Wands should require being wielded before they can be zapped; this way it adds a bit more strategy for the player on when to wield a wand and which one, and balances them a bit relative to monsters. On the other end of the change, you now get a turn or two of warning when a monster is about to zap a wand, because they have to wield it.

You can wield a tooled horn to use it as an ear trumpet, temporarily alleviating deafness for as long as you keep it wielded.

Attacking Famine with food should produce some slight effect, like minimal damage, the food disintegrating, or possibly no more than a YAFM about Famine looking offended.

Allow wielding some types of traditional magical implements to reduce spell failure rates:

• Wielding a quarterstaff confers the same benefit as wearing a robe but does not stack with it.
• Wielding a wand of nothing confers the same benefit as wearing a robe but does not stack with it.
• Wielding an identified wand which matches a spell (wand of light -> spell of light, wand of death -> finger of death, etc) drastically reduces your failure rate when casting it. Perhaps casting the spell while wielding the matching unidentified wand should identify the wand.

The wield slot is fairly underused among object classes, and there are a number of interesting bonuses we can add to spells if the corresponding spellbook is wielded.

• Decreases failure rate of the wielded spell (utility spells might need to be made higher-level/harder to cast to maintain balance).
• Or decreases Pw cost of the wielded spell.
• Allows you to cast the wielded spell even if completely forgotten.
• Allows you to cast the spell without knowing it already - the Z menu gets an additional “-“ option to cast from the spellbook in hand if you don’t know what that book is.
  • Casting from an unknown spellbook will immediately check for reading success as if you had read the book: if you succeed, it then moves on to other checks like whether you have enough power, etc and you may cast the spell. If you fail, you get a random failure effect appropriate to that spellbook.

By wielding a floating eye corpse and either applying it at monsters or hitting monsters with it, you can paralyze the monsters, provided they can see you. As a potential downside, you might paralyze yourself if you stumble or fall into a pit while wielding it while non-blind.

If you are wielding a spellbook of force bolt, you can attempt to force the lock on a box with it (flavored as pulling a tiny bit of force power through the book and into the lock). There are risky side effects to attempting this such as burning out Pw, a backfire which deals damage, breaking potions, etc.

Wands of light should light up when wielded (in a radius of perhaps 3 or 2). To give them some limiting factor, they either lose a charge each time they are wielded, or there is a fixed chance per turn it’s lit that it loses a charge. It’s been noted that this would provide an incentive to try wielding every wand in order to determine if it’s light, but this may not be a big problem.

You can bash things with a wielded acid blob corpse. This inflicts acid damage to both you and the target and has a fixed, lowish chance of destroying the corpse.

Wielding a wand will give you an accuracy or damage bonus with that wand. Or if the Wands Balance Patch is implemented, you get the effects of the wand at the next skill level. Monsters will always wield wands they intend to use, so you will usually see them doing so before they get a chance to take you by surprise with a fire or death ray.

When you wield a treat in your hand, pets that normally like that treat will follow you even more closely than they would if you simply had it in open inventory.

Wielding a mirror conveys partial reflection: you will reflect things 40 or 50% of the time.

If you throw a wand upwards and hit yourself on the head with it, it consumes a charge and zaps yourself. Come to think of it, this should extend to wielding a wand and hitting monsters with it.

Wielding and hitting enemies with a pyrolisk corpse deals fire damage.

Unicorn horns are a one-handed weapon that does 1d3 damage, and train no skill (the skill is removed outright). However, when wielding one without gloves, you automatically “apply” it (not consuming any turns the same way as a stethoscope), every turn.

Whacking monsters with certain types of wielded scrolls may have certain effects on it (and may consume/shred the scroll in the process): fire burns them, confuse monster confuses them, scare monster scares them.