*But a novel hash function will still do the trick and isn't comparable to using...

But a novel hash function will still do the trick and isn't comparable to using a single salt across the entire database, as you originally claimed.

I'm not sure I understand this point, what is the criteria for a function to be novel?

This function produces different hashes from most other hash functions, eg, it is new and possibly novel, but is equivalent to using a single salt across a database:

    function novelHash(password) {
        return md5("novelHash" + password);
    }