Could I throw gold at monsters to distract them?

[kuniqs]

Throw a HD-dependant amount of gold at non-mindless, non-animal monsters to make them distracted for an aut or two. xHD gold where x could be 10. The chance of working is inversely proportional to HD, 75% for 1 HD (goblins) and 5% for 20 HD (fiends). The chance is maybe proportional to your level, raising it to 95% 1HD and 50% 20HD at level 27.

Reason: to give pure stabbers the same chance a pure fighters or pure spellcasters have. To give gold value after you buy everything useful from shops. To make early game easier at the cost of buying good things from shops later.

I know Gozag has this, but it is different than Gozag's since it uses up a turn where Gozag is passive and uses up a limited resource.

[dpeg]

Short answer: no.

You are rediscovering something that existed, and has removed from the game a long time ago (something like DCSS 0.2). Back then, you could drop gold, and monsters would pick it up, giving you a free turn. Sounds nifty once, but is horrible once you realise the scummy potential. So gold became a slot/weightless item, and later runes and the orb followed (for other reasons).

I realise that you want to use up the gold, but stabbers can make use of spells, of nets, and of a number of useful gods (for example, Ashenzari, Dithmenos, Fedhas, Gozag all help in different ways to get stabs in).

[Lyrick]

The same chance as pure fighters or "pure spellcasters"? What are stabbers lacking?

Whats the point of throwing the gold anyway, if you'll kill the monster and pick it back up? Even if it vanishes, a 75% chance to distract an enemy is really strong, and 270 gold is inconsequential.

[kuniqs]

I was thinking about it 'cause: Gold has no other use than buying from shops, and stabber characters need either to worship Trog or learn spellcasting to survive some encounters.

I intended for gold to be another consumable, useful not only to stabbers.

What 'pure' stabbers lack is the ability to kill things fast when things go south. Unless you're playing spriggans it's kinda hard to run away from orc priest (since you can't kill them fast enough)

[Sandman25]

Well, you can worship Yred, Jiyva, Ru, Makleb. Trog is not a must for stabber without spells.

[jejorda2]

stabber characters need either to worship Trog or learn spellcasting to survive some encounters.

This applies to all playstyles, not just stabbers. And for all playstyles, yes, I'm sure it's possible to survive anything without spells. But they make things easier.

I think it is okay that magic does useful things in the game.

[Quazifuji]

Reason: to give pure stabbers the same chance a pure fighters or pure spellcasters have.

What's a "pure stabber"? Someone who uses stabbing as their primary means of killing enemies? If that's the case, then enchanters and needle-stabbers should count. Since you don't seem to think enchanters count, you seem to be defining as "pure stabber" as someone who uses stabbing as their primary means of killing someone but does not use magic to help them stab. But why is that definition useful at all? Why is it important that it be effective to play that style character? Or, more specifically, why is it important that it be possible to play that style character without worshiping Trog? What's special about spells that puts characters that use them into a separate category from characters that don't?

The problem with the term "pure stabber" is that being a stabber already requires two separate capabilities - the ability to make enemies stabbable with some reliability (hexes, needles, stealth), and the ability to do enough damage with your stabs to quickly kill stabbable enemies (short blades and stealth). It doesn't make any sense to consider someone who raises their throwing skill to use needles to make enemies stabbable to be more "pure" than someone who uses hexes to do so. In either case, you're training two different categories of skills, one to make enemies stabbable, and one to stab them. The only skill that both helps you get opportunities to stab and improves your stabbing itself is stealth, but without completely reworking Crawl's stealth system, it won't work to make stealth so reliable you can use stealth-stabbing as your primary means of offense because, with right now stealth stabbing consists mostly of walking up to monsters and hoping they don't see you, and that's not a very interesting playstyle.

To be honest, I actually do like the idea of being able to play a non-Trog needle-stabber, and I do think adding a low-cost way to distract enemies (similar to a needle, but common enough that you can rely on having a large supply without worshipping Trog) would help this, but I don't think "pure stabber" is the right way to put it, and I think if we want to justify such an addition, we need to explain why such a character is sufficiently different enough from a Trog needle-stabber or a hex-stabber to be worth it, and I on't think you've made that argument yet (and I don't have a good one ready either).

[XuaXua]

Could I throw gold at monsters to distract them?

The goal of all monsters in the dungeon is to prevent you from taking the Orb of Zot; keeping that priority in mind, no.