One of the more interesting
NetHack wands to play with.
Zapping a
wand of
polymorph at a
monster, an
item, or
yourself will change it into a different
monster,
item, or
self. In that last case, your
stats are re-rolled, certain bad things go away (
lycanthropy,
stoning,
food poisoning), but you lose other
intrinsics. Furthermore, most of the time you'll wind up changing into a
random monster, unless you have
polymorph control. Note that
polymorphing causes you to undergo a
system shock roll; if this is failed, you will suffer around 30 points of
damage.
Polymorphing other monsters is a possible means of escape from death, but you'd better have more than one charge on the wand (and pumped-up speed, just in case). Changing a giant ant into a mind flayer only makes matters worse, generally speaking.
Polymorphing an item will usually change it into an item of the same class (your wand of light will not become a scroll of genocide, but it might become a wand of fire). "Polymorphing an item" is now listed as a voluntary challenge because of the way this item can be abused. "Polypiling" is largely regarded as unscrupulous by the NetHack community -- this is when you put a bunch of items on the same square and polymorph all of them at once with a single charge from a wand of polymorph. Deplorable. It used to be much more effective when a polymorphed item could change into anything.