The Tavern

He's Ok, but lackluster, ranged extension is Ok, MP restoration is moderately useful (it's akin to ammo gifts from oka or trog, not exciting, but does make gameplay less annoying) and the spell gifts are ok, but really they just slightly increase the odds you'll find that one attack spell that you wanted at an appropriate time, I usually end up memorizing one or two of the gifts Veh gives, if any.

As a god, his powers are.. Ok, but I feel like he needs a small bump to make him more reliable, but something that still keeps him distinct, but I like the fact that he doesn't have any active powers.

So my proposal is that he gets a passive *accuracy boost* to supported spells as a lower level passive power (say at * or **), which grows proportional to your piety with him. As a simple bonus-to-hit it's easy to understand, unlike than the previously proposed spellpower boost, it doesn't drastically increase his power level, it just makes him be the god of "you can more reliably use conjurations as your damage source", in a way that doesn't overlap much. This also slightly smooths out his power curve (as he's effectively useless at lower piety levels presently)

I'd also add a message when Veh's accuracy boost causes you to hit when you'd otherwise miss, because players hate passive effects they can't tell are effective or not. Giving the player a sense of how much he's helping would make him feel a lot more solid.

For that matter, thinking about it, I'd like a message when shadow aura makes an attack miss or halo (and corona) makes an attack hit, too.

I'd kind of like to nerf other gods down to Vehumet's power level, tbh.

Veh doesn't require any invocation training to use his god abilities so I think Veh is perfectly fine. His spell gifts are kinda awful though. I never seem to have the spell slots open to take advantage of it. Sometimes by the time I have trained up for it, the spell has already been replaced.

"I'd also add a message when Veh's accuracy boost causes you to hit when you'd otherwise miss, because players hate passive effects they can't tell are effective or not. Giving the player a sense of how much he's helping would make him feel a lot more solid."

This is a good idea but better used for when Veh spellcasting boost chance causes you to cast when otherwise you'd fail to cast.

Plantissue wrote:Veh doesn't require any invocation training to use his god abilities so I think Veh is perfectly fine. His spell gifts are kinda awful though. I never seem to have the spell slots open to take advantage of it. Sometimes by the time I have trained up for it, the spell has already been replaced.

"I'd also add a message when Veh's accuracy boost causes you to hit when you'd otherwise miss, because players hate passive effects they can't tell are effective or not. Giving the player a sense of how much he's helping would make him feel a lot more solid."

This is a good idea but better used for when Veh spellcasting boost chance causes you to cast when otherwise you'd fail to cast.

Well you can directly see the increase of veh's spellcasting boost in your casting menu, I mean, it certainly wouldn't hurt to add a message but I feel like there's at least some feedback as to what it's effect is already.

Since that wouldn't be true of an accuracy increase (unless you kept very careful track of your spell accuracy before and after getting this proposed ability) I mentioned that it should have a message.

As to whether he is fine as-is, I suspect most players feel he's lackluster, but the improvement I proposed was also modest, as a giant power boost didn't seem warranted.

You are kind of right about the casting menu.

Anyways, he does feel lackluster, till you have lvl9 spells and are not losing MP from killing masses of mmonsters in Zig or whatever. But I think that is fine as you don't need to train invocations to use his abilities.

Though he could be feeling lackluster as until you get to higher piety levels, you gain almost no benefit.

Plantissue wrote:You are kind of right about the casting menu.

Anyways, he does feel lackluster, till you have lvl9 spells and are not losing MP from killing masses of mmonsters in Zig or whatever. But I think that is fine as you don't need to train invocations to use his abilities.

Though he could be feeling lackluster as until you get to higher piety levels, you gain almost no benefit.

You'll note my proposal would change his mid game slightly and his end game not at all (an accuracy increase has no impact at all on level 9 spells)

Why is Vehumet everybody's #1 choice for blaster mages? He is! It's a total mystery why! I'll never tell you.
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OK here it is.

He gives you spells of the kind blaster mages need. Having the right spell over not having it makes a huge difference. If you are a background like a wizard or a VM, which are lacking in lair-tier offensive power, Vehumet will give you solid damage spells by the time you need them.
He returns MP, letting you last much longer in fights than you otherwise could. Perhaps twice as long. That is huge.
He doesn't require you to train invocations. Gods that require you to train invocations are bad for mages, since mages already have to train so many skills.
Oh as a side bonus he gives wiz and range boosts for your damage spells.
Blaster mages are usually strong enough in early dungeon not to need a "crutch" god like Fedhas so they can take a god that helps them more in mid/endgame.

I personally choose Vehumet because he is much more convenient to play, not because he is strong. Almost all strong gods give you some summons, and I play a conjurer because I want to use conjurations, not summons. (I do like Ru tough.)

I also find that every mage type has enough starting spells to clear lair. Usually the first spell I consider to learn from Veh is level 6, and he barely helps till then. (Sometimes he offer sticky flame or conjure flame tough.)

Berder wrote:Why is Vehumet everybody's #1 choice for blaster mages? He is! It's a total mystery why! I'll never tell you.
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OK here it is.
He gives you spells of the kind blaster mages need. Having the right spell over not having it makes a huge difference. If you are a background like a wizard or a VM, which are lacking in lair-tier offensive power, Vehumet will give you solid damage spells by the time you need them.
He returns MP, letting you last much longer in fights than you otherwise could. Perhaps twice as long. That is huge.
He doesn't require you to train invocations. Gods that require you to train invocations are bad for mages, since mages already have to train so many skills.
Oh as a side bonus he gives wiz and range boosts for your damage spells.

These are all true, though exaggerated. They don't make a huge difference but are very comfortable for a mage.

Berder wrote:
Blaster mages are usually strong enough in early dungeon not to need a "crutch" god like Fedhas so they can take a god that helps them more in mid/endgame.

That's just wrong, blaster mages are weak in early dungeon.

Fingolfin wrote:That's just wrong, blaster mages are weak in early dungeon.

I agree with Berder on this one, altough I feel that blaster mages are strong everywhere, so they work well with a weak god like Vehumet.

My problem is less with Vehmet's ultimate power level for a blaster mage, and more about the fact that he's *not interesting to take as a god* basically I'm playing atheist for a bunch of levels, to get a small convenience boost later which happens to dovetail with what I'm going to be doing without a god.

What I would like is for Vehumet to be a competitive and interesting choice in the near term (when I compare it to other gods that would be useful for a blaster which don't require invocations, like Ru, Ash, Goz, etc.) without increasing his ultimate power level (Which isn't really high, but isn't unacceptably low either).

Spell accuracy as independent from success rate or spell power hasn't previously been fiddled with, hence my suggestion. Blasters, while powerful, do suffer from the "I can fail + miss like 8 times in a row and then I'm hosed" problem, which this would ameliorate (since Veh already helps with failure).

If Vehumet is going to be the god of "be a blaster mage, but better" Maybe he should do that all the time, instead of doing nothing for a while, and then helping later.

basically I'm playing atheist for a bunch of levels

Siegurt wrote:when I compare it to other gods that would be useful for a blaster which don't require invocations, like Ru, Ash, Goz, etc.

You complained about how Vehumet doesn't give you much at low piety? Well, Ash is just the same. In fact Ash is worse, since Vehumet will start giving you spell gifts at 1* and they could be something worth taking (e.g. I might take Sandblast or Shock at 1*). Also Ash piety and skill boosts are slower to get. Ash is a good choice for mages nonetheless.

Ru also gives you little early on. The passive Ru aura is almost insignificant at low piety, and is counterbalanced by the sacrifices you made to get it. Draw Out Power is not really a game changer since it causes draining and so should be used as little as possible early on. The first real game changer you get with Ru is at 4* with Power Leap. Apocalypse is excellent, but costs 9 MP, so a desperate mage who is out of MP in a dangerous spot would not be able to use it; Ru is therefore a god aimed more at melee brutes.

Gozag is actively harmful to mages in that they may want to spam high level spells, and not be able to with gozag if they don't have enough int and spellcasting. He does give an early benefit with the free Potion Petition, but this is not as good for mages as it is for brutes. The most common potions you can get from it help brutes much more than mages.

draw out power's draining cost is negligeable and refunds itself very quickly.

Code:: !lg tenpercenters recent mage s=god /won urune=3 o=% [00:17] <Sequell> 421/3184 games for tenpercenters (recent mage): 15/37x Yredelemnul [40.54%], 4/12x Beogh [33.33%], 26/87x Ru [29.89%], 13/47x Nemelex Xobeh [27.66%], 37/134x Ashenzari [27.61%], 6/22x Wu Jian [27.27%], 5/19x Zin [26.32%], 38/156x Okawaru [24.36%], 11/46x Dithmenos [23.91%], 4/17x Jiyva [23.53%], 19/81x Hepliaklqana [23.46%], 38/172x Sif Muna [22.09%], 14/67x Uskayaw [20.90%], 8/39x Fedhas [00:17] <Sequell> [20.51%], 4/21x Qazlal [19.05%], 28/158x Kikubaaqudgha [17.72%], 64/366x Vehumet [17.49%], 27/159x Gozag [16.98%], 22/143x Makhleb [15.38%], 11/95x Cheibriados [11.58%], 1/13x Trog [7.69%], 2/30x Elyvilon [6.67%], 4/64x The Shining One [6.25%], 20/1195x [1.67%], 0/2x Xom [0.00%], 0/2x Lugonu [0.00%]

Seems like Berder's data set of reasonably good players does not support the hypothesis that Vehumet is good for mage starts (obviously we could clean up this query a bit but I will use the amount of rigor expected of a tavern query). Agree with the overall point that Vehumet is often fine to take on mage starts because they are strong enough to not care though.

The only thing I'd want changed about Veh is the early gifts. They are almost universally not good in my experience; very rare to want a low power level 1 or 2 spell in a different school.

I like when gods give you nothing at ...... piety and only small benefits at *..... piety. Gods that give you good benefits too soon after you worship them mean that if you find an altar to that god, you should use it, regardless of your character. Currently if you find a Gozag altar and don't immediately worship at it, that's an unambiguous mistake. So much for strategic choice. The introduction of more gods that give you useful powers at ...... is also a big instance of power creep. Back when I was a kid, Nemelex was the only god that gave you something useful within a few turns of joining them, now there's Nemelex plus Gozag plus Hep plus Jiyva plus Uskayaw.

With that said, in practice, what Vehumet gives you at *..... might as well be nothing. You get a level 1 or 2 spell that already became obsolete before you reached *, and you get a chance of a tiny amount of MP on kill. On-kill effects are usually not very good in the first place, and for this one, the chance depends on your piety and the MP regained depends on the monster's HD, so when you have low piety and monsters have low HD, it just does nothing. It actually manages to be worse than Divine Energy for a while, which is saying something. HP on kills has this issue too of course but Makhleb gives you Minor Destruction to make up for that, Vehumet gives you a useless spell.

Giving something that is effectively nothing, but looks like something, is bad. So either change Vehumet to actually give nothing at *....., or change Vehumet's *..... to something that isn't useless. IMO, move MP on kills to **.... (since Vehumet currently has nothing there), and either
1. Make Vehumet's initial spell gift level 3+. If you want to be fancy you can keep it as level 1/2 if the character has no books/spell skills and yet still chose Vehumet for some reason.
or 2. Give Vehumet some other *..... bonus. On reflection, I'm not sure I like the accuracy idea. First of all, it overlaps with TSO later in the game, and second of all, most spells have excellent accuracy already or don't use accuracy at all - Conjurer has four spells that use accuracy, the elementalists and VM have four each, and the rest of the backgrounds have one or none. And many of those spells are level 1 and are already obsolete by the time you reach *..... piety.

Sandblast and shock are excellent level 1 spell gifts. I would most likely memorize them. Shock is simply the best level 1 spell, and with enough conjuration you will max it out even without training air. It's very efficient for killing lines of weaker monsters, and when bounced does pretty good single target damage. It won't be obsolete until after lair and orc, and might not be obsolete until long after then if you learn battlesphere.

Sandblast is a more difficult choice because you have to train a lot of earth magic. However, it can kill blink frogs, black mambas, and spiny frogs very efficiently, because it is accurate against high EV enemies. Also, many mages go into earth magic anyway to get iron shot/LCS, so the XP probably won't be wasted. I would most likely memorize Sandblast when gifted, but only train it after I started getting worried about whether I'd have a different spell to kill those things.

That is an interesting query, Hellmonk. It's hard to separate out the effect of Vehumet from the effect of weaker players playing Vehumet. You'll note that Vehumet is the most popular choice. But there may well be some truth to your query. Vehumet may be weaker than I thought. (A minor note: you should write urune<=3 /won instead of /won urune=3. This explains why TSO ranked so low.)

Berder wrote:Shock is simply the best level 1 spell

...did Animate Skeleton, Apportation, Confusing Touch, Freeze, Summon Butterflies, and Summon Small Mammal all get removed when I wasn't looking?

Berder might be talking about lvl 1 conjuration spells. Shock is pretty close to the top, though Freeze may be better.

Shock is way better than freeze. Max power Shock is 1d9, max power Freeze is 1d11. But Shock can easily be bounced to hit the same enemy twice. Also, Shock is long-range and can pierce multiple enemies. Also, Freeze is useless against undead like wight packs, or against ice beasts, and Shock kills them perfectly well. Sky beasts are the only early relec threat and they aren't very tough. In addition to which, I would not take Freeze from Vehumet because I'd have to train ice magic specifically for it, but you can get max power Shock just from training conjurations.

Pretty misleading damage comparison since freeze never misses and does not check AC.

But Shock hits twice to make up for accuracy, and most enemies have low AC at this point. And Shock has all those other advantages. Also: Shock bypasses half of target AC. There's really no contest.

I also consider Shock to be better, for reasons pretty much the same as Berder.

Freeze is pretty good too. I too rarely if ever bother to learn Freeze from Vehumet. I have probably learnt Sandblast more than I've learnt Freeze.

Anyway, this is probably off-topic.

Hrm, nvm.

Btw, finding a Ru altar as an atheist and not immediately worshipping is also an unambiguous mistake.

But God selection in Crawl is weird anyway, so I don't bother using this criterion.

Berder wrote:But Shock hits twice to make up for accuracy, and most enemies have low AC at this point. And Shock has all those other advantages. Also: Shock bypasses half of target AC. There's really no contest.

For what its worth, i have never, ever taken the level one spell gift from vehumet, for the simple reason that by the time i get it, i *already have level 1, 2 ,3 and sometimes level 4 spells which i have already invested xp into* that is why it is obsolete by the time you get it.

Shock is marginally better than the other level 1 spells for the same spellpower, but who cares. By the time he might offer it to me (and note that would be in about 1 in 5 non air elementalist starting games that i took veh as my god) my spellpower with whatever starting spell i did start with is probably close to maxed anyway, and i am worried about having the slots for a level 5 spell, why would i waste one on a redundant, less powerful conjuration than i already have?

The only time i would ever be tempted to take the level 1 attack spell from veh is if i started as a non blaster mage (like an enchanter or something) and i got a conjuration manual on like d1, so i decided to transition into one really early, since that has never happened to me, i suspect it is vanishingly unlikely.

bel wrote:Btw, finding a Ru altar as an atheist and not immediately worshipping is also an unambiguous mistake.

Yeah, but that's trivially fixed by giving wrath to Ru.

Level 1 gift still can be useful, I learned Magic Dart as AE, for instance. It allows to kill sky beast and is much better for pack splitting because of max range.

shock and magic dart have the same range...

duvessa wrote:shock and magic dart have the same range...

Oops, probably I confused 2 games, I take Magic Dart as FE too.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Level 1 gift still can be useful, I learned Magic Dart as AE, for instance. It allows to kill sky beast and is much better for pack splitting because of max range.

I use the 'throw stone' spell for max range and pack splitting. Killing a sky beast with magic dart sounds extraordinarily tedious to me (particularly when you can use the 'hit it with a stick and walk away if it doesn't work' spell) but each to their own, or just airstrike if you're at the point where sky beasts are common.

You know, I anticipated several arguments that Vehumet is not weak, but "Level 1 spell gifts are useful because they can kill sky/ice beasts" was one I didn't expect to hear from even one person, let alone two.

I was just about to write that lvl 1 spells should almost never be useful as you simply wouldn't have the training to use them, except possibly for magic dart, and if you could spare the experience, you are mostly better off not training it but training a weapon skill. Only Fire and Air backgrounds will likely have the conjuration skill available and may need to to use another lvl1 spell and they both have emergency escape spells in their books. In theory there is a point that could converge where your spellcasting skill is high enough for the spells to do enough damage, but the monster so dangerous enough that you need to use lvl spells to kill it, but the window is small and quickly vanishes after more experience is gained.

For the sake of argument I am ignoring venom mages. Everybody else seems to forget they exist anyways.

Vehumet is fun to play, at least from my pov. It's also pretty simple. It should be fine tuned, because the spell library is weird and often useless. But I'm OK with a magic god made of passives.

Yeah, Vehumet getting active abilities would be awful and I hope that doesn't happen.

Yeah, I agree, hence why I proposed another passive for him.

I think Vehumet is a pretty decent god who doesn't need much change at all. His wizardry helps you wear heavier armour and still cast, the extended range is pretty nice as well. MP on kills is also one of the best features, all for zero invocations investment. I'm not a big fan of the spell offerings because they frequently aren't in the schools I'm going for but it's not a really big deal to me overall.

The trouble I have with Vehumet is one of more overall game design. As a starting god, it doesn't really add anything above and beyond to your starting position in terms of gear or xp. Vehumet is a god that I'd ideally like to take later on in a game after building up more permanent gains like with Okawaru, Gozag, or even Lugonu or Zin (skimming the abyss.) With a powerful caster, an end-game character can have devastating effect with a spell like firestorm because of the MP returns and extended range. The trouble however, are things like mummies with harmful effects to you when they are killed. Also, to a lesser extent are the arrays of health draining misc. effects which are pretty hard to avoid gradually lowering your health (hellfire, etc. etc.) Using vehumet to clear tomb3 for example, could just be a total stairdance nightmare. Even though Vehumet can work just fine everywhere else, the pretty harsh god wrath and extremely poor functionality in some cases makes it just not worth it at all if you're doing a full rune game. This isn't a problem limited to Vehumet. I wish things like mummy curses were looked at, but that's another topic.

So in recap, because of these reasons, I usually don't take Vehumet as a starting god, and then usually isn't my favored choice for a late game god either, edged out by life-on-kill gods.

TLDR: Vehumet seems pretty well balanced IMO. I don't use Vehumet that much because of other game imbalances.

I'd prefer giving Vehumet a chance to not spend MP when spell misses. This way it is more clear than accuracy boost when not that many players understand how useful extra spell accuracy is vs different monsters.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I'd prefer giving Vehumet a chance to not spend MP when spell misses. This way it is more clear than accuracy boost when not that many players understand how useful extra spell accuracy is vs different monsters.

The lack of clarity around accuracy is why I requested a message when the accuracy boost causes a hit. I guess refunding the MP would be a perhaps slightly toned down version of my proposal (since you don't get the turn back, but at least you don't use the MP)

While this isn't a bad way to do things, I feel like my proposal was already pretty minor in it's impact, and this would water it down slightly making it near-ineffective, it would be more unusual in terms of effect though, so maybe that would be better?

I don't see how the messages will help. Is player supposed to count them?
I think it would be ideal to see accuracy in target phase, something like Aim: ogre (accuracy 78%, increased by 15% by Vehumet) but I am pretty sure it won't be accepted by devs.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I don't see how the messages will help. Is player supposed to count them?

It would help in the way that you would get a general sense of whether or not Veh is helping. (You can see a similar sort of feedback from deflect missiles)

I suppose you could count them if you needed more precise information than "Veh is helping me hit things some/none/a lot/a little" but since you probably actually don't need more detail than that, I proposed something I thought would be sufficient, without requiring a more general overhaul.

Whether or not there should be better/more feedback on accuracy falls outside the scope of this discussion (but if there were such feedback enhancements, and Veh gave an accuracy bonus, I would expect the accuracy bonus to be incorporated into said enhancements)

The Tavern

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