Wed Mar 17 00:26:29 2010

At 12 o'clock PM, Day of the Great Gods, 12th of the Month of the Battle
on the Theran calendar Mirimi perished, never to return.

It seems like it could be very nice, but extremely frustrating.

>It seems like it could be very nice, but extremely
>frustrating.

I had an ON human conjie pre-purge and wanted to go gnome for better int/mana/hp. It was pretty awful, because I'm not patient enough. My final death, for example was me conjuring a transplendant archon (900 mana) that was not angry. I used 500 mana trying to bind it 3 times and then it broke my modestly strong circle (200 mana). Overall I hadn't died many times to unbound servitors but at that moment I realized it just wasn't going to be any fun trying to explore with these inconveniences.

It could be viable, even beastly, with the right edges, and enough patience, but you really have to be willing to make very strong circles and dump tons of mana into bindings. And even so it was pretty hard to keep angels and demons happy and they would almost always leave 10-15 ticks early or attack me.

All in all it was definitely not worth it for a character I wasn't willing to be patient with, but I could see a nexun or something being pretty rocking.

Just going to point out a couple things for next time:

1) Gnome does get some interesting edges and more hp/mana; it also gets much lower charisma than the human. At least as much as with any other class, you should think really really hard about accepting a lower prime stat as a conjurer. Most of the things that frustrated you have at least as much to do with your charisma as your alignment.

2) In some cases you might want to consider drawing multiple circles.

> Most of the things that frustrated you have at least as much to do
>with your charisma as your alignment.

Yup. For what I wanted, the charisma is definitely worth more than the int/wis boost. My idea with the gnome was that I'd have enough extra mana to compensate, and that I'd just be careful to keep my servitors happy. But I just ended up feeling like it wouldn't be worth it. Especially since I have two competing character ideas, plus I'm closing on a house, I just haven't felt like dealing with this conjurer.

Honestly, next time I'll probably just go chaotic evil and accept that really tough mobs will be hard to kill, but 95% of the mud is doable with a juiced familiar and a demon, I expect, and the ranking will be nice and quick. The only problem there is I'm not sure how much contact other planes will get you killed the way clairvoyance will. If that's the case, then evil would be bad, since much of my reason for going conjurer as an explorer is for contact other planes.

> 2) In some cases you might want to consider drawing multiple
>circles.

Is two circle of less than half strength better than one circle? I've used multiple circles many times, but I'm never sure. Does a failed binding weaken the circle much more than the pulses of an pissed off servitor?

Anyhow, it basically plays into what I was talking about with the patience. I think an orderly gnome conjurer could be a pretty suave explorer/killer, but I wasn't up for it.

>Yup. For what I wanted, the charisma is definitely worth more
>than the int/wis boost. My idea with the gnome was that I'd
>have enough extra mana to compensate, and that I'd just be
>careful to keep my servitors happy.

Yeah, my guess is that for the things you really care about the most, int/wis/mana can't compensate. (Although int really is almost a secondary prime stat of conjurers in many ways.)

>Honestly, next time I'll probably just go chaotic evil and
>accept that really tough mobs will be hard to kill, but 95% of
>the mud is doable with a juiced familiar and a demon, I
>expect, and the ranking will be nice and quick. The only
>problem there is I'm not sure how much contact other planes
>will get you killed the way clairvoyance will. If that's the
>case, then evil would be bad, since much of my reason for
>going conjurer as an explorer is for contact other planes.

Contact other planes doesn't work exactly like clairvoyance, but it can get you killed. It's probably less of a danger in the way that you're thinking.

>Is two circle of less than half strength better than one
>circle?

Sometimes. I have a feeling in some of your problem cases it would have been. That's another one of those things to play around with.

>I've used multiple circles many times, but I'm never
>sure. Does a failed binding weaken the circle much more than
>the pulses of an pissed off servitor?

It really does depend, but as a rule of thumb, yes, a lot more.