It was recently noted during a conversation in a different thread that whip-class weapons in ADOM are essentially useless. This is not because whips are inherently bad -- the weapon skill bonuses for them are impressive and there are a couple of whip types in the game with pretty decent stats. The problem is there are only four distinct varieties of whip in the game. Two of them are virtually useless, and even these are rare -- the two that are actually good for something are almost unheard of. If nothing else, this makes using a character that utilizes whips extremely difficult, since if the weapon is destroyed it is no easy task to replace.

The current whips and their stats:

whip (-4, 1d3)
scourge (-4, 1d3+3)
whip of the snake (-2, 5d2+7), +7 sp, +7 Dx, +poison
whip of slaughtering (-4, 1d30), +critical chance

Seldom will whips of the snake/slaughtering be encountered, which leaves the prospective whip wielder with only two probable options, both of them extremely weak (if they're even lucky enough to happen across those!).

There are a few ways of addressing this, including buffing the existing whips, or making the drops more common, but I'd like to suggest a third method, and that's to introduce more variety.

Currently we have two whips that are really bad, and two that are actually pretty good, but nothing in between. So how about making some new whip types? This would not only make whips more useful, but also more common since there would be more kinds that could be randomly generated.

I would suggest some additions such as follows:

knotted whip (-4, 1d4+1)
weighted whip (-5, 1d4+3)
barbed whip (-4, 1d5+2)
razor-tipped whip (-4, 1d5+4)
heavy scourge (-5, 2d3+3)
lash (-3, 4d2)
iron chain whip (-5, 2d5)
mithril chain whip (-5, 2d5+3)
adamantium chain whip (-5, 2d5+5)
eternium chain whip (-5, 2d5+7)

The extra options would help bring whips into the realm of being a practical weapon choice and also make them more interesting and flavorful as an aesthetic choice.