Beogh Overhaul

[wolfstalking]

Beogh is a really unique and fun playstyle. Gather permanant allies, fight alongside them, roll over most things with a flurry of blows.

Trouble is, it's very annoying, and you often feel powerless to prevent orcs from dying because you have so many, and when you do manage to level up an orc, he's irreplaceable, since most things will oneshot regular orcs. Peity spillover helps with the second problem, but not the first, since that swarm of orcs very often killsteals, preventing you from leveling the weakest ones with your kills.

Bring the rate of conversion down significantly, but when an orc converts, immediately equip him with a cloak, boots, helmet, gloves, a leather armor, a weapon, and name him. The orcs you get will be more survivable and better in combat, and because you aren't being swarmed with them or losing LOS the moment you go into a corridor, you can be more strategic, take hits for them, and assign EXP as you wish. Equipment will be upgraded as they increase in rank, and vanishes if they die. This also removes the need for an ally equip menu.

Triple the damage of smite and make it rely on level instead on Invoc. It's an expensive attack, and it should reflect that by being very useful. For instance, you go into an ice cave and see a fiend at the end. Knowing one torment could end your army, you use 9-15 peity to make it go away. Currently smite is borderline useless because it requires you to level a skill specifically for it, and you rarely need smite's special properties to kill something. Peity cost can be increased to reflect it's usefulness.

Beogh's orc gifts should be made a ****** ability that costs 10-12 peity, and gives you a level appropriate orc follower with items as determined above, so it isn't tedious to go back to orc, pick up a fresh batch, and tab into an ugly thing pack to make them useful.

Water walking should also apply to lava, and all orcs should gain your buffs and resistances. I honestly don't think this is overpowered, because they are not as easily replacable as other allies, it makes sense to give them a special trait. It's also thematic, because orc knights already buff other orcs, and you are THE orc leader.

[XuaXua]

All Beogh really needs is better Ally Management.

[wolfstalking]

This suggestion includes that. You will no longer have to equip your orcs, you can keep better track of them since they are smaller in number, they are less tedious to recover, less prone to getting stuck behind water or lava.

[khalil]

I'd like this. I got a HoPr to the end of the game before he died, and at that point I was basicly a fighter who was occasionaly gifted some allies that died after taking five steps.
Making Beogh allies relevent late game would really improve the overall playstyle.
Also, a suggestion: When you are teleported in the abyss, either your followers go with you, or you can summon them via recall.
Currently, if you are taken to a different part of the abyss, all your allies cease to exist.

[Blade]

Beogh allies are relevant (and probably overpowered) all the way through Zot. Yeah, they fall off post-game, but...so? You've already won by that point.

[khalil]

Beogh allies are relevant (and probably overpowered) all the way through Zot. Yeah, they fall off post-game, but...so? You've already won by that point.

Are we playing different games or something?
What I recall was every once and a while getting orc wizards or something useless that immediately got 1-shot by storm dragons.

[Blade]

Well, ideally you'll be playing competently enough to get knights and warlords, not occasional orc wizards. 4 warlords can defeat just about any enemy you can expect to meet.

[Tenaya]

All Beogh really needs is better Ally Management.

Don't we already have that with the inter-level recall? I played a HOPr in the tournament and the allies were very useful from early on through the first 4 runes and up to about d:20. At that point they were easily outplayed by any late-game pack: deep trolls, invisible ogre-mages, dragons, etc. But that is fine, don't bring them with you anymore; just leave them behind and recall them in when you need their help.

As for equipment, just tell them to pickup anything they need and they equip themselves just fine.

Triple the damage of smite and make it rely on level instead on Invoc. It's an expensive attack, and it should reflect that by being very useful. For instance, you go into an ice cave and see a fiend at the end. Knowing one torment could end your army, you use 9-15 peity to make it go away. Currently smite is borderline useless because it requires you to level a skill specifically for it, and you rarely need smite's special properties to kill something. Peity cost can be increased to reflect it's usefulness.

Water walking should also apply to lava, and all orcs should gain your buffs and resistances. I honestly don't think this is overpowered, because they are not as easily replacable as other allies, it makes sense to give them a special trait. It's also thematic, because orc knights already buff other orcs, and you are THE orc leader.

lava-walking? Um ....
Having smite be piety based, similar to Trog, would not be a bad idea. I use it as an early game life/time saver, against my first adder or Sigmund or ogre. I have never bothered to try it later on.
An ability called "battle charge" with a piety cost would not be a bad idea, I suppose, and might present tactical interest. As for the orc-knights buffing other orcs, does that actually do anything? I just have never observed any difference. I just keep pressing tab and they die just the same. It probably makes a difference if there are enough orc warriors, though.

[Tenaya]

Well, ideally you'll be playing competently enough to get knights and warlords, not occasional orc wizards. 4 warlords can defeat just about any enemy you can expect to meet.

Yes, warlords are very powerful, but grooming warlords takes work and they can't be allowed to wander around. Even in Elf, where they should be very safe they can wander into a Hell Sentinel unless corralled.
Also, Sorcerers will advance to the front ranks to melee hydras.

[Blade]

Right, you need to play carefully, and sorcs/high priests are pretty much useless because of their tendency to die stupidly, but

just leave them behind and recall them in when you need their help.

works very well indeed.

As for the orc-knights buffing other orcs, does that actually do anything?

Well, it does (it makes the dudes hit harder), but orcs are so weak at that point that I've never cared about it either.

[heavylincoln]

Well, all I do to (try to) improve my army is to get them polymorphed. A decently raised warrior can easily become a moth of wrath (If four warlords can clear a floor, how about four berserking ones?). Inconvibienty, beogh sees this as blasphemy if you do it, but throwing a polymorph wand at a gnoll to pick up isn't to hard (and once they're no longer orcs, you can zap them all you want!)

Edited for stupid autocorrect

[khalil]

Well, ideally you'll be playing competently enough to get knights and warlords, not occasional orc wizards. 4 warlords can defeat just about any enemy you can expect to meet.

Yes, they probably could. What happened is beorgh gifted me orcs in the middle of fights, where they got killed before they could get any xp.

[njvack]

Tell them to run the hell away. They'll level to warriors and knights fast enough, and they share the XP from your kills so they don't need to be in harm's way. They're also way, way, way less squishy once they're in a set of orcish plate.

Getting them to warlord stage is a serious investment (and it really sucks when one of them goes and gets killed) but warlords with crossbows or longbows are brutal. Hell, they're brutal when they're just chucking rocks.

[That Other Guy]

I just got back into the game after a break of a few months, and I tried a HOPr, because I thought that your orcs gaining EXP from your kills was a great fix to the problem I had with them in previous versions. If you play carefully, and treat them as allies instead of meat shields they're really powerful. By the time I got to zot I had a pack of about 6 warlords that I picked up in the early dungeon as orcs/warriors, and I was able to tear through zot:5 pretty easily as long as I didn't play like an idiot. My gear wasn't at all overpowered, and I picked up a 5 rune win.

I do agree with the change to smite change, though, it's really useless once you get to the vaults or so, even with decent invocations.

[ackack]

I get the logic of not being able to control individual allies. It would be very fiddly but also quite desirable, such that there would be a temptation to spend tons of time doing fiddly things for minor advantage. But there are a couple of other things that seem less clear cut to me:

--- Maybe you could have better inventory management? Right now you occasionally want to get an item to a particular dude and have to jump through stupid hoops to make this happen. A menu that just allowed you to distribute stuff among the allies wouldn't be right, because it would open itself up to weird abuses like swapping what weapon is where in the middle of a fight. But I bet you could make something close to that workable and ultimately more convenient.

--- For a more straightforward suggestion, I see no good reason not to be able to recall specific orcs with Beogh's ability. Right now Recall gets me like 75ish orcs and it's incredibly painful. Having the ability to recruit a small, focused army (I did Spider with a single warlord that happened to tag along and it was quite fun) seems like it would be a huge increase in Beogh enjoyability. Have a menu, much like the pickup menu, and select orcs off of it. Include a memory of the last bunch recalled, so that you can just by default warp that bunch around. (A similar thing would be good for Yredelemnul, too.) It would also be trivial using the pickup interface to have an option for warping all of your orcs in just as you get now with essentially zero more interface time.

[rebthor]

Recall recalls your most powerful orcs. You can stop recalling with "ab" as soon as you have your tactical strike force. You don't need to bring the whole crew every time.

[Siegurt]

Well, all I do to (try to) improve my army is to get them polymorphed. A decently raised warrior can easily become a moth of wrath (If four warlords can clear a floor, how about four berserking ones?). Inconvibienty, beogh sees this as blasphemy if you do it, but throwing a polymorph wand at a gnoll to pick up isn't to hard (and once they're no longer orcs, you can zap them all you want!)

Edited for stupid autocorrect

I had one that was polymorphed into a Minotaur once, it was annoying though, since he couldn't be recalled.

[ackack]

Recall recalls your most powerful orcs. You can stop recalling with "ab" as soon as you have your tactical strike force. You don't need to bring the whole crew every time.

Thanks, this improves my experience vastly.

[rosstin]

I really like this proposal.

+1 TC