Demonspawn X of Chei

[spindart]

After getting two 3 rune wins, with an Ogre Berserker and a Demonspawn Fire elementalist; I am feeling a bit more adventurous.
I love the demonspawn as a class, and was wondering what background would be a good combo to go with Chei.

Also, Weapon + Shield vs 2h; for both demonspawn and in general. I feel like I do so little damage with a 1h weapon, but all the artefacts that I stumble upon are 1h

Thanks again for all your help.
~Spindart

[duvessa]

I made a list of good chei backgrounds a while ago, here it is:

[Sar]

I really don't think Ds is the best race for Chei, Ds do have weak earlygame and Chei doesn't really do anything good for your survival either.
I think backgrounds that benefit from Chei the most is the ones who benefit from Int boost and its effect on spellpower (everyone benefits from Dex). So Conjurers and Elementalists.

[crate]

If you are set on playing a chei character I would suggest IE is probably the best background. FE and Cj are good also.

[Bart]

If you want Chei, definitely monk is my favourite, as he benefits even more from high stats than other classes. DsMo of Chei is not the easiest one, but if you want, give it a try. I would advise then to focus in early game on unarmed combat, and quite soon also start training evasion to get basic defenses.

[Magipi]

If you want Chei, definitely monk is my favourite, as he benefits even more from high stats than other classes.

Can you explain this, please?

[Sar]

Well Monks don't benefit from Int at all. Is the Str influence on UC actually useful?

[Bart]

Yes, the strength bonus is very significant. Monk's damage with chei might go up even by 100% thanks to bonus strength and dex (the second adds much less, though).

About intelligence - monks tend to wear light or medium armour because attack speed is dependent on armour encumbrance. Therefore also spell training is easy even if initially monks do not benefit from int bonus.

If you won't suffer from "one click too much" Chei issue, monks are pleasant way to go. I have won these at least few times and I always recall chei monk games with pleasure.

There is also one additional advantage of Ds monks over casters in my opinion - you will make greater use of mutations in melee (especially unarmed) than in spellcasting and nightstalker won't screw your plans for firestorm

[RBrandon]

I think Tm would be better than monk with chei, since you can benefit from all of the stats and in the case of forms the effect of str on UC is ginormous (dex too, in the case of Blade Hands). I probably wouldn't do that with Ds though.

I would agree with the others that Cj or -E would be best if you are set on Chei

[Sar]

I'm saying Int is useless for Monks because there is absolutely no guarantee you will get any useful book until midgame, and by midgame you've kinda won already, Chei or not. Book backgrounds can get that bonus to use as soon as they convert, as Int has a good effect on both success and spellpower. Those spells also usually give them ranged option, summons, things that make up for lack of mobility somewhat.
I also had decent time with AM of Chei, for what it's worth.

[Siegurt]

Well Monks don't benefit from Int at all. Is the Str influence on UC actually useful?

Monks might benefit from int, all depends on the spellbooks you find and/or use.

The 15 Str and Dex (In combination) given by Chei at max piety increase the damage done by unarmed by:
19% on average for your main hand attack, and by
37.5% for each aux attack,
assuming you start with Str and Dex >=10 (It's a larger increase if you start with less than 10 Str and/or Dex)

The code for those is here for the main hand:

  Code:

int melee_attack::player_stat_modify_damage(int damage)
{
    int dammod = 39;
    const int dam_stat_val = calc_stat_to_dam_base();

    if (dam_stat_val > 11)
        dammod += (random2(dam_stat_val - 11) * 2);
    else if (dam_stat_val < 9)
        dammod -= (random2(9 - dam_stat_val) * 3);

    damage *= dammod;
    damage /= 39;

    return damage;
}


and here for aux attacks:

  Code:

int melee_attack::player_aux_stat_modify_damage(int damage)
{
    int dammod = 20;
    // Use the same str/dex weighting that unarmed combat does, for now.
    const int dam_stat_val = (7 * you.strength() + 3 * you.dex())/10;

    if (dam_stat_val > 10)
        dammod += random2(dam_stat_val - 9);
    else if (dam_stat_val < 10)
        dammod -= random2(11 - dam_stat_val);

    damage *= dammod;
    damage /= 20;

    return damage;
}


Additionally, the chance of using an aux attack goes up with your Str and Dex (a d(50) is rolled and if it's under Str+Dex aux attacks are happen) So that can be a large increase in the number of aux attacks. (Some attacks get an additional roll, so even if you have >50 Str+Dex, you won't see those all the time)

The problem with Chei is that this reasonably large increase in power comes at a terrible disadvantage one I'm personally not convinced is worth it (Because it makes fights you can win easier (And increases by a small amount the number of those types of fights), but fights you can't win become much more difficult to survive)

However Chei is fun, and does force you to think a little more carefully about how you're going to approach things. And Monks do get that immediate piety bump which gets you started on your way pretty quickly (Although I personally never find that getting piety with Chei is very hard.)

[Magipi]

Yes, the strength bonus is very significant. Monk's damage with chei might go up even by 100% thanks to bonus strength and dex (the second adds much less, though).

About intelligence - monks tend to wear light or medium armour because attack speed is dependent on armour encumbrance. Therefore also spell training is easy even if initially monks do not benefit from int bonus.

If you won't suffer from "one click too much" Chei issue, monks are pleasant way to go. I have won these at least few times and I always recall chei monk games with pleasure.

There is also one additional advantage of Ds monks over casters in my opinion - you will make greater use of mutations in melee (especially unarmed) than in spellcasting and nightstalker won't screw your plans for firestorm

When you write "monk", you actually mean "any unarmed fighter, including transmuters"?

[Klown]

TrMo
DECj
MiGl

If you see nessos too early, you're done. Chei is risky business.

[Bart]

DsMo of Chei is definitely my preference over DsTm, although the second is reasonable, too. Let me come back to that later.

If by midgame you've kinda won already, please abandon at this point your god and continue as atheist
If you worship Xom, you might not notice quality of good god in late game, but other people usually benefit from their gods the whole game.

Even if you get superb utility spells early, you rather shouldn't train them immediately, because jack-of-all-trade simply won't work well when you meet first hill giant. +15 int makes later spell learning very easy regardless whether you learn only repel/blink/shroud or go towards deflect/invisibility/darkness. Of course spellcasters make greater use of int than fighters, but trying to prove how +15 str makes your mage superior is even worse. Overall I think that melee-oriented hybrids make the best use of all 45 points in total and feel free to disagree, but don't minimize pros of good int on monks.

Let me also raise the issue of Ds aptitudes. With slightly more expensive skills than usual, you really do not want to waste any exp. Transmuter needs quite many skills to develop and it is hard to get quickly all of them. Not being able to outrun enemies in spider form is serious drawback on this background. That is, Ds isn't as good Chei transmuter as a species with natural transmuting talents. Also transmuter somewhat loses benefits of being demonspawn, because blades can replace claws and ice form/ spider form will replace any body mutation.

The exp issue hurts mages even more if they want to make more serious use of additional strength in melee - and they are kind of forced to, because sooner or later they will find themselves out of mana. Further, lack of guaranteed spells always discourages me even more from trying such combinations.

Getting piety is easy, but bonus piety on Chei has very nice advantage. If you meet ogre soon after you've converted, you won't be able to outrun it with 0* piety, but you'll have significantly greater chances to kill the same ogre with 2* piety thanks to already somewhat boosted statistics and access to first power. Also having earlier access to chei's second power rises your survival chances against e.g. centaurs.

I'm not going to argue with any formulas, although I don't trust their outcome. Fsim shows in most cases much more than 20% boost (I tested for 15dex, 15str vs. 30dex, 30str). Also my experience says that 20% isn't the case!

Chei is a god you need to learn, seriously. He's not obvious, doesn't forgive errors, requires a lot of attention and planning. If you do not have patience, just look for something "easier" to play. It doesn't mean that Chei games are that difficult - they are in fact relatively easy, but I doubt you can figure it out in 2 hours.

[Sar]

Well additional 15 Str would allow my mage to wear heavier armours, especially with new system. My LOFE of Chei won wearing a CPM and it was pretty nice. Also yeah, I would melee on a Chei mage, but I would melee on pretty much any mage.
You do have more experience with Chei than I do, though, so I probably should reconsider my stance.

[Bart]

I should also reconsider mages casting in CPM, impressive firestorm at 2% failure chance! *
http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Sa ... 221011.txt

I'm not changing my opinion of monk, though - if somebody is going to learn how to play with Chei, monk is much, much more obvious than melee-mage. Have fun either way

*however with brilliance

[Sar]

Yeah, that Fire Storm was just me fooling around, Bolt of Fire + vamp lajatang did all the hard work. And I didn't plan to use CPM, of course, but when I found a decent randart one and a helmet that provided me all rC I needed, I decided to do it just for fun.

[crate]

My main disagreement with bart is that I think it is significantly better to approach "melee-oriented hybrids" (or anything like that, really) from a book start instead of from a non-book start, since it is much much easier to find weapons and armour than it is to find specific spellbooks.

Oh! I forgot to mention the actual best chei background, somehow. Chei is actually maybe the best Arcane Marksman god (probably you want to choose xbow for this), only really competing with Fedhas or Okawaru.

[tasonir]

I figured I'd take a stab at it, having lost the DsTm challenge this week...died about 10 or so times without getting to a chei alter - first game I successfully worshipped chei I did very well and really should have won, but I'm lazy and keep fighting at 25% health when I'm carrying a heal wounds wand.

Morgue here: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 035346.txt

Was quite strong in terms of damage/defenses, had a very poor selection of spells, but assuming I found a few more books, I'd have been fine. This is basically exactly what crate is talking about, although I still don't mind starting as a monk, the higher unarmed and getting 3 ranks of fighting makes the first ~5 floors much easier.

My mutations were also terrible; for "scales" I got thin skeleton, for +6 dex, which has almost no effect due to the step downs when you're at 40 dex...Maybe I'll fire up another one and try to get real scales...

[absolutego]

i hear huasˆchei is pretty strong

[Bart]

My main disagreement with bart is that I think it is significantly better to approach "melee-oriented hybrids" (or anything like that, really) from a book start instead of from a non-book start, since it is much much easier to find weapons and armour than it is to find specific spellbooks.

Oh! I forgot to mention the actual best chei background, somehow. Chei is actually maybe the best Arcane Marksman god (probably you want to choose xbow for this), only really competing with Fedhas or Okawaru.

Good point! Yet I think that for a species which has -1 apt in almost everything it can be headache if you do not know where to spend your exp.
I haven't considered AM. Very interesting choice which I'll try on next opportunity, thanks for suggestion!

[Lasty]

I think unarmed backgrounds are probably the last ones I'd recommend for Chei. For one thing, they tend to have a harder time during the period when Chei makes things particularly hard. For another, they don't get to apply Chei's strength bonus to armour, since heavy armour is bad for UC. Also, Chei works best in conjunction with full-LOS damage, and unarmed is not that.

I'm with crate that Arcane Marksman, or even just Hunter, is fairly good Chei background. Among book backgrounds, Conjurer is probably going to be best with Chei, since it's got the largest-range options, but IE is strong with pretty much anything.

[tasonir]

Unarmed not being full LOS damage is a valid point, and very true. But UC do get to wear armor - with a little armor skill wearing 11 encumbrance (formerly -3EV) armors is what I generally prefer. It will have very minimal impact on your attack speed, probably only occasionally adding .1 turn, and generally nothing, once your armor skill is around 15 or so. I generally try to find a good leather/ringmail early game, and then upgrade to fire/ice dragon once I have some skill. If I find a decent scale mail early on, I will consider it, although you'll notice some additional delay from it. In the above game I had found a +4 scale mail on the ground, and wore that for some time, although I later on found a +1 ring mail with MR, and switched to that.

[crate]

I think specifically AM is much better than hunter for chei since
1) the book is actually really good (and fits nicely with chei, to boot)
2) chei helps immensely in getting the spells useful (both power and success) with less xp
3) AM is kind of xp-starved early on

Hunter of chei isnt really anything special. You get less attack delay, but early on that's about it (you don't even get more damage, since your starting bow/sling has low enchantment, and xbow doesn't care about str for damage).

[Lasty]

I agree that AM is much more synergistic with Chei than hunter. The reason I brought up hunter was because it's a relatively easy background, it has full LOS range from even before you join Chei, it can use Chei strength for ranged attack speed and damage and also for heavy armour, it can use Chei dex for ranged attack speed and damage and also for Dodging, and eventually it'll be able to use the int bonus to get good casting on line.

Of course, having the AM book is better, but even without the AM book it plays to most of Chei's strengths.

[tasonir]

(you don't even get more damage, since your starting bow/sling has low enchantment, and xbow doesn't care about str for damage).

I consider this to be a major flaw in the ranged combat equations, and one I'd love to overhaul if I could get support for it. But you're right that's how it currently is.