Beogh Suggestions

[Ghoul King]

Suggestion 1: Create a 'rank' above High Priest, and a 'rank' above Sorcerer. Sorcerers and High Priests are good, provide a lot of utility that a Knight doesn't, but Warlords so badly outclass them that they eventually become dead weight you wish was still more Warlords, assuming they survive long enough for you to resent them. If Warlords themselves ultimately reach popcorn status (I haven't gotten a Beoghite far enough to say myself) maybe add a 'rank' above Warlord too.

Suggestion 2: Rework Beogh's gifting of allies to scale quantity and quality to Invocations+XL. (And Piety?) Something like: Beogh will gift you followers if you have less than (formula derived from XL, Invocations, and possibly Piety) HD of minions in the world, rather than gifting you minions when you have none on the current floor. This would make training Invocations something other than Smite boost/make Hill Orc +3 in Invocations more relevant to Beoghites, and would make follower gifts more consistent and less weird. Currently, if you have one Warlord following you around, if you want a gift of followers you should abandon the Warlord on another floor until Beogh gifts you minions, which is weird, unintuitive behavior; shouldn't Beogh be able to tell I have almost nobody and decide that merits a follower gift? Gifting up to a maximum of HD provides a roof (Instead of Beogh just gifting minions relentlessly) but also lets Beogh decide two loser Orcs is not fitting for the XL27 Messiah. Scaling the quality of the follower gift would also make it a little easier to come back from a total wipe, even if you've emptied the Mines. Note that I do not mean Beogh gifts a maxed out character a half dozen Warlords every time the previous batch dies: I'm thinking more in terms of an overall shift upwards, but any given minion can still be popcorn and if Warlords ever enter the pool of possible minion gifts it never rises above a very low chance. So initially you won't be gifted anything above basic Orcs, but a mid-late character can expect to get Knights mixed in routinely enough that building up to Warlords on Zot threats is not some pipe dream.

Suggestion 3: Make Beogh's blessings of minions 'meatier'. When I first played I assumed Beogh was directly increasing my minion's AC and damage, but in actuality he is merely using 100% reliable scrolls of enchantment on their gear. This means the Orcs themselves are only permanently improved by 'ranking up' and, unless I've misunderstood things, raising their HD ("Your Warlord looks more experienced"), while the blessings are effectively wasted anytime they find better gear. (Or gear their AI considers to be better) 0.15 is apparently dumping allies picking up equipment and reworking Beoghite Orcs appropriately, so this might be redundant, but it would still be nice if my flock actually got improvements to their personal qualities. (I will admit specific ideas largely elude me: increasing their speed would be ridiculous on a number of levels, resistances opens up all kinds of problems...)

[reaver]

0.15 is apparently dumping allies picking up equipment and reworking Beoghite Orcs appropriately, so this might be redundant, but it would still be nice if my flock actually got improvements to their personal qualities.

This is already in Trunk, it would be best if you played some Trunk Beogh before making further suggestions on minions.

Plenty of this seems to be based on the idea that orc followers become outclassed as the game goes on, which I cannot really verify or deny.

[tasonir]

Note that I've only won beogh once, but I had warlords survive throughout the entire run. I had 4 with me through most of the late game all the way to zot:5, and while a large amount of them went down to an orb of fire/ancient lich combination in the orb chamber, I ran from the fight while they were holding off the mobs, and recalled one warlord. Them dying probably delayed the mobs long enough and saved my life. That last remaining warlord made it all the way out with me to the surface.

In general, warlords are highly survivable if managed well, but priests/sorcerers are fragile and tend to die. I haven't played with .15 beogh trunk, so I don't know if the caster minions are better or worse now.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 151243.txt

  Code:

Wardok is recalled.
You finish recalling your allies.
You have escaped!

You could see the friendly Wardok the orc warlord.

[Ghoul King]

The main one I'd like to see implemented is a reworking of ally gifting. It's problematic in several ways (Mostly minor, to be fair) that Beogh will gift you followers whether you have none or have a legion of Warlords, so long as none are on the same floor on you, and in turn will never gift you followers if you have even one snot-nosed maggot following you around cheering your name just because he's on the same floor as you. The other things are things I suspect would be good for the game, but I've never gotten a Beoghite far enough to say for sure.

I don't play Trunk for a variety of reasons, none of which are changing any time soon.

[muxecoid]

I do not like what happened to Beogh in trunk. You can only give items to each follower once over the game. If unarmed, unarmored orc joins you and promotes to Warlord you can give him a weapon or armor, but not both. And once you give him that armor you can not upgrade it in the future. If you could give them items every, for example, 5000 turns it would be much better.

[spudwalt]

I do not like what happened to Beogh in trunk. You can only give items to each follower once over the game. If unarmed, unarmored orc joins you and promotes to Warlord you can give him a weapon or armor, but not both. And once you give him that armor you can not upgrade it in the future. If you could give them items every, for example, 5000 turns it would be much better.

Yeah, that seems not that great. They might have changed this by now (I haven't played a Beoghite in a while just because I got fed up with the micromanageryness of it), but if you could tell specific dudes "hey, stop following me around", that might make a good fix. That way, you'd have the option of leaving all your unequipped shlubs in a corner somewhere while you level up your other minions.

Or, you could have the option to give each follower one weapon and one armor. That way, you'd at least be able to completely equip someone who joined up with nothing.

How does gifting your orcs a ranged weapon work? Do you give them a crossbow and some bolts?

[duvessa]

My proposal for beogh: allow giving equipment to allies up to 0 times.

[rockygargoyle]

I do not like what happened to Beogh in trunk. You can only give items to each follower once over the game. If unarmed, unarmored orc joins you and promotes to Warlord you can give him a weapon or armor, but not both. And once you give him that armor you can not upgrade it in the future. If you could give them items every, for example, 5000 turns it would be much better.

Yeah, that seems not that great. They might have changed this by now (I haven't played a Beoghite in a while just because I got fed up with the micromanageryness of it), but if you could tell specific dudes "hey, stop following me around", that might make a good fix. That way, you'd have the option of leaving all your unequipped shlubs in a corner somewhere while you level up your other minions.

Or, you could have the option to give each follower one weapon and one armor. That way, you'd at least be able to completely equip someone who joined up with nothing.

How does gifting your orcs a ranged weapon work? Do you give them a crossbow and some bolts?

When I gifted a longbow to an orc knight, it dropped its former weapon and wielded the longbow
He still couldn't pick arrows, so he would just bash things with the longbow.

[tasonir]

When I gifted a longbow to an orc knight, it dropped its former weapon and wielded the longbow
He still couldn't pick arrows, so he would just bash things with the longbow.

Textbook example of "orc level intelligence".

[muxecoid]

Recalling specific orcs and telling specific orcs to not follow is a much requited change. When I go to elf 3 I definetely do not want any vanilla orcs following.

I do not understand recent Beogh nerf, even before Beogh was not overpowered enough.
Upgrade of starting axe of foghters in 0.14 was a huge buff to orcs, who prefer Fi though.

[Hirsch I]

I still think you should be able to limit the amount of orcs following. dozens of vanilla orcs cluttering the screen, messing with recall, eating the others XP and confuing you... is just too anoying. I just want to be able to say "hey, not recruiting anymore, sorry." adding that option on the ^ screen, or an ability "start/stop recruiting" would be enough. 80% of beogh's problems would be solved, I believe.
man, I need to learn how to code. damned college, stop eating my precious time!

[PleasingFungus]

Beogh changes are ongoing. At present, Beogh will gift weapons & armour to orcs that lack them, and upgrade both enchantment & type of held equipment. (E.g., flail to morningstar, etc.) I have plans for ranged weapon/ammo gifts that should be implemented in the next few days.

The initial change was made, not to "nerf" Beogh, but to avoid the tedium of micromanaging the equipment of dozens of orcs. The goal is that Beogh should ensure that any orc who survives long enough has all the basic gear they need; this frees the player to consider a relatively small number of interesting, impactful choices. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer.

Responding to the OP: suggestion 3 is done, suggestion 1 is probably not going to happen, suggestion 2 is interesting and warrants more thought. It feels good that the player can limit the number of allies wandering around with them, but it is weird that the only way you can get more allies (when you want them) is by sending all your pals to another floor... perhaps allies should instead be requested manually, at a significant piety cost? I'm concerned about adding yet another ability...

[Bim]

Responding to the OP: suggestion 3 is done, suggestion 1 is probably not going to happen, suggestion 2 is interesting and warrants more thought. It feels good that the player can limit the number of allies wandering around with them, but it is weird that the only way you can get more allies (when you want them) is by sending all your pals to another floor... perhaps allies should instead be requested manually, at a significant piety cost? I'm concerned about adding yet another ability...

I think an extra ability to manually request them would be great, as well as possibly rarely getting a random recruit or so just so you can't micromanage down to 'optimum orc levels'.

[swizzlewizzle]

I know most of you are laser-focused on the 3 rune win, but what about beoghites that want to do a 15 rune? Warlords don't die from getting hit in melee in the late game; they die from getting trashed by hellfire/torment/etc.. being thrown out all over the place. I think there should be high piety or XP cost options to bring up resistances on your orc followers. Either that or let us give them a full set of equipment so they can at least survive a fireball or two. I don't see why a priest of beogh would go all the way to the end of the 3 rune game via his warlords (taking a 50% hit to all xp in the process) and then all of a sudden be pretty much required to take on another god to get through the other 12 runes. There is no reason that the upper strength bound for the orc followers should be capped.

[PleasingFungus]

I know most of you are laser-focused on the 3 rune win, but what about beoghites that want to do a 15 rune? Warlords don't die from getting hit in melee in the late game; they die from getting trashed by hellfire/torment/etc.. being thrown out all over the place. I think there should be high piety or XP cost options to bring up resistances on your orc followers. Either that or let us give them a full set of equipment so they can at least survive a fireball or two. I don't see why a priest of beogh would go all the way to the end of the 3 rune game via his warlords (taking a 50% hit to all xp in the process) and then all of a sudden be pretty much required to take on another god to get through the other 12 runes. There is no reason that the upper strength bound for the orc followers should be capped.

It is okay for some gods to be focused on 3-rune wins. See: Trog, Fedhas, etc. It's more important to make Beogh work well in the area of the game he's suited to - and that the vast majority of games are limited to!

[Bim]

I know most of you are laser-focused on the 3 rune win, but what about beoghites that want to do a 15 rune? Warlords don't die from getting hit in melee in the late game; they die from getting trashed by hellfire/torment/etc.. being thrown out all over the place. I think there should be high piety or XP cost options to bring up resistances on your orc followers. Either that or let us give them a full set of equipment so they can at least survive a fireball or two. I don't see why a priest of beogh would go all the way to the end of the 3 rune game via his warlords (taking a 50% hit to all xp in the process) and then all of a sudden be pretty much required to take on another god to get through the other 12 runes. There is no reason that the upper strength bound for the orc followers should be capped.

It is okay for some gods to be focused on 3-rune wins. See: Trog, Fedhas, etc. It's more important to make Beogh work well in the area of the game he's suited to - and that the vast majority of games are limited to!

While I agree with that, I don't think it's a good idea to have gods which are completely limited to a 3-rune win which Beogh kinda is. Trog and Fedhas may lose some of their direct power, but they still have side powers which Beogh doesn't really have.

When I tried to do Pan with Beogh I may as well have not been playing with any god at all which isn't the case with Trog (ammo gifts, hand) or Fedhas (deep water, barriers).

Giving Orcs past knights some resistances would be great, or just flat out giving them torment resistance would make them viable. I don't think that'd make them overpowered, especially torment resistance, as you're only coming up against that to a meaningful degree past a 3 rune game, so it wouldn't impact earlier games.

[and into]

Frankly I think it is much worse that TSO is really bad except in extended, as that's much more limiting. But that's only one god.

A major point (IMO) that wasn't brought up, is this: If you are planning to go extended, you almost certainly have the means and opportunity to switch to some other god, and time the switch such that you aren't greatly risking death. In the case of Fedhas, Yred, Beogh, you probably should switch if you are going extended and, incidentally, the wrath of those gods shouldn't be too bad for a late-game character that is contemplating extended (even with changes that—justifiably—made god wrath much scarier).

Also, for the record, Trog is perfectly fine in extended. He's basically as powerful in Hell/Pan/Abyss as he is in Depths or Zot, it is just that his conduct becomes harsher as you basically run out of worthwhile non-magical things to train. On the other hand anti-magic is the best brand for extended, and using a weapon with that brand would conflict with magic use even if you weren't worshiping Trog. So the two kind of balance out.

[Bim]

Frankly I think it is much worse that TSO is really bad except in extended, as that's much more limiting. But that's only one god.

A major point (IMO) that wasn't brought up, is this: If you are planning to go extended, you almost certainly have the means and opportunity to switch to some other god, and time the switch such that you aren't greatly risking death. In the case of Fedhas, Yred, Beogh, you probably should switch if you are going extended and, incidentally, the wrath of those gods shouldn't be too bad for a late-game character that is contemplating extended (even with changes that—justifiably—made god wrath much scarier).

Also, for the record, Trog is perfectly fine in extended. He's basically as powerful in Hell/Pan/Abyss as he is in Depths or Zot, it is just that his conduct becomes harsher as you basically run out of worthwhile non-magical things to train. On the other hand anti-magic is the best brand for extended, and using a weapon with that brand would conflict with magic use even if you weren't worshiping Trog. So the two kind of balance out.

I completely agree with all you've said - I just don't think it's good to force the player to god-swap. A lot of gods are kiiiiinda rubbish in late game, and that's fine, but all the others have at least some uses, whereas Beogh just becomes utterly useless.

[archaeo]

I'm not sure I understand how god swapping is seen as undesirable or why the gods all need to be equally balanced in level of power.

[Bim]

I'm not sure I understand how god swapping is seen as undesirable or why the gods all need to be equally balanced in level of power.

You're over-reading what I've put - I completely understand and agree that they don't need to be equally balanced, I just don't believe that any should get to a point where they're nearly completely useless.

As far as swapping goes, I've always thought that it was supposed to be a moderately undesirable thing to do, that the whole thing about having god wrath was making it a long term decision you had to stick with. Beogh currently is pretty much useless throughout extended game, and it's a 'no-brainer' to swap away from him. I personally don't like that, especially from a roleplaying (not Role Playing as in making up a story and whatever, but as in building up a character) perspective.