ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Shadowherd

The concept was this: Shadows are undead, so Retch can heal them. Awesome, right? To get more retches, leverage Gnaw and Curse of Corpses.

This works pretty decently, although fighting undead and AeO/DoT mages is problematic.

Started out with Willful Strike and Reproach mostly, first cat point went into Shadows and then I went 5/5/4/1 there (for max Fade, reconstruct). Second cat point into One With Shadow, where I went 1/1/4/1 most of the game, but for starters I only put in 1 point in Shadow Senses while I worked on maxing Madness. First prodigy went into Mental Tyranny (no brainer), the wyrm bile cat point bought a rune slot for Taint of Telepathy (first time I used it: awesome!). My final cat point I put into Cursed Aura.

Some notes:

One with Shadow: for Undead, definitely worth the cat point, mostly for Shadow Senses (one point wonder) and Shadow Transposition. The problem with Shadow Empathy and Shadow Decoy is that when you really could use some help, your Shadows are likely already dead. Less of an issue with Shadow Decoy, but Empathy actively messes with your defenses and offensive power. Thanks to Fade, shadows are pretty good at tanking despite having only a few hit points, and Empathy bypasses that. Of course, it might be better with on an antimagic Yeek - I haven't used it much, seemed questionably useful to me.

There's also little reason to put in more than one point in Shadow Senses - since they'll get into people's faces sooner or later, range one is enough to tell you what's going on. Maybe additional points should also grant a bit of stealth and invis vision?

Curse of Corpses: Even with this setup, ideally suited to take advantage of it, it's sub-par compared to Shrouds or Nightmares, and even Misfortune except when fighting humanoids. Partially that's because with the new Retch, your walking corpses will hardly ever use it. So no overlapping pools of vomit for you and your shadows to cavort in, sadly. The other part is of course that level 3 and 4 do nothing when not fighting humanoids - it would be nice if there were undead plants, animals and wyrms at least.

Through the Crowds: Running around with +40 to all saves is great, the friendly fire protection a nice touch (but Doomed native talents don't do friendly fire anyway). The reduced movecost when switching places is surprisingly useful if you want to nip in for a quick malign, then nip back out behind your meatshield. All in all decent for this build, and definitely superior to Blighted Summoning, unless Emphatic Hex got a serious boost in the meantime.

Gnaw: Needs gestures to be turned off to work, and gets resisted a lot. Maybe it uses physical power? The fun with Mental Tyranny and Madness is of course that it does 33% mental damage and procs confusion, stuns, slows and mental restistance debuffs. Still not worth five generics - for 1 it'd be okay.

Doomed Mindstar artifacts: There aren't any. Maybe this is why they hate everyone?

I find both Doomed and Ghouls to have a difficult start. How bad were your first 12 levels or so, and when did things really get rolling?

You'll note I played on adventurer, not roguelike, and ate a couple of deaths.

That said, your starting phase door rune + reproach + willful strike let you handle pretty much anything that's not ranged. Keep hate topped off from critters. Find/buy a teleportation rune and second shield rune ASAP. Ignore con for the start, you've got enough, you need to get Blast and agony online fast - Blast 5/5 and Agony 1 or 2 so you have a bit more range than your anemic feed life drain.

I went through most of the game with a copper amulet of healing (sometimes you need burst healing) and Bloodcaller (goes nicely with your DoT) equipped.

Trying to remember what accounted for those 6 deaths. I think that's it:

[*] Blood Master: spiked his shield for a TRUCKLOAD of damage on a double turn
[*] High Pyromancer rare in the Vor Armory: Wildfire burns away Fade, eats shadows
[*] Telos + 2 rares twice: knife fight in a phone booth against undead: a Ghoul's nightmare
[*] High Pyromancer stair guardian, twice: Essence of Speed + lots of fire

So it's actually mostly in the mid-game I had trouble.

When I played Ghoul Doomed on nightmare, I was loving it.

Retch + Shadows = awesome.
Ghoulish Leap gives Doomed much needed mobility, not quite as good as a movement infusions, perhaps, but you can leap over foes.
I gave up my run around Vor Armory, due to getting absolutely destroyed there and not being happy with the loss of lives.
Edit: Sorry, it was Telos I gave up. No room to maneuver really didn't go well for me.

I found the Doomed Start to not be so bad, once I got out of Blighted Ruins - Which was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE on nightmare. I ended up cheating my way out by turning the necromancer into a boss (I had about a 50% survival rate against him) and connecting the zone to the worldmap. No shame.
The second you hit level 4, to get ghoulish leap, survivability increases dramatically.

Congratulations on the win!