Shooting past the monster works fine too.

Just to make sure: You do not want to see the prompt at all? (despite suffering an alignment penalty if you attack the being)

Sorry, I might not have been clear. The problem is the prompt appearing at all. I can attack neutrally hostile creatures all day long in melee (not friendly creatures, just the indifferent ones), and normally only get the prompt when attacking a friendly creature. However, those same indifferent creatures will always trigger a "Really attack?" prompt with archery (as if they were friendly) unless I attack them in another manner first, to set them hostile (melee, spells, etc).

The "Really attack?" prompt should only come up when attacking friendlies, whether that's in melee or archery (and then you suffer the alignment drop). But the problem is it prompts when attacking anyone non-hostile with archery.

Note for everyone: While working on a fix I changed the implementation for the same check when trying to kick a monster. According to my tests the new implementation should be as good as the old one but everyone beware ;-)

Fixed. The fix was surprisingly complicated which can be taken as a proof to the surprisingly arcane, convoluted and cHaOtIc code structures in ADOM. Hopefully this fix will not create any unforeseen new problems.

Still not fixed in pre22.

Message when "t"argeting - Target: a goblin rockthrower (neutral). "t". Really attack the goblin rockthrower? [y/N].
Message when "l"ooking - This is a goblin rockthrower. He does not care about you.

Aligment penalty if answering "y" with missile attack.
No aligment penalty and no prompt with melee attack.

Expected behavior - No aligment penalty and no [y/N] prompt when using missile attack.

This bug makes archers life a hell. Savegame attached.

Still seeing this bug in p22.

Why should attacking neutral monsters not invoke an alignment penalty? It being a hostile act? I'm confused about that part.

I'll reopen the bug.

Hostile monsters attack you. This is now labeled as "hostile".
Not-yet-hostile monsters do not attack you _now_, but will backstab you in any turn. This is now labeled as "neutral".
Neutral monsters do not attack you unless you attack them first. This is now labeled as "friendly".
Friendly monsters help you with your combat. This is now labeled as "tame". (perhaps the only naturally occuring friendly one is the white unicorn for L+)

Not-yet-hostile monsters should be _hostile_, not neutral, that is the main idea of this RFE.

In one of the previous prereleases they were labeled as neutral for melee combat too, that went awful. Imagine "neutral" dangerous monster like berserker emperor, which you cant hit without aligment drop, but who can almost kill you in one turn, when he suddenly turn hostile on you.

Yeah, basically you can attack these monsters in melee for no penalty (and without being prompted), but cannot attack them with missiles. It's really, really annoying. Try playing an archer for 5 minutes if visualizing the bug is difficult - you'll notice it right away.

And dont make them true neutrals - there will be too many of them. When one third of all monsters is neutral and clogging your levels - this will be really annoying. One true neutral monster per two-three levels, like now - is ok.

Just to note - I really like how I can see when monsters are not-yet-hostile in pre 21...
That brown border around their healthbar is really helpful: I like seeing which monsters I can backstab!

Are we still going to have the ability to see which monsters are elligible for backstabbing?

There shouldn't be too few "neutral" monsters, it feels more "realistic" if there is some. It was kind of perfect in p20. Also, how am I supposed to prove that I can steal if you only give me one victim every 2-3 dungeon levels.

I think it may be stealth-related. Monsters who are hostile but haven't detected you yet induce an alignment hit if you shoot them, but not if you backstab.

No, you can 'c'hat with them, and then try and shoot. Makes no difference.

Fixed once again. I guess... this part of the code is so convoluted :-P