Early game wands on enemies and avoidable splats

[MackTheKnife]

Not sure when this trend started, but lately I've had regular orcs kill me on D:4 with /acid, and recently Duvessa putting an end to a 5-win-streak with a double-zap /lightning for 36 damage:

Duvessa, Sister of Dowan comes into view. She is wielding a short sword.
Here: Duvessa, wielding a short sword and wearing a leather armour
Duvessa zaps a wand.
The bolt of lightning hits you!
Ouch! That really hurt!
The bolt of lightning hits you!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
It is a wand of lightning (?/15).
You take 36 damage, and have 8/44 hp.
MASSIVE DAMAGE!!

(Full morgue if anyone's interested. I'd like to add that discussions on fault in this particular game is not the point of this thread - attempting a 45 % /enslave might have been better than taking her out with /scattershot.)

This stuff is pretty funny, but it's tiresome to assume every humanoid capable of wielding wands are potential game-ending threats in D:3-7. Optimal play, tedium and so on.

My proposal is to not hide wands on enemies, so when you 'x' or 'x, v' them the game tells you they're carrying a wand (unknown until they use it). This would be a nice middle-ground between keeping it the way it is, and removing dangerous wands from enemies entirely.

[ion_frigate]

I'd put it here as well:

  Code:

Duvessa, Sister of Dowan comes into view. She is wielding a short sword and carrying an unknown wand.

For those of us who are too lazy to x-v everything.

[MainiacJoe]

Returning to our Nethack roots I see

[MackTheKnife]

I'd put it here as well:

  Code:

Duvessa, Sister of Dowan comes into view. She is wielding a short sword and carrying an unknown wand.

For those of us who are too lazy to x-v everything.

Absolutely! This way we could probably add some further warning stuff via the .rc file.