Merfolk Chaos Knight

[danr]

Makhleb is really growing on me again. Great powers that are easy to train and use, and that really supplement a melee character (e.g. give you the ability to deal with monsters at a distance). You get decent ranged magic and summons all under one skill, Invocations.

MfCK (I'll call it Mofo:)), in addition to Makhleb, start with a +2 trident and have the best weapon aptitude in the game of any species for any weapon type, +4. The trident is also a very effective weapon: Base damage of 10, Acc +3! and speed of 130!

The one I just started (by accident actually, I was wanting to play Sprint with this class based on suggestion here but ended up in the regular dungeon by keyboard error) has also found a +2 robe of resistance, and I cleared the Chevalier's keep or whatever and found a bunch of glaives of reaching.

The swimming ability is also just icing on the cake - fighting bonuses in water, and of course you can ignore water barriers.

[Sealer]

Swimming also grants you spriggan speed in water, melds your shoes and gives you a tail (unarmed) and increases your EV by 20% if I remember correctly. It's actually jolly powerful.

[danr]

CKs are fast becoming my favourite class again - summons kick way more butt than Berserking, and with fewer downsides, provided you are careful with Greater Servants and Greater Destruction. Trog's gifts have underwhelmed me recently, and often don't provide me with my best weapon anyway.

[rebthor]

One think I found with Makhleb is that if you ever get a hostile summon and have no other escape route, assuming your invocation is high enough to give you a good chance, it's worth it to do another summon and hope for the best. This is really a last resort kind of move, but once I was looking at my inventory, a hostile balrug along with the end branch skeletal dragons/drakes and realized that I was pretty much dead. I did another summon and boom executioner came along and saved my bacon.

[Stormfox]

Exactly. If your Invocations is decent (12-ish), the chance of a hostile summon is low enough that getting two or three in a row is a really bad run of luck.

Normally I curse when I get a friendly Cacodemon, but if I need to cover a retreat instead of advance offensively, Cacos are great for the volume of meat shielding that they can produce.