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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/12/84; site desint.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!desint!geoff
From: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Newsgroups: net.games.hack
Subject: 1.0.2 cockatrice complaint (spoiler)
Message-ID: <150@desint.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 14-Sep-85 17:04:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: desint.150
Posted: Sat Sep 14 17:04:43 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 05:49:50 EDT
Reply-To: geoff@desint .UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Organization: SAH Consulting, Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 21

This refers to hack 1.0.2.  I don't know about other versions.

After the second time I had a character killed because I stepped on a trap
door while wielding a cockatrice, I looked at the code.  It's in hack.trap.c,
in a routine named selftouch().

My complaint is that you *always* touch the cockatrice if you fall while
wielding it.  Seems to me it would be both fairer and more realisitic if it
were a (high) probability, rather than a certainty.  Also, it seems to me
that you should be somewhat at risk if you have the thing in your pack
(this should be a much lower probability, or falling down stairs would become
fatal too).

I would have made my own changes and posted the fixes, but I don't understand
how hack's random-number subroutines work.  So, if somebody else wants to
pick some probabilities and associated rn2() calls, I'll be happy to post
a fix.
-- 

	Geoff Kuenning
	...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff