I thought that SteamBand handled passwall player characters well. In short, depending on skill, there was a % chance of the player taking HP (or maybe SP) damage when moving through solid wall. In effect, it makes passing through solid rock a risk, a trade-off, rather than something that is done casually, at least at low levels.

Of course, being able to walk through walls while your enemies cannot is still a huge advantage which typically causes one to get in over his head. I found that death most often came because all monsters have ESP, which leads to ghostly PCs getting surrounded/trapped in the walls, afraid to poke their nose out. Since resting while embedded in rock is likely to be a losing proposition, one should seek to avoid such situations. This is the sort of balance I'd look for, unless you've got a better idea.

Tunnel a square of granite once inside. Perfect resting place.

You have to come out sooner or later :). An truly evil benovelent DM would spawn umber hulks nearby if it detected a player resting in such a place. Oh my, the player is trapped and will surely starve to death. I will free him.

Add a mac version!!!!

I appreciate you may be able to cast StM but the image of one trying to swing a pick* when already embedded in rock is somewhat comical...




*and that's not to mention how ghosts carry stuff through walls in the first place.

Most important monsters to implement:

Dragons/Hydras
Spiders (webs were amazingly fun in Pos)
Xorns/Umber Hulks that can move through walls

That's how Z handles it as well, except there's no skill - 100% of the time you take a small amount of nonlethal damage. That's probably what I'll do too.
I would if I could.. I'll be sure to include the source in 5.4 (I wish I had for 5.3) so that someone with a Mac can compile a Mac version. I think compiling it should be pretty easy- hopefully it's just a matter of going to the source directory and entering "make -f makefile.osx" -but if not then you could try bugging forum goers with Macs to do it. I think d_m has one, for example.
Ooh, I like the idea of playing an X. No need for a ring of delving when you have the KILL_WALL flag!

edit: Also, in case any Angband gurus are reading this, I could use some help dealing with an extremely annoying crash-on-save bug. The code is on github.com/simongre/RePosBand
edit2: OK, the problem is that increasing home space to 128 slots causes a low level saving routine (savers[i].save) to freak out. That's way above my pay grade, so hoarding is going to have to wait a while.

Someone created unlimited home already I believe for 3.2ish, Fizzix maybe? It was iVanilla IIRC.

As for hounds/vortex evolution, here's an idea:

Start with Water/Fire/Cold/Elec hound...
At level 15 morph into a Multi hued hound (resist basic 4 + poison, and a breath for each)
Each breath gives you resist to it
20 - Light / Dark breath
25 - Shards breath
30 - Sound
35 - Force
40 - Plasma
42 - Gravity
44 - Nether
46 - Time
50 - Aether form (resist all)

Remember, Level 1-5 needs to be Clear Hound

Right, which then you become a water/fire/cold/elec hound at 6.