Draft:Master thief

Omega 0.90.4

@ Master thief
Form	Ordinary creature
Attacks	1 harmless contact; 3 defensive actions
Special abilities	Steals while adjacent, even if peaceful; guild recognition
Base level	6
HP	100
Hit	0
Defense	20
Action interval	3 ticks; lower is faster
Kill experience	200, when death is in sight
Generation	Ordinary and special encounters
Carried items	Thieve's pick; 0–4 extra random items
Immunities	None innate
Remains	Dead master thief; 50% on normal death
Remains use	Human-corpse food and alignment penalty; no alchemy
Traits Initially hostile and greedy Initially named human Opens doors; swims; scavenges
Reference	minit.h in Omega 0.90.4, line 205

A master thief is a hostile, greedy character initially displayed as a red @ named human. Its corpse and guild-recognition dialogue reveal the master-thief identity. It is distinct from the variable ordinary humans and from the Shadowlord.

Generation

Master thieves belong to ordinary random-monster pools. Each starts with a neutral +0 thieve's pick and zero through four random possessions. It has no damaging melee routine; its zero damage setting excludes it from random arena matches. The polymorph routine also excludes it as a randomly chosen new form.

Theft and escape

The common theft rules give the full inventory-selection, level and Dexterity checks; recovery distinguishes drops, teleportation and disappearance.

Like a sneak-thief, it makes harmless melee contact and has three defensive actions. Its adjacent theft special can operate while peaceful. It selects a nonempty carried-inventory slot; equipped objects and theft immunity prevent a successful theft. A level check also protects the player, guaranteed against the ordinary master thief at player level 32 or higher.

The grip test is reversed from the usual expectation: it can make you hold on when Dexterity is below the random threshold. High Dexterity is therefore not reliable protection from this routine. If it succeeds, the thief takes the entire selected object or stack, teleports on the same level and changes both its normal and special behavior to retreat. It no longer attempts theft through that replaced special action.

Its stolen items remain recoverable from normal drops or death. The master thief can swim and opens doors while using its initial pursuit movement, making water and ordinary doors poor assumptions for containing it. It has no innate immunity. Sanctuary prevents its special action while you stand there.

Payment and recognition

Payment uses the ordinary greedy-recipient response.

A still-greedy master thief accepts 600 Au in one payment, or one non-cursed item of at least that intrinsic value, to become peaceful and stop being greedy. Smaller gifts are kept without adding toward the threshold; each accepted gift in this response adds one alignment point. Pacification does not switch off the theft special.

A Thieves' Guild member can instead speak to the thief. It identifies itself as a master thief, gives the guild signal and vanishes, without kill experience or ordinary drops. Any already stolen items are not returned by this dialogue.

Remains

Normal death drops carried property and has a 50% chance of leaving a dead master thief. Eating it costs ten alignment points: food becomes 33 if alignment was positive, or increases by eight otherwise, subject to hunger limits. It has no alchemical transformation.

Strategy

Do not assume a red human figure is an ordinary peaceful resident. Protect valuable carried stacks by keeping distance or using guild recognition before a theft; a 600 Au bribe changes attitude without guaranteeing inventory safety. The thief's 100 HP makes recovering property through combat slower than fighting a sneak-thief. After a theft, pursuing it can recover the item, whereas guild dismissal removes that opportunity.