god of random skill training

[Croases]

Over the last few versions, we had a good number of gods that grant major benefits in return for major drawbacks (movement speed, noise, Ru's whole gamut). Do you think there's design space in crawl for a similar god that takes away the freedom of training the skills you want? Specifically, worshiping this god would make it start taking a big chunk (say, 3/4) out of all incoming skill experience and allocating it into whatever it wants, ignoring training prerequisites like having the necessary weapon/spells, to make you something akin to a wanderer for the entire game.

The way this occurs may be entirely random (so that you can finish the game with 20 axes and 20 long blades, if you're incredibly unlucky), dependent on prior "decisions" (god made you train fire magic to 8, so it's more likely to choose fire magic to 12 instead of say, necromancy to 8, but it can still choose the latter), or dependent on pre-set "niches" (god wants your hill orc to be a stabber, so it forces experience into stealth, short blades and hexes). You would still have 1/4 experience for essentials like fighting, in case it asks you to train poison magic up to 27.

As for benefits, I'm partial to the "drinking potions/reading scrolls has a X% chance not to use up the item" mechanic, since it gives you an incentive to take up the god early instead of switching late game after your skillset is stable. The god also shouldn't give you weapons/books, since the point is to face the challenge of mediating between what the floor gives you and what the god wants you to train.

Thoughts?

[n1000]

This idea is similar to Nemelex's now removed Sage card which did the same thing, although the diverted XP would be increased by some factor, and the random skill was weighted towards skills the character had trained (given enough card power).

Broadly, I like the idea of having to accommodate restrictions/benefits you don't predict over the course of a game. I mean I think being forced to (and being able to) adapt is much better for Crawl than having fixed character builds.

However, the god you've described sounds like it would be boring and frustrating to play. I think there's potential for a god to mess with skill training and to drive characters towards zany builds, but I think it needs to avoid making worshipping the god worse than useless with high probability ("entirely random" idea) without overtly favoring fixed archetypes ("hexes, stealth, sbl" example).

I do not like the bonus to consumables. It seems boring and is incongruous with the skill training mechanics.

[pratamawirya]

Training the right skills is one of primary things to do to make your character stronger. Not being able to do that is very bad. So... in exchange, this god should give very significant benefits. You really need to go all out in designing the god's abilities; "drinking potions/reading scrolls has a X% chance not to use up the item" is far from enough, I think.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I see 2 problems with this god.
1) Being unable to train what you want means you have to use divine abilities to kill monsters, otherwise it is a gamble and more frustrating than unavoidable Xom-caused deaths.
2) Ru does what I described in previous point. I still remember a game where I had all skills at 0 in Lair, Orc, late Dungeon and first Lair rune, killing everything with Apocalypse and escaping with Power Leap.

[papilio]

penalties like movement spd, resistance, attributes doesn't reduce player's decision in character growth

taking away freedom of skill building would be very boring feature