Lots of people complaining about Killer Vegan

[Nothing]

I see a ton of people complaining about how irritating Killer Vegan is, but when I used it it was amazing. Immense health boost, a quarter of the enemies in the entire game ignore you, and just take promethean, arrows, or fungal to kill them without the debuffs. Even ignoring the charm ability. No food is easy, just make diggle omeletts and the de-debuff ability.
Honestly, this skill is far more OP than Archaeology ever was, and Arch got nerfed to hell. Is there some major downside I have somehow avoided seeing?

Edit: Removed the Fungal Arts portion. I derped. hard.

[OpenSheep]

if you plan around the debuffs when attacking animals nothing is really a negative about veganism execpt the not being able to eat most foods.

[Bishop]

Killer vegan is great for any ranged character but it quickly becomes irritating as pure melee.

[Nothing]

Honestly the health and survivability bonuses are insane. 4 points into it will take my character from 30 to 100 health, plus or minus a bit from equipment and leveling up.

[Stone]

The issue I have with Vegan is that a key portion of this game seems to involve... killing things and reaping XP (aka "the grind"). Taking 25% (plus?) of that XP off the table, alone, seems to invite a dramatic difficulty increase. Unless animals are never present in monster zoos (and it seems like this would have to be put in as a result of a build with Vegan in it, since I know diggles show in zoos on other builds), how would you go about clearing them? Also: massive debuffs for eating?

Is it possible this is a decent thing to have in your build if you get to Dredmor?

I would take it if I was trying an intentionally difficult build.

[YetiChow]

Originally posted by Release The Troll:

The issue I have with Vegan is that a key portion of this game seems to involve... killing things and reaping XP (aka "the grind"). Taking 25% (plus?) of that XP off the table, alone, seems to invite a dramatic difficulty increase. Unless animals are never present in monster zoos (and it seems like this would have to be put in as a result of a build with Vegan in it, since I know diggles show in zoos on other builds), how would you go about clearing them? Also: massive debuffs for eating?

Is it possible this is a decent thing to have in your build if you get to Dredmor?

I would take it if I was trying an intentionally difficult build.

Half the fun of Dredmore, for those who enjoy playing that way at least, is to "break the game" with ridiculous combinations that turn enemy strengths into weaknesses or supposed debuffs into strengths.

I played a Vegan Communist Bankster Viking Vampire for the lols of all those inherent contradictions... and yet it turned into one of the most powerful melee characters I've ever built; without any dedicated melee skills at all. I'd get the Fallen Vegan debuffs and then either transfer them to an enemy with the Banksterism skill, or turn them to a buff with the Communism skill; and Communism's healing plus the various stunning and escaping abilities meant that I never got stuck in combats I didn't want to be in.

In the end, I lost that build because I got cocky and threw a Noxious Brimstone Flask at my feet in a packed hallway... but that was my own stupidity; if I'd done the sensible thing I could have kept the build going further; but that remains one of my most brokenly powerful runs.

[Sojiro]

Originally posted by Release The Troll:

The issue I have with Vegan is that a key portion of this game seems to involve... killing things and reaping XP (aka "the grind"). Taking 25% (plus?) of that XP off the table, alone, seems to invite a dramatic difficulty increase.

Are you serious? The point is that you do NOT avoid killing animals when you're a Killer Vegan, you simply do it at range. Or you use polymorph spells to turn animals into other stuff. Or you use traps. Or you charm them into getting killed by other monsters.

[Daemonologist]

Vegan is pretty powerful, the problem is when you get the debuff by accident because you're not paying enough attention or in the earlier levels when you might get it on purpose to clear up a few mobs because you don't have a way to kill them without direct attacks yet. Once you can damage reliably without getting the debuff (via AoE, summons, traps, etc) it's purely upsides provided your careful what you directly target - none of the things you can't directly attack fight back beyond counter chance when attacked at melee range either, so you can take your time killing them for xp. Alternatively, get a reliable anti-debuff method alongside it and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want without the consequences of 'breaking Vegan Edge' as the game calls it.