbees thrown at dogs might tame them.
If the player has glowy confuse-monster hands, ranged projectile attacks also work to confuse monsters, not just melee attacks.
Allow sufficiently skilled characters to multi-fire while levitating.
Ranged attacks get an accuracy bonus if you rested the previous turn.
When you throw ammo without the proper launcher, the game makes it clear that you’re doing it wrong, e.g. “You clumsily throw the arrow”. This also abuses Wisdom.
Rebalance multishot damage so that multishooting +7 projectiles doesn’t give a massive damage bonus over a single +7 melee weapon. Possibly only apply the damage bonus to the first projectile.
You have a small Dexterity-based chance of catching a potion thrown at you instead of having it break on you (this chance is zero if you cannot see the thrower.)
Creatures in pits are very hard to hit with projectiles.
Make more potions effective for throwing at monsters, first by making the vapor effects hit more than just whoever they were thrown at (i.e. splash effects), and then by making more potions have a vapor effect that affects monsters.
More variety in ranged unreflectable elemental attacks, as a sort-of-nerf to reflection (all ranged elemental attacks currently in the game are reflectable). For instance, have enemies shooting fire arrows at you.
When wearing gauntlets of power, thrown javelins (or other spear-likes) continue flying after hitting monsters, and may damage monsters standing further back.
Resolve the problem of having to double-enchant launchers and ammo and get double bonuses in one of two ways:
The game should ask to confirm when you try to throw something that is not intended to be thrown (for example, if you unwielded your bow and are now trying to throw arrows).
