I've compared Assassins to bloody water balloons. Because they die pretty quick and explode in a shower of blood that rusts the absolute shit out of anything and everything metal on you.

The table also doesn't include whips or warhammers, and includes "Poleaxe" which obviously was not implemented. No idea where that was going.
Going to have to say the inclusion of flaming anything swords in LIVAN tips the balance pretty solidly in the player's favor rather than just having the standard flaming longsword.

I think this has been mentioned before but blink dogs have a chance to spawn another blink dog when they teleport.
I found this out because I polymorphed myself into a blink dog in New Attnam and attacked Decos, and spawned another (friendly) blink dog when I took a hit and teleported away.

Oh yes, you certainly are remembering correctly.
Feed an ommel bone armor to wolves or blink dogs and enjoy the show.

Dialog.txt would suggest this is true, but having looked at the damage calculations in the source code it does not seem like monster size is taken into account anywhere.
Let me clarify - Dialog.txt says that large monsters take MORE damage from "long" weapons (spear, quarterstaff, 2h sword, halberd) and LESS from "short" weapons (dagger, short sword) and that the inverse is true for small monsters. The code doesn't seem to support this.

However, like Hatter up there suggests larger targets are in fact easier to hit, much like small targets are harder to hit (good example - try hitting a floating eye with a warhammer).
Size is taken into account with to-hit values, and smaller weapons have higher to-hit values than larger ones.
Therefore, perhaps dialog.txt holds true only because a larger target is more likely to take a hit from a big weapon and take more damage than being hit with a small weapon, and that a small target it more likely to be hit by a small weapon and thus "DPS" (per turn I guess) is going to be higher than missing it 20 times with a humongous hammer.

Here's the excerpt from dialog.txt, line 2523:

Ivan perform damage with jolliness:

Point increases chance of critical hit by +50%
Cut and blunt damage simultaneous
Long weakens against small enemies and improves against large, short 
works inversely

POINT CUT BLUNT | ACCURACY DURABILITY BLOCK | special

Spear             P8 C0 B2 | A8 D1 Blo6 | long, 2hand, throw
Quarterstaff      P3 C0 B2 | A6 D1 Blo6 | long, 2hand
Bastard sword     P4 C6 B4 | A4 D7 Blo5 |
Short sword       P6 C4 B2 | A6 D8 Blo7 | short, 1hand
Longsword         P6 C5 B2 | A7 D6 Blo8 | 1hand
2-handed sword    P1 C7 B7 | A4 D6 Blo6 | long, 2hand
Axe               P0 C6 B5 | A2 D4 Blo4 |
Battle-axe        P0 C7 B6 | A4 D6 Blo5 |
Halberd           P7 C8 B8 | A4 D4 Blo5 | long, 2hand
Poleaxe           P0 C8 B8 | A4 D4 Blo4 | long, 2hand
Mace              P0 C0 B6 | A4 D4 Blo5 |
Dagger            P6 C2 B0 | A8 D2 Blo1 | short, 1hand

I meant whoever casts the spell. So yes, if you cast it on yourself or if a monster casts it on itself, as opposed to you casting polymorph on an enemy or a monster casting polymorph on you.

Heh, the script files are nowhere near as difficult to pick up on as Java (which should say something since Java isn't particularly tough either) so you should be fine all the way.

IIRC Polymorphing into a bad creature is intentional. It's something like a 75% chance to turn the caster into something better, and 25% to something terrible (e.g. large spider, puppy, carnivorous plant), and the inverse for hostiles.

If you're interested in learning to do more with the script files, check out the thread I made here alongside this guide which is also linked in that topic.

The player gets moved to the "team" the taming monster belongs to.
This has been used as a Wizmode exploit referred to as "diplomatic immunity" where you'd possess the Gloomy Cave shopkeeper and use him to tame the player.

Since the shopkeeper has his own team (just him and the guards) and has special properties (can't trigger aggravation from any other team except the player's) you can then re-possess the player and have him run around Attnam lopping peoples' limbs off without fear of setting off the alarm and getting slaughtered.

Speaking of, that's going to be an issue if the whip of taming is used against the player as you'd instantly be attacked when you returned to town and also the monsters would become friendly to you right down to Elpuri and Oree.
Of course an easy fix would be to add "CanBeTamed = False" or w/e the actual tag is to playerkind in the script.

The only time I "defeated" Izzy he teleported himself into the dwarven minefield with just about the expected result.