Revised Yredelemnul: God of Constructs

[File200]

It's kind of silly that we still have an entire religion which is made redundant by a spell school AND another religion, in terms of both flavor and function. Therefore, I suggest be Yredelemnul be revised to fit a different niche.

Yredelemnul the Grim, God of Constructs
Yredelemnul has done a 180 and now loves constructs, while still hating living and holy creatures. He now also dislikes demons to a small extent, because they mess up his statues and put graffiti everywhere. He strongly dislike destroying statues and artificial creatures. Gargoyles start with 5 piety when choosing Yred.

Gameplay
-Pain Mirror remains unchanged. Drain Life should be changed or reflavored.
-Artificial enemies now have chance to turn neutral upon seeing you, equal to [(piety/2) + (Invocations) - 2*(Monster HD)]%.
-Animate Remains and Animate Dead are removed, and replaced with similar abilites. Recall Undead Slaves and Enslave Soul are now called Recall Minion and Create Replica, but otherwise work the same.
-You now have the ability to keep one Constructed Minion with you. Whenever you receive or create a new Minion, your current one is destroyed.
-(Piety Level *) Activated ability: Corpse Puppet. Transform a corpse (but not a skeleton) into a puppet that fights for you. The puppet's stats are derived from the base monster, just like a zombie. The puppet has -8 EV, speed -1 (minimum 4) and [HD]d4 + 7*[HD] hit points. The monster loses its innate abilities (other than flying and the ability to carry weapons) and gains the construct subtype, with rC+ and rElec. Puppets cannot follow you downstairs. Costs 2 MP and 100-200 food.
-(Piety level ***) Activated ability: Raise Golem. Use your own essence to give life to the non-living materials around you, creating a golem. Costs 5 MP, 3-4 Piety, and 20% of your current HP. The golem's HD depends on your XL and the HP spent to create it. The golem created does not change depending on Branch or depth (too spoilery). Requires invocations to cast reliably. Golems fall apart when you leave the dungeon level they were created on.
-Gift Construct: Yredelemnul sometimes offers you a level-appropriate artificial minion, similar to his current ability. You have a choice of accepting the minion or not. If you accept, your current minion is destroyed.
-(Piety level *****) Activated ability: Create Replica. Functionally identical to Enslave Soul, but it can be used on non-unique demons and holy creatures as well. You can only have one Replica at a time, as with Enslave Soul. Your replica is tracked separately from your minion: you can have one replica and one puppet, or one replica and one golem, etc.
-Recall Minion changes to recall constructs, and will now recall both your minion and replica across levels.

[KoboldLord]

Why don't you actually play Yredelemnul before you start proposing 'fixes'? If Yred is redundant with another deity, it's Beogh or Fedhas, not Kiku. Yred characters and Kiku characters don't play anything like each other, and it will not actually change anything to slop on a new coat of paint over basically the same mechanics. It does not matter if two deities make reference to the same monster class in their flavor text if they don't actually play remotely the same.

[bcadren]

Yea. Yred and Beogh are too similar with Beogh being the worse of the two gods. Yred and Kiku, not so much. There are a few similarities between Yred invocations and actual necromancy, but no more than say...Qazlal's Upheaval and an actual Fireball. If any of those gods needs anything it's probably Beogh, just because Beogh is really weak compared to Yred and Beogh's wrath is...likely to most deadly of any god's so you can't just abandon him for extended.

[tasonir]

I suppose this is getting somewhat offtopic, but I'd say that Beogh is better than Yred, if you are careful. It takes some coddling, but properly equipped orcs with polearms are stronger than the general gift spam of Yred. I'm assuming a 3 rune game, neither god really works terribly well in extended.

As for OP, if it's mostly flavor changes, it isn't really adding much. Seems like you're removing the swarm of gifted allies in exchange for a single gifted ally? Not sure there's too much to gain there, although I wouldn't mind a god centered around giving you one powerful permanent ally who had interesting abilities. That would be an entirely new god though, and not really a Yred reskin.

[scorpionwarrior]

I suppose this is getting somewhat offtopic, but I'd say that Beogh is better than Yred, if you are careful. It takes some coddling, but properly equipped orcs with polearms are stronger than the general gift spam of Yred. I'm assuming a 3 rune game, neither god really works terribly well in extended.

Yeah but in addition to getting an army yred gives you abilities that are actually useful

[Pollen_Golem]

To be fair, Yred would be better off re-skinned for newer players, though it's not worth the effort. For some of my first games of Crawl, when I'd go altar-to-altar deciding what god to take, Yred and Kiku were just the two undead gods to me. And for quite some time I had trouble remembering which one did what. They did seem somewhat redundant, especially since I couldn't tell what the big difference was between training invo for Yred and necro for Kiku. Then again, same goes for Zin and TSO. For seasoned players, OP's change would mean that minions have a different set of resistances/vulnerabilities, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

[Berder]

Why don't you actually play Yredelemnul before you start proposing 'fixes'?

Careful, now - pointing out someone hasn't played a certain combo they're opining about is "record shaming" and against the (unwritten) rules! Apparently worth a full warning on first offense! Rules are enforced equally for everyone, right?

(I personally don't see any problem with your post, but I wonder what Lasty would say about it)

[File200]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I played Necromancer I would make packs of abominations and simulacra to wipe out the dungeon. Pretty much Yredelemnul-lite, but with the versatility of...well, magic. I guess this doesn't apply anymore with the removal of twisted resurrection. But, since it was brought up, Yred does step on the toes of Beogh. And maybe Fedhas too. (I don't know, Fedhas is a god that I actually don't use.)

Yes, packs of gifted undead are the first thing that anyone thinks about when they think of Yred. I wanted to take that aspect and pare it down to something that's easier to manage and isn't made redundant by other options. I'm satisfied with the ability changes I listed. If you want the feeling of old Yred, just expand the number of constructs that you can have. A reasonable compromise would be keeping one gifted construct, one replica and one golem at a time. You can make unlimited puppets, but they fall apart between levels instead of golems.

[bcadren]

To be fair, Yred would be better off re-skinned for newer players, though it's not worth the effort. For some of my first games of Crawl, when I'd go altar-to-altar deciding what god to take, Yred and Kiku were just the two undead gods to me. And for quite some time I had trouble remembering which one did what. They did seem somewhat redundant, especially since I couldn't tell what the big difference was between training invo for Yred and necro for Kiku. Then again, same goes for Zin and TSO. For seasoned players, OP's change would mean that minions have a different set of resistances/vulnerabilities, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

You know; after reading this I actually want to make a 180 on my original opinion. It would be nice to reskin Yred a bit; not because it necessarily needs it, but because the "Yred Gifts" were chosen out of creatures that spawn as enemies rather than being unique, interesting allies. Hell most (all?) of them are 'melee only creature' of various descriptions most without any kind of special effect at all. Be nice if the gifts were more interesting than 'a bunch of melee creatures'.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

To be fair, Yred would be better off re-skinned for newer players, though it's not worth the effort. For some of my first games of Crawl, when I'd go altar-to-altar deciding what god to take, Yred and Kiku were just the two undead gods to me. And for quite some time I had trouble remembering which one did what. They did seem somewhat redundant, especially since I couldn't tell what the big difference was between training invo for Yred and necro for Kiku. Then again, same goes for Zin and TSO. For seasoned players, OP's change would mean that minions have a different set of resistances/vulnerabilities, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

You know; after reading this I actually want to make a 180 on my original opinion. It would be nice to reskin Yred a bit; not because it necessarily needs it, but because the "Yred Gifts" were chosen out of creatures that spawn as enemies rather than being unique, interesting allies. Hell most (all?) of them are 'melee only creature' of various descriptions most without any kind of special effect at all. Be nice if the gifts were more interesting than 'a bunch of melee creatures'.

I would Love to see this done.

[Pollen_Golem]

Recent thread inspired me to bump. Existing nonliving monsters tend to have interesting properties and abilities. A lot of them use ranged attacks, addressing the 'boring melee' issue brought up by bcarden. Overall Yred would stay good longer while still making complete holistic sense. Changing Yred to a god of constructs may be rather straightforward. Here's one plan that could be used to get this done - it does not go as far as OP's sweeping changes, but further reduces similarity with necromancy, so the only ability related to living beings is Enslave Soul.

GIFTS
change gifts from undead monsters to golems, gargoyles, and some others
probably decrease the rate at which you become eligible for better gifts
ensure allied AI does not friendly-fire
Example:
1 toenail golem
2 gargoyle
3 thrashing horror
4 molten gargoyle
5 war gargoyle
6 tentacled starspawn
7 dancing weapon
8 crystal guardian
9 electric golem
Each time you are to receive a minion, the game rolls 1d(min(2+(# of previous gifts)/3, 9)). The result determines which minion you are gifted. (yes this is the wiki entry re-written)

ABILITIES
remove animate remains/dead
make active abilities available earlier
rename Drain Life to Drain Constitution and make it work on everything
recalibrate when player starts getting gifts
change Enslave Soul to create dolls instead of spectral things; use monster's original tile and change the characteristics dolls gain, e.g. rElec instead of undead features

OTHER
add piety gain for killing demonic and undead beings
standardize piety gain for killing holy beings with other creatures
remove piety gain for killing artificial beings
remove Yred's peeves, allow gargoyles to worship
make Yred neutral instead of evil
change Yred's wrath to make sense, e.g. make him summon hostile constructs instead of undead
re-write player titles, flavor text, god description
change altar tile to Nemelex's old altar tile, unless someone draws a new one
take another look at all vaults related to Yred and change them to make sense or give them to Kiku
do something about death knight monsters
just maybe rework twisted ressurection into his abilities, though probably not

[tasonir]

I wonder how an iron golem ally would play. They're nearly indestructible, but they move slowly, so it might be a pain keeping them with you. Yred could give them a special boost to speed 10, but that's kind of cheating. I'm not sure I'd want Yred to gift abyss monsters (feels too much like it's stealing from Lugonu), but I think there's enough powerful gargoyles/golems to still have a useful list. I'd also probably want to keep bone dragons, they're iconic and powerful. While they may be associated with undead, having something be made entirely out of bone does also seem pretty 'construct' to me.