What's a good way to level a character who avoids combat

[Mondkalb]

The ! forces a dialog. E.g.: if you inscribe a rod of recall with !z the game would ask you whether you really want to zap that rod or not if you use the z command.

I usually inscribe spell books with !d!k!v!s which prevents me from mistakenly drop, destroy, throw or sell them.

I also inscribe some scrolls, rods, potions, and staves with !* which gives me a game prompt whenever I try to do anything with them. Very useful to prevent inadvertent usage of stuff.

[Pete Mack]

!a (or possibly ^a--i don't remember which one works for this) will prevent accidental attacks using your weapon. We were discussing a pure pacifist character, where the object was to kill no monsters. He killed two creatures just by accident, running into them with Ringil.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

!a (or possibly ^a--i don't remember which one works for this) will prevent accidental attacks using your weapon.

Note: as !a or !^a or just plain ^a is an unfamiliar inscription to me, I just did a test, and none of these variations prevent attack with a weapon, at least in the regular typeset (maybe it works for rogue typeset?). Not even !* has any affect on attacks.

I asked a similar question many moons ago. http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?p=101945

An inscription of ^ was supposed to prevent walking with a weapon (or digger), but that didn't work either.

[wobbly]

!a works in Sil, I use it quite often for pacifists. Sil forked off an older version of NPP. Never tried it in V

[fph]

at least in the regular typeset (maybe it works for rogue typeset?).

Nope, not even in the roguelike keymap.

[wobbly]

I tested a bunch of variants on my computer. It appears !a only works in Sil. (presumably it does !aim in others). I don't have a pre-UI change version of NPP, but quickband also forked from NPP & doesn't have it.

[t4nk]

Note: as !a or !^a or just plain ^a is an unfamiliar inscription to me, I just did a test, and none of these variations prevent attack with a weapon, at least in the regular typeset (maybe it works for rogue typeset?).

It's actually "ask confirmation before using a rod" in roguelike keyset ('a'pply command). "Ask before attacking" functionality doesn't exists in V. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement it, though (presumably by calling key_confirm_command(), or some such, from do_cmd_move(), do_cmd_alter_aux(), etc).