A cursed amulet of reflection will behave as an “amulet of absorption”: instead of reflecting rays, nearby ones that weren’t going to hit you get redirected towards you instead. Also, rays that hit an amulet of absorption wearer don’t continue past them.
Alternatively, add the amulet of absorption as its own item, and make it usually generate cursed like other “bad” amulets.
Conceptually separate breath weapons from rays, making them not trivially reflectable. Make it possible to suffer reduced effects from a breath weapon, with the size of a worn shield a factor in that reduction.
Possibly make dragon armor of the same type as a given breath weapon (e.g. red dragon armor versus fire breath) reflect that breath weapon, and only that one.
New magic beam trap, which fires a magic beam (probably implemented as a magic missile ray, or possibly a random ray type) from a fixed point several squares away in one of the eight directions towards the trap square.
Internally, the fixed point is stored in the trap’s launch coordinates, and the ray type should probably be stored as the appropriate wand type in launch_otyp.
Remove sleep as a ray. Sleep wands (and monsters with sleep breath like orange dragons and Nazgul) instead shoot a beam of sleep. The sleep spell either also shoots a beam of sleep or causes sleep in an area of effect. Sleep could also possibly be a cone, spreading out in the direction it’s shot in, but cone spells remain unimplemented.
Fire and Frost Brand can be invoked for powerful fire and cold bolts.
The healing spell is a ray. Monsters will cast it on allies, but they might also hit you. But now that it’s a ray, it’ll bounce off you if you have reflection.
The spell of light has an advanced form, which is a ray. It blinds monsters it is fired at like a camera flash does. (The camera flash is also transformed into a ray, which can be reflected.) In Wands Balance Patch-implementing variants, the wand of light should also have this effect for skilled users.
Beams and rays from wands have a slightly reduced range if the wand is cursed, and a boosted range if it is blessed.
Disintegration rays have a small (on the order of 5% or 10%) chance of destroying the player’s reflection source instead of reflecting. This terminates the ray, so the player can’t get hit twice by it.
Cold rays are colored light blue, to be distinct from lightning.
Lightning spells:
Magic missiles, and possibly other rays, stop at the first creature they hit and don’t continue to other creatures behind it. Possibly this should only happen on the first magic-resistant creature and “the missiles bounce off” (they clearly aren’t bouncing off in the same exact direction they were traveling before hitting the target, and the message implies they scatter harmlessly).
Higher wand skill makes the shooter’s wand rays harder to dodge.
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.
Fire and cold should both work as a cone, and should spread out over distance and possibly hit multiple targets, but with damage decreasing over distance.
Rays should reflect erratically or not at all from non-wall rock terrain, Walls are smooth, but rock is rough.
