Tiber wrote:If anything, I might propose the opposite: that a monster picks up items off the ground ONLY if it can see you (and is possibly smarter about doing so). That would also essentially prevent the tedium of throwing items in lava, plus a monster with a potion of heal wounds that you have no way of knowing about is really just a monster with extra HP unless you can kill it in one hit.
On the other hand, some enemies with !might or !rage (or !invisibility to a much lesser extent) can become more dangerous, sometimes ridiculously more dangerous, for certain characters in an entirely unpredictable way. It is basically the potion equivalent of weapons of distortion, which is to say, it is like how weapons of distortion would be if their special status were "hidden" and they weren't described as glowing/runed in monster's hand.
Overall I like that enemies can become more dangerous, it makes item-using enemies (which are fairly recognizable as "all human-ish stuff") have greater variance and means that even lowly orcs and kobolds can provide some unexpected challenges. The problem is that some degree of danger for unfairness lurks there.
A simple warning message about enemies having some type of scroll/potion would keep the good and delimit the bad sufficiently, IMO. This is also good because, if you were on the fence about fighting something that you can probably handle but might be a bit tough for your level, if said thing is known to have a potion/scroll that might push you into using a few wand charges to take it out rather than just running, in order to get a (potentially) helpful item. Basically you should know what items are in your enemy's inventory, with exactly same information that you would have if those items were on the ground. Also note that if the enemy uses an unknown item before you kill it, you still get something useful out of it (one helpful consumable is now IDed), so it does provide incentive for taking on dudes who spawned with potions and scrolls early on, when those items could potentially have much more impact on the battle.
For 0.15 I also agree that monsters should spawn with rather than pick up stuff, but I'd like for there to be some exceptions. Elf and Labyrinths being the big ones, probably (at least some) Baileys too. For labs in particular, if you are worried about minotaur strength being too swingy, I guess you could have him spawn separately with equipment in addition to whatever loot is there. This punishes a "haste and run, loop around, grab loot and exit" avoidance strategy, as the minotaur has some stuff on him, while also putting some limits on what the 'taur can have.