Make mindless allies actually mindless

[RBrandon]

It has always seemed odd to me that ctrl-c melee attacking zombies made them upset at you, especially since they don't mind you firing bolts of fire through them. Or anything else really. Shoot arrows at them, whatever, they only get mad about melee attacks. Since zombies are either 1) mindless or, more likely, 2) bound to your will, I propose that they lose the attitude and no longer react whatsoever to harassment of any kind.

I am not sure if this should apply to intelligent undead allies. The current god flavour text (at least in the case of Yredelemnul gifts as well other collateral kill messages from Beogh's proxy zombies and death channel spectres) notes that they "accept your slave's kill." The message could be changed to the collateral kill message for clarity, or they could be made to not react negatively to your attacks as above if they are bound to your will.

[Laraso]

Oh boy, I can't wait to turn every single last skeleton and zombie into walking sacks of free XP.

"What's that? You ran into an early hill giant zombie and you're only XL 4? Just cast Control Undead or Enslavement and kill it and then you'll be XL 7! Don't worry bro, it can't fight back."

[Psiweapon]

I don't think it'd be that hard to make charmed thralls still have the effect broken

[duvessa]

Oh boy, I can't wait to turn every single last skeleton and zombie into walking sacks of free XP.

"What's that? You ran into an early hill giant zombie and you're only XL 4? Just cast Control Undead or Enslavement and kill it and then you'll be XL 7! Don't worry bro, it can't fight back."

um you can already do that

[crate]

I actually bug reported sufficiently-dumb enslaved things not going hostile from certain actions a while back (because apart from not being clear to the player it leads to awful gameplay).

Unfortunately the response I got was "not a bug". Probably I should bring this up again at some point since it's really bad that you are encouraged to do things like enslave a yak and then kill it with stones or needles so it won't go hostile.

You could make permanent allies have different rules, I guess, and then the suggestion here is fine, but that has the cost of being inconsistent in a not-immediately-clear manner (enslaved zombies go hostile if you attack them, permally ones do not).

[dck]

I don't see how anyone could claim basically all zombies and skeletons are anything but walking sacks of free exp already.

[Laraso]

I don't see how anyone could claim basically all zombies and skeletons are anything but walking sacks of free exp already.

I said that because I didn't know it was already possible to attack enslaved zombies and not turn them hostile. At least, it never ever works when I try to do it.

[dck]

To make this a bit more clear, the overwhelming majority of zombies and skeletons are completely harmless in basically any situation, your example included.

[damiac]

The difference seems to be whether you melee them or kill them with ranged stuff. That's interesting, I didn't know I could kill my enslaved allies with ranged attacks without them turning on me. Wand of enslavement seems that much better now...

[Tenaya]

Skeletons also get mad when you LRD them, I don't think that makes sense. I think casting Shatter does too.

[crate]

The difference seems to be whether you melee them or kill them with ranged stuff. That's interesting, I didn't know I could kill my enslaved allies with ranged attacks without them turning on me. Wand of enslavement seems that much better now...

You can only do this for things of animal intelligence or lower. Smarter things behave as you would expect (i.e. they get mad at you when you attack them).