Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's 5% per turn spent summoning I believe, not 5% per summoning event.

Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

Don't let it get you down, I'm having the same bad luck. I tried this race for the first time and my void summoners got feebleminded 5 times in the first 7 attempts. They usually summoned a couple of things so it wasn't a total loss, but my first attempts left a lot to be desired. I ended up looking at the void summons as a bonus. I built my empire around the regularly available units and if I managed to get anything useful from the summons, I counted myself blessed.

Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

My Last R'lyeh game, my Starspawn priest made it all the way to summoning level 19 before feeblemind. By that time, he had a chalice, too. He quickly got better, and went all the way to 25.

Priest has a %5 feeblemind chance. Mage, also called Starspawn, big diff, has a %20. Thats a big chance, and might be why you are feeling its so common.

Stargazer is practically immune.

And I also recommend the spell returning. At 2 astral gems every 8 turns or so, its practically free.

Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

In my Last game as Rl'yeh, I combined Gift of Health (via an empowered and artifact-enhanced lizardman shaman) with Ritual of Return. That was the key to keeping the summons coming.

I had a pair of Starspawn Priests in the capital. One would summon until feebleminded, and then his partner would take over while Gift of Health healed the first one. The Ritual of Return protected them to some degree from those ambushes by void creatures.

It worked out really well, even given the cost of researching Gift of Health (which was actually a side-effect of going for something else) and boosting the nature mage up. Since the nature mage provided many other benefits as well, it was a good system. I think I might use a Pretender with nature magic next time, however, as that would remove the problems of finding and training/forging for an independent nature mage.

Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm wondering why you used a shaman instead of a starspawn with 1 nature, or a jade sorceress, or a druid.

Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

I couldn't seem to 'draw' an appropriate Starspawn, and the attempts were getting expensive. Just some lousy luck there. I didn't have access (at the time) to any other guaranteed nature-Users, so I went with what I had. It wan't so much a deliberate "let's use a lizardman!" choice as a "man, I can't keep shelling out 280 gold a pop" thing.

One would expect, however, to normally be able to get a Starspawn with nature magic a bit easier.

Re: Use for R\'lyeh void summons ?
 

Just an FYI, if something has a probability of 5%, it does _not_ have an expected value of 20. IIRC, the standard Expected Value formula is .7/p, where p is the probability of the event. Therefore, if p=.05, then the Expected Value is 14. For p=.02, the EV should be 35.

(The Expected Value is the number of trials expected before a true result occurs.)

Bayushi Tasogare