Fedhas Improved

[Lacuenta]

After playing with Fedhas for awhile i found him to be a bit lacking and his abbilities seem kinda weak compared to other gods, wandering mushroom just doesn't compare with a squad of flying skulls for example, especially lategame. I understand not all gods have to be usefull in extended but fedhas seem to get the short end of the stick pretty heftily, especially since he's also rather dependant on fruits.

I rarely see anyone playing Fedhas.

My proposal:
Sunlight: grows plants into trees, sunlight seems a bit weak and plants lose their abbility to stop opposing forces rather quickly, this might give the abbility more reach for the lategame.
Also seems flavorfull.

Evolution: if you have 161+ piety allows trees to be transformed into allied treants i would set the cost somewhere arround 2 fruit and 10 piety.
This will make fedhas abbilities more usefull in the lategame, maybe a chance should be added depending on invocations so as not to be able to easily make an army of them.

To counter piety loss in the lategame: It would be fun if you could let giant spores takeover dungeon floors, where you get a piety bonus every 100 turns or so for each dungeon floor being assimilated. Alternatively the bonus per x turns could depend on the total area which is currently covered in mold.

One other interesing idea would be to have Fedhas gift you fruits, much like trog gifts weapons, the same timeout would be fine imho, so you can actually use his abbilities if you are unfortunate enough not to find much fruit.

Just my 2 cents here, Fedhas seems a bit weak and undepowered compared to the other gods, this proposal is not only flavorfull but also handles the bigger issues of Fedhas.

[Mankeli]

Yeap, definitely weak even before extented, yeap.

oklob3.jpg (211.48 KiB) Viewed 6592 times

[Lacuenta]

Early and midgame Fedhas tends to be pretty weak you rarely have food to spare.
That picture really doesn't tell me much except that you had fruit to burn and your character seems so decked out, you hardly needed Fedhas or any god for that matter, you probably made that oklob farm for fun.

[dpeg]

7183 games have been played online with Fedhas, of these 466 in 0.12.

Among the 835 online 0.12 wins, gods are distributed as: Trog (139), Vehumet (106), The Shining One (98), Okawaru (97), Makhleb (56), Sif Muna (47), Ashenzari (43), Kikubaaqudgha (35), Lugonu (31), Jiyva (29), godless (26), Beogh (23), Cheibriados (18), Nemelex Xobeh (17), Elyvilon, Zin, Yredelemnul (all 16), Xom (12), Fedhas (10).

The ratio between most used and least used god is about ten in one, which is good enough for me. Fedhas is definitely an easy go-to deity. And I am sure that the fruit cost makes players shy away from the god altogether but I also believe that's a mechanic to be used elsewhere too rather than taken away from Fedhas: it does lead to decisions.

Finally, I am not convinced that the numbers reflect strength very well. Your wandering mushrooms can do wonders (I cleared a Bailey, including high level orcs, on mushrooms), and the oklobs even more so (I killed Mennas on four oklobs).

[One-Eyed Jack]

The fact that nemelex is near the bottom seems to indicate that popularity has little to do with power

[dpeg]

At ##crawl-dev we've just been looking at termcast tv, and oklobs can deal with orbs of fire.

[Lacuenta]

7183 games have been played online with Fedhas, of these 466 in 0.12.

Among the 835 online 0.12 wins, gods are distributed as: Trog (139), Vehumet (106), The Shining One (98), Okawaru (97), Makhleb (56), Sif Muna (47), Ashenzari (43), Kikubaaqudgha (35), Lugonu (31), Jiyva (29), godless (26), Beogh (23), Cheibriados (18), Nemelex Xobeh (17), Elyvilon, Zin, Yredelemnul (all 16), Xom (12), Fedhas (10).

The ratio between most used and least used god is about ten in one, which is good enough for me. Fedhas is definitely an easy go-to deity. And I am sure that the fruit cost makes players shy away from the god altogether but I also believe that's a mechanic to be used elsewhere too rather than taken away from Fedhas: it does lead to decisions.

Finally, I am not convinced that the numbers reflect strength very well. Your wandering mushrooms can do wonders (I cleared a Bailey, including high level orcs, on mushrooms), and the oklobs even more so (I killed Mennas on four oklobs).

Well 10 to 1 seems like a rather big gap to me.

I do like the fruit costs very much to be honest it really makes Fedhas unique, the gifting of fruit isn't that neccesary i think, it just seemed like a good idea to make people more interested in playing him.

I understand what you are trying to say about him making usefull allies, most of my proposal won't change that much about him, treants just seem to fit Fedhas pretty well flavorwise.
Also killing Menas tends to be a lot easier with most other gods, its fun to built your own fort and this is one of reasons i like Fedhas, it just seems like it takes a lot more resources and effort with Fedhas compared to the benefits.
I'm not only posting this to make Fedhas better, also to make him more fun, and a more interesting god choice.

[BlackSheep]

I avoid Fedhas because shepherding around allies is annoying, not because he's especially weak. I avoid Beogh and Yred for the same reasons.

[dpeg]

BackSheep: Yes, that is definitely an interface burden. Do you still avoid Beogh and Yredelemnul, even with the dungeon-wide ally recall?

We try to put not too many allies in our gods, but for a plant god I don't see how to avoid them.

[Klown]

I only play him with Merfolk to have a pool party later on, or if he shows up as the first altar of the game and makes any sense at all with the current character.

Maybe make his abilities not drain hunger/piety as much?

[BlackSheep]

BackSheep: Yes, that is definitely an interface burden. Do you still avoid Beogh and Yredelemnul, even with the dungeon-wide ally recall?

I've been busy with the new species and books, so I haven't tried the new recall ability yet. I might give Beogh another go because of that, if only because you get to see your allies level up with you. Yred's gameplay got boring toward the end when I was tooling around with a host of bone dragons and profane servitors. That and perpetual umbra making the screen hard to look at mean I won't be revisiting Yred any time soon.

[HenryFlower]

I cleared a Bailey, including high level orcs, on mushrooms

But you thought they were newts at the time?

[Lasty]

Fedhas is extremely strong, but the things that make him strong aren't very fun. Wandering Mushrooms are very powerful against everything through the end of orc, and are reasonably good against anything past that which can be confused, but have to be led around. Oklobs are very strong, and can be used to clear just about anything, but force you to find and then carry around a lot of inventory-choking fruit.

Fedhas's other abilities are pretty fun, and often useful. Sunlight is sometimes nice as a replacement for see invis and makes hitting your target easier, and it provides the only way to remove water in the game. Making moats/drowning mobs with rain is both entertaining and strong. Being able to shoot through plants is very, very good for ranged attackers of any sort.

The only reason Fedhas becomes weak in extended is that there are few corpses to farm for piety, and also more monsters fly, limiting the power of rain. Oklobs are quite good anywhere, and I think spores are too, though I have less experience there.

In brief, if there's anything wrong with Fedhas, it's in the irritation of having inventories full of fruit and needing to cart around mushrooms. Everything else about Fedhas is well-designed and interesting.

[Lacuenta]

Fedhas is extremely strong, but the things that make him strong aren't very fun. Wandering Mushrooms are very powerful against everything through the end of orc, and are reasonably good against anything past that which can be confused, but have to be led around. Oklobs are very strong, and can be used to clear just about anything, but force you to find and then carry around a lot of inventory-choking fruit.

Fedhas's other abilities are pretty fun, and often useful. Sunlight is sometimes nice as a replacement for see invis and makes hitting your target easier, and it provides the only way to remove water in the game. Making moats/drowning mobs with rain is both entertaining and strong. Being able to shoot through plants is very, very good for ranged attackers of any sort.

The only reason Fedhas becomes weak in extended is that there are few corpses to farm for piety, and also more monsters fly, limiting the power of rain. Oklobs are quite good anywhere, and I think spores are too, though I have less experience there.

In brief, if there's anything wrong with Fedhas, it's in the irritation of having inventories full of fruit and needing to cart around mushrooms. Everything else about Fedhas is well-designed and interesting.

It seems everyone is saying that Fedhas's abbilities are ok, and you can finish the game with him, but you can also finish it without a god.
The main thing that bothers me is that tho wandering mushroom are usefull early game they quickly lose their value midgame, are a hassle to manage, and seem weak especially compared to other ally gifting gods like yred and beogh, sunlight is almost useless.
Only thing making fedhas worthy lategame are oklobs, which means if you need them you are constantly pulling enemies to the same corner of the map into your oklob trap, not exactly much fun after awhile.
My proposal would give Fedhas some more depth, and its odd that trees don't belong to the god of plants imho. I would also like if at least some of the discussion would center around the proposal, is it rly that bad to give Fedhas some extra abbilities/options? What is the use of having him in crawl if no-one wants to play him? Why do his abbilities have fruit costs, if they are much less powerfull then the abilities of other gods which do not require this extra investment?

[Lacuenta]

fedhas is dramatically stronger than beogh at any and all points in the game

So you totally ignore my entire post to say i made a miscomparison between Fedhas and beogh, which wasn't even the main subject of it, how boring.

[Mankeli]

snip

I don't think you are following me (us?). If your whole proposal is based on an underlying assumption which is that Fedhas is very weak, then people who know that is not true will naturally criticize that assumption. Also often when the underlying assumptions are wrong, the proposals are weak. The 'shrooms do fall off later in the game but high invo oklobs are really powerful. I think Fedhas is pretty powerful early on: easy piety and the 'shrooms/spores rule.

A better player can correct me if I'm wrong but how I see playing a later game character ^ Fedhas is like this: you don't have abilities that you can use/or benefit you constantly that would be as good as, say Makhleb healing or Heroism, but on the other hand you have the ability to completely and absolutely wreck any one unique/place with oklobs when you are having difficulties with it otherwise (you can't do this to ALL the monsters and places but if you have difficulties with all monsters then it's not a problem of Fedhas being weak). If you use your fruit conservatively, you can build oklob farms that allow you to just hit "rest" while watching things go down in rune branch ends or even zot:5.

I don't honestly know if the treant thing would work but I don't think getting free fruit is a good idea. Also the "spores take over the whole dungeon" thing is very unpolished so it's hard to really say anything about that. Fedhas is no Ely or Nemelex but not every deity in DCSS needs to be overpowered.

[tasonir]

As a minor point, i don't think tournament stats on which gods are the most used is really a fair picture of god popularity. Tournaments specifically assign much more points to underused gods, so it will have a balancing effect. In "normal" play I'd expect the popular gods are more popular and the unpopular gods are more unpopular.

I've always avoided fedhas but I'm not entirely sure why. Mostly just the skill descriptions don't seem that useful, and even though I'd love to have oklobs, having to have fruit for it seems like a hassle. Maybe I'll get around to playing fedhas more seriously at some point.

[dpeg]

I didn't give the numbers (they are for all 0.12 games -- not that this really matters) in order to measure power of the god. Numbers such as these only indicate popularity and yes, Fedhas is one of the less popular ones. But on the other hand the numbers are not so bad that I'd cry in my bed about them. (Note that Trog is a starting god, and the four leading gods are either straightforward to use (O,T,V) or the go-to deity for extended games (TSO). Fedhas is (a) more intricate, (b) younger and (c) saddled with the psychological burden of permanent fruit costs. On the other hand the god has a pretty clear theme and a relevant gameplay, so I am not worried.

Lacuenta: In a more recent post you (against) wondered about the fruit costs: these are crucial and make the god work. Because of the permanent cost, you can get much better effects. An alternative would be really high piety costs (such as for Sanctuary or Corruption) but the fruit minigame creates it own set of choices to be made, which is interesting. This is also why the idea that plants generate fruits if you follow Fedhas is bad. It comes up from time to time but is completely counter to the concept. There may be tweaks to piety/fruit costs in order, but fruit costs together with fruits from plants would be completely pointless.

Regarding the 10-to-1 discrepancy: we have similar ratios for backgrounds and species. For example, in 0.12 we have around 10k Minotaur online games but only 2k Centaurs and 1.5k Halflings. When we think the discrepancy comes from over/underpoweredness, there will be nerfs/buffs. Apart from that, popular appeal should not guide design, and we are also fine if some species/backgrounds/gods are unequal (this is least an issue with species, and most with gods, in my opinion).

[Team Impy]

I support pretty much everything that OP proposes. The first time I played him blindly to see what he was all about, I fully expected him to start gifting me fruit at some point; thematically it just seemed like an obvious thing to happen. Not gifting supplies to support the theme of his other abilities just seems really detrimental to his whole kit. Fruit gifts could also make him an interesting choice for spriggans instead of being the worst possible choice. Which would make a lot more sense flavor-wise given that spriggans are supposed to be nature's allies.

[Daggtex]

I may be a noob who has never played Fedhas, but this whole argument here has taught me a bit on the issues at hand and has made me want to throw in my 2 cents.

I feel like Fedhas should gift fruit, as giving food is a natural thing for a plant related god to do. To preserve the mechanics, however, things would no longer cost fruit to do; rather they cost seeds that are (probably randomly) obtained from eating fruit. As soon as they are on the ground they could be planted, so the player would be forced to carry around a bunch of seeds to plant things, as storing seeds in a stash would make them suddenly un-pickup-able (which would be suitably disabling). And trees really sound like they should be under Fedhas's control. Seaweed too. And cacti.

[Daggtex]

Oh, and to be clear, the seeds probably shouldn't all stack, that way they'd take some inventory space. The character would end up like Johnny Appleseed, planting things around the dungeon as inventory fills up

[Wahaha]

Abilities that cost hunger: sunlight, reproduction (create giant spores)
Abilities that cost piety but don't use fruit: Mushrooms, upgrade ballistomycete to active ballistomycete, rain.
Abilities that use fruit: create plants, upgrade plants to oklobs

Try using the abilities that aren't create oklobs sometimes.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Fedhas is cool, but there's some things that annoy me. Setting up Oklobs turns any level you do it on into a "kite every remotely dangerous monster to the Oklob farm" fest, which is terrible outside of the amusement of watching Oklobs mow everything down that comes near them. And unlike other allies, once you're done with the level, the Oklob is useless. As awesome as Oklobs are, I wouldn't mind them being replaced with something else that wouldn't involve kiting everything to the corner of your choosing.

Or, at the very least, let players move them around somehow. I'd say give players the ability to harvest Oklobs they placed. This will remove the Oklob and give the player back one fruit, either always or with a chance. So if you create a plant and then upgrade it into an Oklob, you'd get half the fruit you spent back if it doesn't die and you harvest it (or less on average if it isn't a 100% chance). I think this would be a good way to alleviate the "fruit costs" complaint without making it trivial. And might encourage players to use them more often than for nuking branch ends.

Or it might be a terrible idea.

[Lasty]

It seems everyone is saying that Fedhas's abbilities are ok, and you can finish the game with him, but you can also finish it without a god.

That is definitely not what I was saying. What I was saying is that Fedhas's powers are actually quite strong, but that a couple of the most useful ones can be a bit irritating to use. Fedhas's powers are easily good enough to make winning the game possible; in fact, they make it easy by trivializing the hardest parts of the game. There's way more than enough fruit in any given game to dominate lair branch ends, vault:5, and Zot:5. These can be some of the most challenging areas in a game, and all of them go down easy to Fedhas's powers in a way that no other god can match. The only thing that stops me from expanding that list to all rune branch endings is that the others have no corpses to harvest piety from and Slime contains a lot of creatures that resist acid damage.

As if that wasn't enough, Fedhas also makes the time between temple and the end of lair very, very easy, while normally that chunk of the game gets the most player deaths (as I understand it).

Even the fruit is great, aside from the stacking; it adds a resource that must be managed and isn't effectively infinite (unlike piety). Nothing needs to change about fruit, except that if there were a change to make all fruit take up a single inventory space, it would really make the fruit less irritating to carry.

[rebthor]

Fedhas is probably the strongest or at least top 3 strongest god in the game. Wandering mushrooms literally trivialize everything until they start getting one-shot. Considering the game generally gets easier as you go on, that's a huge benefit. The only other gods that are remotely as powerful for a starting game are Okawaru and Trog for non-undead.

Fedhas' power does sort of tail off after the mid-game until you're ready to use your fruit for oklob farms, but I don't really see the issue in that. It's true that all his other powers are useful but situational and I don't really see an issue with that. If any of them were made more powerful, I think you'd have to nerf mushrooms because they are that good.

And to repost this from One-Eyed Jack:

The fact that nemelex is near the bottom seems to indicate that popularity has little to do with power