Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 5382
Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36
Redesign Makhleb's active abilities
In its current state, Makhleb is essentially the god of heal on kills. Its active abilities feel somewhat tacked on, in order to justify the god as not simply a single passive effect, even though the god is almost always taken simply for that passive effect. Considering power level alone healing on kills is enough power to justify taking Makhleb over other gods, particularly on Deep Dwarves, who worship Makhleb frequently. This leaves Makhleb's active abilities in a tough spot - they can't actually be that strong, since the god is already very strong. This is usually given as the reason why its summons have a chance to be hostile - so that they are inferior to other summons such at Trog's Brother in Arms, which won't backfire and kill you (or at least try to kill you). The conjurations are likewise somewhat unpredictable (in damage type) so it's hard to rely on them, and the damage isn't really that incredible that you see people using them as a main attack. People tend to develop whatever offense they were going to use independent of Makhleb, and fairly soon that eclipses the damage of his destruction abilities.
In many cases players will entirely or almost entirely ignore the active abilities for an entire run. It isn't terribly hard to find a run that uses one ability < 5 times, and never uses the other three. There are some runs where people do use a fair mix of the skills, but it is generally optional and not really central to the character.
Proposal
1) Remove all active abilities
2) Replace them with only 1-2 higher impact abilities. These abilities still can't be incredibly powerful due to the power of the heal on kills passive, but I'd rather see one good ability than 4 "filler" abilities that are tacked on justify Makhleb's existence.
That's the end of the proposal; I'm not too certain what the ideal 1-2 abilities to replace should be, and would be happy to have other people post suggestions. I am going to suggest my own here, but I wanted to focus more on the reasoning and justification of needing to redesign Makhleb, rather than the suggested replacement.
Sample active ability
In order to keep with the theme of blood/healing, I think the ability should have a large health cost. Offering you tremendous power at the cost of most of your health works well with being able to heal on kill.
Name: Avatar of Makhleb
Moderate version: Sacrifice 25% of your max health: Gain +50% damage, +5 AC/EV/SH, lasts 100-150 auts (10-15 turns). High piety cost, available at 3*.
Extreme version: Sacrifice 75% of current health: Gain +100% damage, +10 AC/EV/SH, lasts 100-150 auts (10-15 turns). Extreme piety cost, available at 4* or 5*. Optionally grants death protection for a shorter duration than the full effect's duration, about 2 turns.
Works with all damage sources - spells, ranged weapons, melee. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about offering a brief death protection effect - without it, taking off 75% of your health might be too severe, with it, it may be too strong. In all cases for both versions the goal is to restore your health by killing several enemies to make up for giving up the health initially. You could take only one version of the ability, or give both, like how the current active abilities have two levels.
I'm a bit conflicted on if it should use max health or current health - the moderate version seems like something you'd want to use early on as a boost for a tough fight, but the extreme version is more of a desperate last stand when you're already losing a fight. Having that require 75% of your max health would mean it's unusable when you need it since you're already below 75% health.
Some more complex formula like "Attempts to use 75% of your max health but will always leave you with at minimum of 20-30 (randomly chosen) health, and requires at least 30 hp to be spent in order to activate" is probably best, but then it's harder to communicate to the player how much they're giving up.
Conclusion
Makhleb is the god of healing on kills; its active abilities are mostly forgettable and often unused. They are generic and weak, although this is probably due to how powerful healing on kills is. It would be better to replace them with 1 or 2 abilties which had more direct interaction with the healing on kills passive.
I've suggested one sample ability that does that, although I'm not really that wedded to the active; it's more the idea that Makhleb should have a completely different set of active abilities that I'm trying to sell here. I am fond of the general idea that the active has a significant health cost - this is one thing that Makhleb's active abilities do well (cost hp rather than mana).
Officially ruining greatplayer statistics since Jan 18th, 2015.
I wrote the Melee Naga Guide.
Recording of my 15 rune 40k turn VSMo^Chei speedrun!