Part 1: Ally God, Beogh


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Swamp Slogger

Posts: 174

Joined: Saturday, 16th September 2017, 21:17

Post Thursday, 19th April 2018, 15:45

Part 1: Ally God, Beogh

This thread is inspired by some of the things I've seen floating around. It is Part 1 of two threads (sister thread here) because I have noticed that ally-gods (and allies in general) tend to get a bit of flak now and then...and for good reason.

Beogh

I, personally, love the overall concept of Beogh. Having permallies that you can equip and that level up to be quite powerful is potent. So don't take this as hate on Beogh, because Orc Jesus is just awesome (although based on the "destroy all dissenters," might be more Orc Mohammed.)

Let's look at the problems, though.

1) Allies. Allies are really powerful already, perhaps one of the most powerful tools in the game if you learn how to manage them well. Permallies that level up are even more powerful, for clear reasons. Equipping them/them getting gifted gear just makes them another notch higher in power.

2) Micro-ing. I may be wrong here, but on both a personal level and from what I gather, the optimal minigame of positioning orcs, recalling certain ones, keeping track of leveling orcs, choosing equipment for them, etc. seems a bit much. Yes, there are players who do this, and it is optimal. But it is a time-sink and a needless hassle in something that could be a bit more straightforward.

3) Race limited. This has been floating around now for a bit, and seems to be widely agreed -- anyone should be able to worship Beogh. He's a cool god that turns you into Jesus-Mohammed (Johammed? Jesammus? Mesused?) and certain dungeon creatures actually worship you. But just one race? That's too limiting, and a total "one-off" in this game. Even worse, the one race chosen is a good race, but about as vanilla as they come, being buffer-and-dummer humans almost.

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Now, the point of this thread is simple: discussing possible ways to improve Beogh.

Things that are not the point of this thread:

1) Debating if he should be improved -- while that is a feasible question, in threads like this it tends to hijack potential discussion

2) "Dead-end" suggestions -- just saying he needs to be removed, or that there shouldn't be allies is merely a statement, not a workable solution. If you think he should be removed, explain how an equivalent god might be created; if he shouldn't do much with allies, give plausible alternatives.

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With that said, I'll start with my personal thoughts.

1) The ally system can be a bit kooky, sometimes. You can usually get Beogh early game (I actually had one game where I didn't run into a priest until I found the mines), and you'll probably get enough piety to start getting followers by the time you're ready to hit lair, give or take (Monk and amulet of faith help). At that rate, Beogh is probably one of the more powerful choices, since even having a single ally or two makes a huge advantage at that level.

Mid-game you'll hit the orcish mines at full piety and end up with your army. At this point you'll be OP-AF, probably with more direct power than any other god for the time being (note direct power, as in walk around and destroy stuff without having to play around with powers).

Late-game, however (and even on many mid-game sections), you'll run into things that will chow through your army. In my experience, Spider's Nest is one of the worst culprits you'll hit first, with the repeat-application poison effects and Orbs undermining your tanks. If your army dies, after a certain point you won't regain them quickly enough to get them to level up before they die again, meaning you'll be behind the curve.

Solution?: I could be overlapping the way things already work, BUT... I think that adjusting the "orc granting" ability to key off of the number of living orc allies you have would be helpful. Additionally, key the power of orcs granted off of your current XL... and make this more than a "small chance." If you're going to have allies, make them reliably granted. This also will make it so that you can't boost your army just by entering levels alone so that you get free allies -- it would work more around a total number and power of allies.

2) Micro-ing is probably why I end up with dead orcs. Yes, I do try to equip them strategically, and I do play around with attacking, positioning, polearms, etc...but in the end when I enter a level, I want to drag my army down and begin the massacre. I don't want to have to do some kind of calculation with scratch paper keeping track of how many orcs I have of which types, and which ones I need to bring down to keep the other ones in reserve, and who comes when and stopping recall...just...no.

Solution?: Honestly, I don't know the answer to this per se, not knowing the nuances of DCSS enough to come up with a mechanically feasible alternative. I do know that it isn't enjoyable.

3) Orcs only? I mean, come on. I'm going to say this right now: A good chunk of why Beogh is powerful is less because he's that awesome of a god, and more because you could run a godless orc with a decent chance of success. I mean, you're one of the more reliable species that has overall great attributes, high HP, acceptable MP, etc. You then get tossed a powerful ally god as what is essentially the most OP of OP racial mutations. Orcs have no mutations? Come now, orcs have the "Beogh" mutation. That is really why I think this is a problem -- it is a ridiculous empowerment of a race that, of ALL the races, doesn't need an empowerment. Sure, if you slapped Beogh onto a mummy (Beogh, the great Sun-Pharoh) that might be a decent balance. Not so much on orcs. Even that aside, having certain god limitations is logical (holy flesh-eating ghouls doesn't make much sense), but limiting a god to one race only really inhibits gameplay, IMO.

Solution?: The orc theme is cool. If that was changed ala some merge of race, whatever...but I don't see that happening. That said, #stoptheracism. Think about it. Orcs worship Beogh...and we know this merely because they have a few altars and their smiting flavor text says so. What about all the other races that smite you, but THEIR gods don't have names. Why not make Beogh the god of violent smitey-smitey creatures who weren't lucky enough to worship a named god? Any race that currently has a no-name smite ability ends up worshipping Beogh. Instead of just orcs, you can now have meliai followers, sphinx followers, smoke demon followers...hell, even mummy followers! Not only would this be more thematic, it would remove the bizarre "no-name gods" as well as give an interesting route to pursue with balancing allies.

Edit: One last comment I would make is about Resurrection. If Beogh is non-racist, then Resurrection would work on ANY corpse. In this case, it should have a cost like that of Yred's Enslave Soul:
  Code:
Costs 8 MP, 150-300 Food, and 4-6 Piety

Resurrection is cool, but on a build that relies on keeping piety at max to attract/retain allies, get them gifts, etc...35 Piety is rather steep. In an orc-only game there are only a handful of orcs actually WORTH Resurrecting, but in a non-racist world this ability would be something you'd want to use much more liberally.

Ostensibly, even, you could rebrand Resurrection into some kind of Inquisition themed forced conversion, and work it to be functionally identical to Enslave Soul (see sister thread), except the creature remains alive afterwards instead of becoming a spectral thing.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Thursday, 19th April 2018, 17:37

Re: Part 1: Ally God, Beogh

At least one of your premises is that Beogh is an 'empowerment of a race that doesn't need it' however Beogh is certainly worse, power-wise than a significant portion of the pantheon, so it doesn't constitute a power increase at all, for any race that could possibly worship Beogh, there's several other choices that would be more powerful. Arguing that giving him to orcs makes orcs more powerful is silly, since orcs would be exactly as powerful without Beogh, as would any other race. That doesn't imply that there are no arguments for making him non-exclusive, only that that isn't one of them.

Also personally, I don't think you can possibly discuss how to improve something without a discussion of if (and more importantly *why*) something needs improved. If I disagree with your reasons for improving something, I can't possibly have a meaningful discussion about what needs to be done to improve things. Trying to proactively 'not derail' your discussion is a reasonable instinct, however you're really not going to see much productive discussion when you impose terms for what can be discussed (or even any agreement to abide by your proposed terms for discussion)
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Swamp Slogger

Posts: 174

Joined: Saturday, 16th September 2017, 21:17

Post Thursday, 19th April 2018, 17:58

Re: Part 1: Ally God, Beogh

Perhaps I phrased that wrong -- what I was wanting to avoid is what I have seen before, when a thread made on a good topic gets sidetracked into the "I love XYZ, keep it!" and "I hate XYZ, axe it!" camps rather than finding progressive options.

So I'll clarify here:

Please feel free to post any thoughtful material intended to further discussion, even if it disagrees with the basic premise of this post (i.e, changing Beogh)

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