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:

• Some of the longer swords allow parrying monsters’ attacks.
• Mace or flail or morning star could stun or confuse targets
• Stiletto gives you automatic counterattacks sometimes.
• Spears can skewer through an enemy and hit another one directly behind it.

Wielded, lit lightsabers should confer reflection, either partial or full, at a certain skill level. Not helpful against missiles or beams, but useful against rays.

Charm monster is generally considered too powerful and too low-level, and should probably be nerfed. Ideas:

• It only works if you’re not wearing any armor. (This is apparently how D&D does it.) Alternatively, its chance of successfully charming is reduced the more armor you’re wearing.
• Make it more reliable than it is now, but it always fails if you have other pets. (You can then only have one pet at a time without using scrolls of taming.)
• It only tames one monster at a time. (Make it a directional beam with a maximum range of 1.)
• It only pacifies monsters, and can’t be used to tame an always-hostile monster.
• Make it do what the temporary pet code in the Bard patch does: the monster remains tame for a fairly short amount of time and then reverts to whatever it was originally.
• Split into three spells: pacify monster (peaceful for charisma*2 turns), charm monster (tame for Charisma*2 turns), and dominate monster (tame permanently or for a long time).
• It only works on monsters, and doesn’t work on intelligent beings.
• It can’t directly tame a hostile monster; it can only pacify it. Peaceful monsters can then be tamed by subsequent casts, but attempting to tame a peaceful intelligent monster may anger it instead. The pacification step is dependent only on monster MR, but the taming depends on the player’s level relative to the target. The scroll of taming should remain comparatively powerful.
• Scale with skill: unskilled attempts to pacify one adjacent monster, basic to pacify all adjacent, skilled to tame one adjacent, and expert to tame all adjacent. All of these are subject to normal monster MR checks.
• Whatever nerfs do get applied, they should ensure that the scroll of taming is more powerful and reliable than the spell.

Advanced spell forms are slightly problematic. Certain spells (fireball and cone of cold) which have advanced versions automatically kick in when the player is Skilled or above, and can’t be cast using the lesser form even if the player wants to.

• Some variants give you the choice of casting the basic or advanced form, but this suffers from an interface annoyance (an extra y/n prompt) and the fact that the advanced form counts as the same spell level so it is not actually any more difficult or expensive to cast.
• Advanced forms are castable even at Basic skill, but have a higher failure rate.
• The advanced form appears in the Z menu once you are Skilled.
• The advanced forms are implemented as higher-level never-generated spellbooks, e.g. “fire storm” and “frost storm”. Reading the basic spellbook automatically teaches you the advanced spell as well. This is dNetHack’s approach.
  • This allows you to balance them separately; in the case of fireball and cone of cold, the lesser spells could be dropped to level 3 or so and the advanced forms elevated to level 6.
• The advanced forms are broken out into completely separate spellbooks that must be discovered and learned separately.
  • This makes the balance of spellbooks a concern, since it would add more books of a certain school.
  • Both of the ideas that involve higher level spellbooks may create a problem with the Z menu only allowing 52 different spells if more advanced forms come along, not that that can’t be worked around.
• Skilled+ casting does nothing to the actual spell effects, but allows you to cast the spell mentally: you do not need to be able to speak or move to cast it.

Differentiate spellcasting greatly for the different types of spellcasters:

• Intelligence casters have a spellbook limited by their level, where higher level spells take up more space.
  • Specifically, they can store up to (10 + XL) levels of spells.
  • Higher skill in a spell’s school provides a discount: 1 level for Basic, 2 for Skilled, and 3 for Expert.
  • So for instance, a level 5 character has 15 spell levels available. If they know force bolt and are Unskilled in attack spells, that takes up 1 level. If they know cancellation and are Skilled in matter spells, that takes up 5 levels (7 - 2 because they are Skilled).
  • When they learn a new spell that cannot fit into their existing spell list, they are prompted to forget known spells until they have enough space, or decline to learn the new spell (which still uses up a read charge on the book).
• Wisdom casters always have all the spells they have learned available so long as they haven’t forgotten them, but are strictly limited in whether they can cast a spell of a given level by their skill in its spell school.
  • If Restricted in a spell school they can only cast spells of up to level 1. If Unskilled, up to 2. Basic, 3; Skilled, 5; and Expert, 7.
• Charisma casters (which only exist in a couple variants) always have all spells available to cast, but can never cast spells twice in a row; there is always a cooldown of (5 - skill) * 2 * spell level. (Skill ranges from 0 at Restricted to 4 at Expert.)

If you are Skilled or above in divination spells, you can passively sense when an item is magical like a Wizard can. (Wizards keep this benefit and don’t need to have Skilled divination for it.)

Some ways to scale some spell effects with skill. Generally, this consists of nerfing unskilled and basic casting rather than adding even more powerful high-skill effects.

• Beam spells such as knock and wizard lock scale the range of their beam with skill, with only a few squares at Unskilled, up to 4 squares at Basic, up to 6 at Skilled.
• Identify always identifies exactly 1 item when Unskilled.
• Light scales its radius with skill.
• Charm monster only pacifies 1 monster at Unskilled, and can only tame 1 monster at Basic, 3 at Skilled, no cap at Expert.

A SpliceHack spell to make splatters of blood have a use case. It causes blood splatters in a area scaling from 3x3 to 7x7 around the caster (depending on skill) explode, dealing physical damage to things caught in the explosions. Blood splatters on the floor are cleared, and new blood being caused by something dying might be suppressed if it becomes too easy to repeatedly cast this for lots of explosions.

As proposed, this would be a level 5 attack or matter spell.

If cast at Skilled or above, the spell of force bolt knocks back the first monster it hits (probably only 1 square like a monk’s staggering blow, or perhaps an Expert cast could provide additional knockback).

Wands of striking would not change since the Basic effects of the spell do not change.

Note that only two roles can cast force bolt at these levels: Knights (at Skilled) and Wizards (at Expert).

The drain life spell heals you with some of the HP you drained from your target, possibly even increasing maximum HP by one point if it is full (though this is probably too powerful).

The healing isn’t intended for anyone who can cast it; it would require you to have a certain amount of attack skill and possibly be chaotic.

The sleep spell has an advanced form, castable only at Expert, which creates area of effect sleep like a magic flute does.

The Tsurugi of Muramasa should allow Samurai to use additional “techniques” besides just bisection, with more becoming available with greater two-handed sword skill.

Reduce the spell level of magic mapping, but also reduce its utility: instead of mapping the entire level at once, you choose a point to center your divination on and a circular or square area, with a radius dependent on your divination skill, gets mapped. After this change, it might be similar enough to clairvoyance to be merged with that spell (the difference with clairvoyance is that it currently always centers on the player; perhaps the new merged spell could instead scale with skill by having a fixed mapping area, but the distance you can target it at increases with skill level.)

This does not change the scroll of magic mapping behavior, which still maps the whole level.

Certain high level spells require some minimum amount of skill in their school in order to be able to cast them at all. For instance, create familiar should be impossible to cast if you are not at least Basic in clerical spells, perhaps even Skilled, no matter what you do to improve your spellcasting odds.

Reaching Skilled in polearms allows you to use them in melee with no penalty.

Force bolt will dig one space if cast at skilled or expert and it hits a diggable wall.

Spell of disarming, a level 2 attack (possibly matter) directional spell, which disarms the first monster it hits, causing the weapon to drop. At Skilled and above, it makes the weapon go flying in the direction the spell was directed.

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.)

Address the spell of magic missile being overpowered for such a low-cost spell by scaling its number of dice on skill level rather than experience level. One solution is to give it 2d6 per skill level, though this means that starting Wizards can cast it for 4d6 damage, which is rather high. Another option is to make it scale on powers of 2: 1d6 at Unskilled, 2d6 at Basic, 4d6 at Skilled and 8d6 at Expert, which has the same respectable maximum as the linear system.

Note that a 4d6 magic missile at Basic for 10 Pw may not be considered too powerful for an early game Wizard (it’s statistically slightly better damage-wise than force bolt but also has the benefits of being a ray), but this is contingent on the existing Pw regeneration formula, which keeps Wizards from casting spells much in the early game, remaining as is.

Remove Wizards’ exclusive access to reduced-hunger and hungerless casting. Instead, tie spell hunger to how experienced you are with the spell; this could either track how many times you’ve cast that specific spell, or use your skill in the spell’s school as a proxy for that, or both. Intelligence could remain a factor, but the important thing is that non-wizard casters can also enjoy the benefits. (Note that Wizards, what with casting spells a lot more than other roles and having high spell skill caps, will still reap a larger benefit from this.)

If you aren’t wearing armor or a shield and have high martial arts/bare hands skill, you get an AC bonus (probably a higher one for martial arts). The bonus should probably scale up with higher skill, and should be generally higher for martial arts users than bare hands users.

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.

Magic missile damage depends solely on skill and not XL. (Perhaps realized by scaling its damage die size - d4 for Unskilled, d6 for Basic, d8 for Skilled, d12 for Expert.)

At high skill, the spell of wizard lock forces items off the doorway to adjacent squares so it can make the door. If there’s a monster on the door, it also gets forced off to an adjacent square, or becomes embedded in the door if none exists.

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.

Spell of necromancy that turns a corpse you’re standing on (or possibly adjacent to you) into a tame undead. Probably in the clerical school, though a case could be made for matter (and certain variants have a school of necromancy which this would much more directly fit into). It will work on corpses of undead that you have killed. Casting this spell would have some sort of penalty for lawfuls; there would be some sort of warning before trying to cast it.

You can normally only create zombies or mummies when an undead monster exists for the kind of corpse you are animating (i.e. a jackal can’t be turned into undead but a gnome can turn into a gnome zombie/mummy). For intelligent monsters that have no counterpart, the spell can create ghosts.

At a high enough skill or caster level, you can create skeletons from the corpse of any vertebrate, and maybe even vampires from humanoids. You can also create wraiths and shades from monsters that have no undead counterparts.

Make the sleep spell scale with your skill level in its school.

Spell of earthquake, mid-level matter spell. Causes an earthquake centered on you; range and power varies based on your skill level.

Ring spells, level 7 (or even 8) attack spells, which cast a ring of some elemental power emanating from your square that does not hit your square itself. The radius is 1 if Unskilled or Basic and 2 if Skilled or Expert.

Spell of shove: level 4 or 5 escape spell. At Unskilled and Basic, it fires a beam that pushes the first monster it hits back one space (as if receiving a staggering blow, but doing no damage); at Skilled and Expert, it fires a shorter-range beam in all eight directions. What with shoving monsters into moats to drown them and things like that, this could be a pretty fun spell.

Spell of repair: level 3 matter spell. If wielded weapon is eroded, fixes its erosion. Otherwise, target a random piece of worn armor and fix any erosion it has. At Unskilled, the erosion will only be repaired 1 level at a time; at Basic, 2 levels; at Skilled, 3 levels; and at Expert (maybe) the item will be erodeproofed.

Characters with at least Basic in sling can do something (use a touchstone? flint stone? any gray stone?) to break rocks into slingshot, which weigh 1 and have comparable to-hit and damage to flint stones. Slingshot may be weapon-class instead of rock-class. The higher the sling skill, the more shot that one can get out of a single rock. There should also be rare silver rocks, which can be broken into silver shot.

Spell of probing, in the divination school, that probes monsters based on skill:

• Unskilled limits it to touch range and gives minimal information on the monster’s status, possibly only showing HP like a stethoscope.
• Basic is still touch range but gives the usual amount of information.
• Skilled shoots a probing beam and gives some additional information.
• Expert allows you to select any space or monster in your line of sight within a radius, and gives the same information as Skilled.

The wand of probing is raised to be on par with the Skilled effects.

Remove the special damage bonus skill tables for bare-handed and martial arts combat. In place of them, scale up the die size based on skill: bare hands damage is a d2 at unskilled, a d3 at basic, etc. and martial arts doubles this die size, for a d4 at unskilled, a d6 at basic, and so on up to a d14 at grand master. Note that this still gives pretty poor damage output. Possibly it should be 2 dice being rolled (with the die size changing as described here).

A levelable haggling skill that gets you better prices in shops.

Factor your role’s skill cap in spells’ schools into the success rates for those spells.

Allow sufficiently skilled characters to multi-fire while levitating.

Make the breakage rate of ammo tied to the player’s skill ‘‘cap’’ in its corresponding skill, in addition to the actual level the player has advanced that skill to. This incentivizes roles which start with ammo to use it rather than finding a subpar melee option because any ammo they would fire early on would break..

Non-weapon stethoscope skill, which gives less information than it currently does at Unskilled (perhaps just HP), the same amount of information as currently at Basic, more information like pet tameness and apport at Skilled, and a full probe at Expert. Possibly it also takes a full turn to use until Basic or Skilled.

When riding, your steed may randomly go in a different direction than you intended. Higher riding skill decreases this, and expert blocks it entirely. Possibly, the steed will use this ability to shy away from water or other known hazards.

For variants with wand skill, higher wand skill improves the outcomes from snapping a wand. Ideas include increasing the effective number of remaining charges, increasing the explosion radius, and decreasing the damage the player takes.

Swimming skill: how well you can swim on top of water and carry weight at the same time. At Unskilled you can carry very little, but it quickly increases beyond that.

Casting wizard lock at Expert skill will transform a door into an iron door or create an iron door.

Higher skill in a spell school allows you to subtract some points off its Pw cost.

Higher wand skill makes the shooter’s wand rays harder to dodge.

Clubs may stun monsters that they hit. Perhaps the chance increases with skill, such as 0% unskilled, 10% basic, 20% skilled, 40% expert.

Grand Master martial arts skill allows you to (attempt to) force-fight boulders and statues to shatter them with your bare hands.

The higher your skill is with your wielded weapon, the lower the chance is that an enemy will yank it out of your hand with a bullwhip.

Remove the extra healing, cure blindness, and cure sickness books. The healing spell scales in the amount it heals with skill level. At skilled it also cures blindness, and at expert it cures both blindness and sickness.

Merge the damage versus small and damage versus large stats of weapons, since they don’t really matter that much and add mostly pointless complexity. Damage should be more dependent on skill than on the size of the target monster. The only problem is how to stop the highest-damage weapons from becoming used by everyone because they’re so optimal; perhaps skill should do something drastic like add an extra die with every skill level, allowing you to have weapons that are decent at low skill (by having multiple small base dice) but poorer at high skill (because adding more small dice doesn’t work as well).

Higher pickaxe skill increases digging speed.

The wand of death at master skill kills and automatically zombie-enslaves the monsters it hits.

Reduce the level of the spell of create familiar to 2, and give it a dedicated list of summonable monsters based on skill level: Unskilled creates only kittens and little dogs, Basic will pick a random non-fully-grown dog, cat or horse, Skilled will not create kittens, ponies, or little dogs but otherwise will choose any d, u, B, or f that isn’t a unicorn. Expert will choose from the Skilled list, plus any q or w. If not doing that, as a more minor change, don’t create any monster that is always hostile.

The spell of identify is an unlimited replacement from the scroll that makes them rather useless, so nerf the spell so that it only type-identifies items (beatitude, enchantment, and charges will not be considered). If you want to learn these things, you must use scrolls of identify.

• Alternatively, blessed scrolls of identify could be buffed, for example they always give a full identification of everything in inventory, or they identify several additional object classes that are not yet in your discoveries list.
• Also, the identify spell could scale with skill, so that it identifies beatitude at Skilled and enchantment/charges at Expert.

Unicorn horn skill is also trained by curing things with it, and its chance of fixing something increases with skill level.

Grandmaster skill in martial arts allows you to shatter enemy weapons like two-handed weapons do.

Roles which are good with melee weapons (Bar, Val, Kni?, Cav?) should be able to see the enchantment of their weapon after using it for a while, or perhaps right when wielding it. Alternatively, seeing the enchantment of a weapon should be based on skill: basic will reveal enchantment on 1% of hits, skilled on 10%, expert as soon as you wield the weapon.

Monks, or anyone skilled in martial arts, can kick weapons out of an enemy’s hand.