Newbie question.

[Northern]

Hey everyone. I discovered Angband awhile ago, but never really got into it until recently. I have a simple, (if stupid), question. When you activate cheat_know, does it automatically tell you about monsters, or do you have to look at the monster?

I used to play other roguelikes, so I feel like I should know this question, but yeah.

[EpicMan]

You have to e(X)amine the monster while looking at it (or recall(/) it) to benefit.

What cheat_know does is fill in your monster memory. SO when you recall a monster or examine one you see you know everything there is to know about it, rather than having to observe it, fight many and slowly learn about it.

[Derakon]

EpicMan has the right of it. Normally, when you see a new monster, all you know about it is its description, speed, and experience value. You can only learn about important stuff like its attacks, spells, breath weapons, hitpoints, etc. by fighting it. Turning on cheat_know automatically fills in all that information, so when you next look at the monster or page through your monster memory using '/', you'll see the full listing of information.

You can get the same effect by using a probing spell on the monster (rod/staff of probing), but to do that you have to have the monster in line of sight already. And of course it only applies to that one monster, not the entire monster memory.

[Northern]

Ahhh I see. Well thanks for the knowledge. So how many different variations of one monster could there be? Do they differ slightly or could there be one that is a polar opposite of another?

[bio_hazard]

Each flavor of monster will be the same (i.e. an Uruk will always have the same armor, # of attacks, damage, likelihood of drops, etc). If you are asking about how many flavors of monsters there are, it depends on the monster, and each flavor can be quite distinct (a white 'd' baby white dragon is quite different than a mature multi-hued 'd').
I've found this to be a hard thing to get used to- that even when you can begin to mow down a certain letter in the dungeon, you always have to be aware of new flavors that may have unpleasant and unexpected attributes. Even though it is labeled as a cheat, playing with full monster knowledge is worth considering if you are a new player (I sometimes do).
You can always check out the spoilers here at oook as well.

[Derakon]

Two monsters with the same name will be identical save for certain attributes:

* Sometimes monsters get generated slightly faster than usual, getting an extra turn for every 5 or 10 normal turns.
* The "Novice X" monsters (e.g. Novice ranger, Novice mage, Novice warrior) can appear singly or in groups -- though the group version is actually a separate monster altogether, they are otherwise identical.

Notably, hitpoints are not random. Every monster of the same type has the same amount of hit points. This used to not be the case.

[PowerDiver]

Notably, hitpoints are not random. Every monster of the same type has the same amount of hit points. This used to not be the case.

Are you sure about that? I have not looked, but comments here have led me to believe non-uniques had random hitpoints, possbily normally distributed.

[fizzix]

Are you sure about that? I have not looked, but comments here have led me to believe non-uniques had random hitpoints, possbily normally distributed.

Eddie is right, for non-uniques:

                int std_dev = (((r_ptr->avg_hp * 10) / 8) + 5) / 10;
		if (r_ptr->avg_hp > 1) std_dev++;

		n_ptr->maxhp = Rand_normal(r_ptr->avg_hp, std_dev);
		n_ptr->maxhp = MAX(n_ptr->maxhp, 1);

Normal distribution with a standard deviation of (5/8 * max_hp)+1

[Derakon]

...oh. My mistake. I had assumed that with the change to monster.txt to remove all dice-style hitpoint values in favor of simple constants (complete with lots of comments on previous values, and the removal of the MAX_HP flag), that HP variation had been removed entirely. Turns out it was just hardcoded. Okay.

Well, thanks for the correction. I'm curious why the change was made though.