My SpliceHack Samurai returned from the Castle to the only altar
in the whole game, which was in mine-town. An Aleax appeared and
I quickly killed it. When I stepped onto his loot pile to see
what equipment he had left I was astonished (to say the least)...

Weapons
a - a long sword
b - a katana
Armor
c - a helm of telepathy [1AC]
d - a pair of gauntlets of power [1AC]
e - a pair of water walking boots [1AC]
f - a cloak of flight [1AC]
g - a Hawaiian shirt [0AC]
h - a gray dragon scale mail [9AC]

The gear that my Samurai is wielding and wearing is...

Weapons
a - the blessed rustproof +6 Excalibur (wielded in right hand) (40 aum)
Z - a blessed rustproof +4 katana (wielded in left hand) [+5|5-14|5-16]
(40 aum)
Armor
A - a blessed +4 gray dragon scale mail (being worn) [13AC] (40 aum)
C - a blessed +2 cloak of flight (being worn) [3AC] (10 aum)
G - a blessed rustproof +3 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn) [4AC]
(30 aum)
H - an uncursed rustproof +4 helm of telepathy (being worn) [5AC] (50 aum)
T - an uncursed +5 Hawaiian shirt (being worn) [5AC] (5 aum)
W - an uncursed +0 pair of plastic water walking boots (being worn)
[1AC] (20 aum)

It is *exactly* the same!

I cannot believe that - ...or only if that variant is programmed in a
way that it is possible for some foes to get an exact replication of
the player's gear.

I had just recently wished for the cloak of flight. I wonder whether
the Aleax would have had my other previous cloak (protection) instead
if I hadn't wished for and worn that new cloak.

Janis

Okay, as it turned out the behavior described below is standard.
After finishing the Quest and returning to the mine-town altar
the next killed Aleax again had the gear that I was wearing...

Weapons
a - a long sword
b - a katana
Armor
c - a helm of telepathy [1AC]
d - a pair of gauntlets of power [1AC]
e - a pair of dwarvish boots [2AC]
f - a cloak of flight [1AC]
g - a Hawaiian shirt [0AC]
h - a gray dragon scale mail [9AC]

This time I had changed my boots to something else and the Aleax'
inventory reflected that.

This implementation might make some sense to create spare armor
in case of lacking MR and getting the own armor disintegrated
by magic (or by dragon ray disintegration). Moreover the armor
seem to be always +0 but also rustproof/fireproof. I made use
of that by changing my non-fixed water walking boots by the one
that the Aleax provided. (And I'll take the Hawaiian shirt with
me, of course, for my shirt collection.)

But what's the point of this feature?

Janis

On 26.07.2023 03:00, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> My SpliceHack Samurai returned from the Castle to the only altar
> in the whole game, which was in mine-town. An Aleax appeared and
> I quickly killed it. When I stepped onto his loot pile to see
> what equipment he had left I was astonished (to say the least)...
>
> Weapons
> a - a long sword
> b - a katana
> Armor
> c - a helm of telepathy [1AC]
> d - a pair of gauntlets of power [1AC]
> e - a pair of water walking boots [1AC]
> f - a cloak of flight [1AC]
> g - a Hawaiian shirt [0AC]
> h - a gray dragon scale mail [9AC]
>
> The gear that my Samurai is wielding and wearing is...
>
> Weapons
> a - the blessed rustproof +6 Excalibur (wielded in right hand) (40 aum)
> Z - a blessed rustproof +4 katana (wielded in left hand) [+5|5-14|5-16]
> (40 aum)
> Armor
> A - a blessed +4 gray dragon scale mail (being worn) [13AC] (40 aum)
> C - a blessed +2 cloak of flight (being worn) [3AC] (10 aum)
> G - a blessed rustproof +3 pair of gauntlets of power (being worn) [4AC]
> (30 aum)
> H - an uncursed rustproof +4 helm of telepathy (being worn) [5AC] (50 aum)
> T - an uncursed +5 Hawaiian shirt (being worn) [5AC] (5 aum)
> W - an uncursed +0 pair of plastic water walking boots (being worn)
> [1AC] (20 aum)
>
> It is *exactly* the same!
>
> I cannot believe that - ...or only if that variant is programmed in a
> way that it is possible for some foes to get an exact replication of
> the player's gear.
>
> I had just recently wished for the cloak of flight. I wonder whether
> the Aleax would have had my other previous cloak (protection) instead
> if I hadn't wished for and worn that new cloak.
>
> Janis
>

> But what's the point of this feature?

from the wiki: "In Dungeons & Dragons, an Aleax is an avatar of a deity sent to punish a specific mortal; the Aleax takes on the target's exact appearance and carries identical equipment."
I think this change may have originally been from UnNetHack. Just a sort of "flavor" feature, I suppose.

On 03.08.2023 09:36, Loggers VIII wrote:
>> But what's the point of this feature?
>
> from the wiki: "In Dungeons & Dragons, an Aleax is an avatar of a
> deity sent to punish a specific mortal; the Aleax takes on the
> target's exact appearance and carries identical equipment." I think
> this change may have originally been from UnNetHack. Just a sort of
> "flavor" feature, I suppose.

Ah, okay, I also supposed it's just flavor. Thanks.

Just a nit-pick on the quote: "identical equipment" is not correct;
the gear disregards (of course) artifacts, enchantments (always +0),
and seems always be fixed (independent of original gear). So some
of the gear attributes are inherently lost, other attributes gained.

WRT "the target's exact appearance" it should then be depicted as '@'
(or whatever race the player is) instead of an 'A'?

Janis

> Just a nit-pick on the quote: "identical equipment" is not correct;
> the gear disregards (of course) artifacts, enchantments (always +0),
> and seems always be fixed (independent of original gear). So some
> of the gear attributes are inherently lost, other attributes gained.
>
> WRT "the target's exact appearance" it should then be depicted as '@'
> (or whatever race the player is) instead of an 'A'?

The quote on the wiki is referencing the D&D incarnation, which actually does have identical gear and appearance. But yeah, the NetHack version isn't totally faithful in that regard. It is a nice way to upgrade your gear to fooproof if you have some enchanting scrolls to spare, at least.

On Wednesday, July 26, 2023 at 4:36:34 AM UTC-7, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> [...] Moreover the armor seem to be always +0 but also rustproof/fireproof.

In nethack, starting gear of lawful minions is always erodeproof.
Enchantment is never negative for them (if randomly generated
that way, it gets changed to one of 0, +1, or abs(enchantment);
I don't recall which), but random positive values are kept as-is.
It's possible that splicehack is overriding that last aspect, or
perhaps your sample size isn't big enough yet to see +X items.

On 03.08.2023 23:30, Pat Rankin wrote:
> perhaps your sample size isn't big enough yet to see +X items.

My sample size of 2 is not big enough? 8-)

I guess for a significant sample size we would have to reach the
hard coded extinction limit! - But I think, and that was the goal
of my question, that it would be easier to get that information
from someone who already knows the details (a variant developer)
or from someone who knows where to look in the source code.

And thanks for your posted information, BTW. - Myself I had just
speculated (as my "seem to be" was meant to indicate just that).

Janis

On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 2:30:09 PM UTC-7, Pat Rankin wrote:
> In nethack, starting gear of lawful minions is always erodeproof.
> Enchantment is never negative for them (if randomly generated
> that way, it gets changed to one of 0, +1, or abs(enchantment);
> I don't recall which), but random positive values are kept as-is.

I misremembered.... Humanoid Angels (so all except for ki-rin and
couatl) are given a rustproof long sword with the enchantment set
to a random value between 0 and 3, inclusive, ignoring whatever
random value was initially applied as it was created, and also a
rustproof +0 large shield or shield of reflection.

Not a very good starting point for cloning equipment for an Aleax,
so not particularly relevant to this discussion.