ToME WikiKhymChanur: For ToME 3.0.0, how about more flexible ways of items applying Aggravate Monsters. An item could include or exlcude types of monsters to be affected, so you could have an artifact with *Slay Undead* that aggravates only the undead, or a demonologist artifact that aggravates everything except for demons. The include/exclude could also work on co-aligned, pets, and companions, so you could have aggravate that only affects pets and companion, preventing you from keeping them, but doesn't wake up monsters; on the other hand, you could have an aggravate that works on everything but pets and companions, so a player who depends on pets could keep them while still aggravating monsters.
Additionally, you could have a modifier to say how powerful the aggravation is. So you could have one item which is only slightly aggravation, with a low chance of waking monsters per round, and that only speeds them up a tiny; and another item which majorly aggravates monsters, speeding them up twice as much as normal aggravation. This would let developers be better able to fine tune the benefits and drawbacks of artifacts, as compared to just on/off aggravation.
KhymChanur: Another idea along the same lines would be to allow for aggravation to be split up into it's component parts: waking monsters, turning monsters hostile, and giving monsters a speed boost. Something that's supposed to make a lot of noise can wake up everything, without making monsters hostile or giving them a speed boost. You could even give a radius to the wake-up effect, so you could have an item with a wake-up radius of 1 which keeps you from sneaking right past a monster without waking it up, but for a group of sleeping monsters you can stand a ways away and pick them off one-by-one with distance attacks.
NeilStevens: The monster aggravation item ability doesn't haste monsters.