A special container that can hold the invocation items, and only the invocation items. Has bag-of-holding-like properties (or else is an artifact bag of holding). It appears in some hard to reach place in the dungeon.

Add two dice objects: a magic die and a plastic die. Both appear as “game die” when unidentified, are made of plastic, and weigh 2. Dice can be rolled by applying them or throwing them (upward or downward).

Magic dice are chargeable. They start out with 3-5 charges; uncursed charging adds 1 and blessed adds d3, up to a maximum of 7. The die can only be recharged twice.

Rolling either type of die produces a message “The die spins around and lands on [number].” Plastic dice and non-cursed magic dice use a d20 with even probability; cursed magic dice bias the result towards lower numbers such that the probability of each possible roll is proportional to 20 minus that roll (so there is a 19/170 chance of a 1, an 18/170 chance of a 2, etc.)

The effects are:

One possible alteration is to do away with both the instadeath and the wish, because it’s been pointed out that nearly all the negative effects are recoverable. The player has an incentive to hold off on rolling the die until they have the wherewithal to recover from most of the negative effects, and then roll it as much as possible in hopes of getting a wish, while suffering few permanent issues. Giving the die a chance to just unavoidably end the game to compensate for wishing abuse may be unsatisfying.

Hookshot, a tool that shoots a retractable point on a chain and then pulls things together when the chain retracts. In practice, this should probably be implemented as an invisible beam that gets shot in the player-chosen direction, with a short range of only 3 or 4 squares. It has various effects depending on what it hits:

• Wall or furniture: Player is dragged towards that space.
• Boulder or solid stone: Goes “Clink!” and does nothing. (Except maybe if the player is a giant, they can drag the boulder to themselves with it.)
• Monster: Either deals small damage, or yanks the player and monster together. The relative weights of the player and monster determine who gets yanked more (could be either or both).

The game should not assume heroes all carry an unlimited invisible box of matches to light candles and lamps with. Doing that should require a fire source, whether that is Fire Brand, lava, a fire trap, the wand of fire, the fireball spell, or an already lit candle, lamp, or potion of oil. There could also be a new “lighter” tool which enables you to light things, but can get lost or run out of charges.

New type of terrain, “fire terrain”, a square that is on fire. It displays as an orange period. (If this will be too nasty to people who play with color off, the glyph should perhaps be changed.)

• Fire terrain has a certain amount of burning wood material on it.
• Standing next to or on fire terrain grants cold resistance, but standing on top of fire terrain has the same effect as a fire trap whenever you end your turn on it.
• The fire eventually burns out and reverts to normal floor, the duration determined by the total weight of the burning objects.
• Killing a wood golem with fire or burning more than a certain weight of objects on a square creates fire terrain on that space.
• Throwing burnables onto a fire trap may make them spontaneously combust and produce fire terrain.
• Fire terrain can be used to cook corpses.
• You can create fire terrain by applying a lit candle to a space with burnables on it
• You can also create it by applying a tinderbox to a space, which is a chargeable non-magical tool. Archeologists and Rangers start with one.
• Fires provide a light source of radius 3, but cannot be moved.
• Monster AI will not travel over fire if the monster is not resistant.

Add a “purple crayon” tool, which is used by engraving on the floor with it. If you engrave the name of a monster species, a single monster of that species is created, possibly ignoring reverse-genocide restrictions. This is a reference to the children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon.

A flask item that you can dip into a potion to fill it with that potion, protecting it from fire and cold damage while still allowing you to drink it at a moment’s notice. When you drink from it, it becomes empty and can be reused with more potions. It could be either in the tool object class or the potion object class.

Shovel, a tool that can be used to dig walls, but only deals 1d2 damage in combat (because it’s a pure tool, not a weapon-tool) and doesn’t count as hitting with a weapon if used in combat.

Fog horn, a magical tool that when played surrounds the user with clouds and possibly fog clouds (the monster). It would be best if some type of non-poison-gas cloud were implemented first; it is probably a bad idea to actually change the terrain around the user into cloud.

Glowstick: a tool that can be applied to make it emit light in a radius of 2. It lasts a few thousand turns before dying (reducing to radius 1 light when near the end of its life), but cannot be turned off like a candle or lamp can.

A magical horn whose effect depends on what material it’s made out of. One effect could be pacification; another possibility is to make it a horn of summoning, with the monster type summoned controlled by the material.

Containers never generate with food. Instead, split up the probability of food among other object classes that have nonzero probability, and also allow some tools to generate in them.

Some charged tools (such as horns of plenty, crystal balls, and other charged tools, NOT magic markers) slowly recover charges over time on their own up to a reasonable maximum.

A magical whistle that instead of warping pets summons a temporary ally who disappears after a while.

Another type of magical horn, a “horn of heroes”, that when improvised on creates powerful allied monsters (dead heroes?). Ideally the summons would be temporary.

Dowsing rod: chargeable magical tool that when applied tells you the total value of all gold and gems on the level that isn’t being carried by the player (but not their locations), and whether there are any artifacts on the level that are not carried by the player.

Add “candelabrum” as a new randomly generated tool. It can hold 3 candles and gives a light radius of 2 with one candle, 3 with two candles, and 4 with three candles. Its material is brass. The Candelabrum of Invocation’s unidentified description is now “ornate candelabrum”.

G-class monsters will pick up tools if they wander onto them. (They won’t specifically seek them out and pathfind to them though).

Caltrops: a nonmagic stackable tool that when applied creates a “caltrop trap” on your space, which damages / immobilizes / slows the first monster to enter it. Rangers and rogues excel at using them and possibly get some bonuses from them. Not difficult to untrap, though it would be nice if some caltrops could gradually be lost in the process. Maybe spreading caltrops consumes five or so of them, and you won’t always get five back during an untrap.

Muzzles that can be put on pets so they stop eating food off the floor. Uncursed ones block their eating 90% of the time; blessed 100%; and cursed ones weld to the pet’s face and prevent it from eating anything until it starves or the curse is removed. May also decrease tameness when put on the pet.

Shepherds’ crooks: a wooden multi-purpose weapon-tool.

• Damage is a little less than a quarterstaff. Should probably not weigh as much as a quarterstaff; it would be hard to justify 40 weight any way you slice it.
• Can be applied to give a menu offering to do one of three things (and unlike grappling hooks it never does the wrong thing):
  1. Hit a monster at polearm range (skill-dependent).
  2. Attempt to hook a monster at polearm range. Tame monsters are always hooked. Peacefuls are always hooked, but may be angered. Hostiles might be hit instead of hooked. If the monster is hooked, it will be pulled towards you, or you will be pulled towards it if it’s much larger than you.
  3. Grab the top item from a square, even if the square is a trap or water square.
• Wielding one passively gives a boost to the radius in which pets will follow when you change levels.
• Wielding one also makes pets follow you as if you had a treat.
• Can be applied to a monster two squares away to yank it towards you, which may stun the monster.
• Binders in dNetHack could start with one. Peasants in dNetHack could generate with them.
• Two-weaponing a crook and a flail should do ‘‘something’’ (from Egyptian pharaoh iconography).

Non-magical tools that can be used to heal wounds.

A lamp with the same unidentified appearance and base cost as a magic lamp. It is a charged magical tool (has a lifetime, comparable to an oil lamp) that sheds no light, but instead detects unseen in its range whenever it is turned on. This includes invisible monsters, secret doors, and all traps. It also allows vision to penetrate through clouds.

Some version of key breaking, perhaps when trying to use a cursed key. However, this should not go the SLASH’EM route of allowing any unlocking device to break, since that just makes the player carry around extra keys. Skeleton keys should be made of bone and can break. Perhaps add a new key that is not breakable but is rarer than skeleton keys (stealing some of skeleton keys’ probability).

Lock picks and credit cards should possibly be able to break too.