The Tavern

I once had a flying, invisible, wall-passing, Ash-worshipping THING (Spriggan) that could tab-stab an entire corridor of draconians in Zot:1~4. One-shotting The Royal Jelly while it was resting was an electrifying moment. But by Zot:5 I lost confidence in the stab style - lots of things can see invisible and some of them are virtually immune to enchantments. I don't think sleep needles work on undead/demons either.

I'm used to dealing with the endgame with summoner, conjurer, melee and ranged styles. I'm also used to transitioning out of a stab style into one of the above styles for the late/endgame. But I am curious: can it be dealt with using a pure stabber style?

It works for demons, but not for undead, as all the other needles, unless there's poison immunity.

You can deal with all of extended (and zot:5) except for Geryon and TRJ by just not bothering to kill anything, and if you're a stabber you probably have the right skills to do this.

There are several solutions to killing TRJ and Geryon that your character should be fine with.

Hmmmm, the art of a true ninja. Yes, by the time it's endgame a stabber should have all the EXP he needs and thus "eventually kill the majority of monsters" becomes an obsolete policy. Does that imply it may not be worth taking stabbing all the way up to 27 (and instead stopping at e.g. 20) even for a pure stabber?

Stabbing skill past 15 or so is pretty much useless with a dagger for sleep/paralysis stabs.