Chaos Knights - which species?

[danr]

I'm really digging on Makhleb these days, at least for the early / midgame - endgame is pretty theoretical for me anyway. I'm curious as to what species people like for this class though:

Deep Dwarves:
- DD's benefit from the healing and also of course from Destruction and Servants keeping harm at some distance.
- DD's also have great aptitude for invocations, which is critical to this class.
- DD's have the same Armour, Dodging and Shields aptitudes as Minotaurs
- Pick axes, as that is the DD's best weapon aptitude (+1) Any other strengths / weaknesses people see with this combo?
- Don't train spellcasting, just rely on Makhleb and max your invocations skill

Demonspawn
- The only other species with +2 aptitude in invocations
- All their other aptitudes are not great, but their special mutations may give them other strengths that again, together with Makhleb, can eliminate the need for magic and detracting XP from your core melee, defence and invocation skills.

Merfolk
- Starting with a +2 trident is pretty sweet, esp. with +4 aptitude in polearms.
- Apart from this, decent dodging (+3), fighting (+1) make for a great EV-melee build
- Mf have spellcasting of 0 and with favouring light armour they are more natural to expand into magic than the above two (esp. enchantments(+1), Crusader-style, or Transmutations (+3). Ice / Poison aptitudes are also +1). MfTm of Makhleb would be another way to go.
- Polearms (+4) crosstrain with staves, so the -2 aptitude in staves is greatly improved if you have trained up polearms and want to also use a magical staff. If my math is correct, as long as your Polearm skill is higher than your staves skill, the crosstraining means your staves aptitude goes from -2 to +2.


Those are the three that seem the best to me. I'm curious what others think.

Other possibilities:
Kobolds: Eat anything (reduces food burden of invocations), good dodging, fighting, short blades, and decent evocations
Mountain Dwarf: If you want to go the heavy armour (apt. +3) route
Minotaur: Horns for extra damage, general great melee class, Makhleb is a great god to compensate for totally sucking at magic. Invocations skill of -1 though.

[MrMisterMonkey]

DD:

• I personally prefer demon whip and shield over 2-hander axes, especially on a deep dwarf, and axes with shields isn't that great of a combo
• Don't max Invocations; that's a waste of experience and 12 or so is enough.
• Spellcasting is great; do it if you're not going extremely heavy on your armour.
• Invocations aptitude is hardly critical, and it trains quickly enough even with a bad apt, but it's still nice if your character is really weak enough to have to rely on it early on I guess (hint: DDCK is not weak).

DS:

• Once again, you don't really need that much Invocations, and magic always helps, even if you only get enough skill to cast Regeneration and Apportation. You can turn off your weapon skill, too, once you get your weapon to minimum delay (demon whips, for instance, only require 12 m&f skill to hit their minimum, which is 5 delay).

Mf:

• Enhancer staves are only really good with 14 or more Evocations (the amount it takes to trigger the effect on every hit), and I personally wouldn't bother with them on a MfCK, but they're great on more casty/evocationsy types.

Ko:

• I'd probably go maces and flails for demon whip if not getting any stabby spells to use with short blades

[danr]

Why is 12 Invocations enough?

Do minor / major destruction top out at some point?

[danr]

I guess I basically just use minor destruction to train invocations (and to soften monsters in the early game), and I don't use major destruction much because of its volatility and piety cost anyway.

And for summons, Invocations does not affect the power, just the likelihood of hostility, correct?

[Stormfox]

And for summons, Invocations does not affect the power, just the likelihood of hostility, correct?

Correct. Around 12 is where things start getting pretty safe even for Greater Servant, and the returns are diminishing from there.

[Sealer]

To be honest any race can be an effective chaos knight and most comboes can benefit from Makhleb. It's just that some do a bit more than others.

[acvar]

Take a vampire. Get to third level. Turn into a bat, and spam your abilities while staying out of range of everything. It actually works quite well.

[danr]

And for summons, Invocations does not affect the power, just the likelihood of hostility, correct?

Correct. Around 12 is where things start getting pretty safe even for Greater Servant, and the returns are diminishing from there.

Hmm. My current game I have invocations at 12 and it feels to me like 1/4 of my greater servants are coming out hostile.

[Stormfox]

And for summons, Invocations does not affect the power, just the likelihood of hostility, correct?

Correct. Around 12 is where things start getting pretty safe even for Greater Servant, and the returns are diminishing from there.

Hmm. My current game I have invocations at 12 and it feels to me like 1/4 of my greater servants are coming out hostile.

A hostility rate of about 20% for greater servants is about par for the course, I've seen. It's still less capricious than Major Destruction having a fireball or lightning orb blow up in your face, and easier to deal with. If you've got XP to burn, raising Invocations to 18 or so drops that rate to around 10%, but I think about that and then about how else I could have spent that experience, and I take my chances. You gotta keep the Chaos in Chaos Knight, right?

dpeg once told me that Makhleb-ites should place a higher priority on teleport control if they're going to play with Greater Servant, and the few times I've been able to come up with it, it's made a pretty big difference.

[Robsoie]

I played several time a Mummy Chaos Knight of Maklheb and usually had some nice result with this combo.

While at first a Mummy does not seem to be the best choice because it has trouble with the invocation skill learning (it's -2 ), the fact is that unlike most other species the Mummy can spam Minor Destruction without a problem as soon as you get it.
That's due to having absolutely no hunger to deal with it (minor destruction costs not only magic points, but has a food cost), so even with a -2 at learning this skill, as the mummy does not have to be carefull with the food level, the invocation skill can then actually raise relatively well despite its malus.

Additionally, coming from the lack of hunger, you will earn faith points quicker than other species too, as you will be able to sacrifice everything you kill, instead of having to butcher/eat half of them to fight the hunger induced by lots of minor destruction usage and various minor demon summon.
So in the end it's easy to regain the faith lost by invocking Maklheb other powers.