Whitney -- Translocations God

[twelwe]

The god of here and there. Or I suppose the god of whatever, just this god.

First you have to join the god, then you get the good stuff.

The good stuff:

------ Protection from Translocation Miscast effects. Player may activate an ability to stay at zero mana. While at zero mana, mana regeneration instead regenerates health.

*----- Beam targeted blink other close. Interrupts any ongoing spells (tornado, aura of abjuration, searing ray etc) and removes all buffs. Beam penetrates.

**---- While under the effect of ctele the player can cast translocation spells without mana. While at zero mana, each point of mana that would have regenerated instead regenerates three health points.

***--- Siphon Power. All creatures in los and the player lose all mana. Player gains ctele. Piety cost.

****-- Transfocus Teleportation. Player gains buff tftele and places a mark on the ground. The player returns to that space after 20 turns. May be activated sooner. Unaffected by -ctele. While at zero mana, each point of mana that would have regenerated instead regenerates six health points.

*****- tftele buff lasts 25 turns.

****** Ultimate Controlled Blink. Requires 8 mana, large amount of piety for each square transposed and drains all mana. Blink unaffected by -ctele. tftele buff lasts 30 turns. While at zero mana, each point of mana that would have regenerated instead regenerates nine health points.

Also the god name starts with a W, and might be just W

[and into]

Like it. In terms of "drain mana" from monsters with Siphon Power, that would probably have to be implemented as a strong antimagic effect.

I wonder whether "ultimate controlled blink" shouldn't be changed a bit, though, so that it is more distinctive, and also more powerful outside of -cTele areas of the game. Off the top of my head: A "Wormhole" ability that freezes time for up to X auts (or you could think of it as "all movement is instantaneous"), but movement is only action allowed while wormhole is activated; you can exit the wormhole and end the effect any time via your (a)bilities menu. Costs large piety to activate wormhole, requires 8 MP to activate, and drains all MP; also drains piety for each turn it is used. Wormhole isn't blocked by -cTele, but cannot be activated while carrying Orb of Zot.

Some of the abilities might be too strong, and the flavor needs to be fleshed out to link up the stuff the god does (MP <==> HP, translocations, and some anti-caster stuff to use against enemy spell casters), but the fundamental idea and mechanics are solid. I could see myself taking a god like this on a lot of characters.

[and into]

The focus is on repositioning yourself and your enemies for defense, which is a lot more interesting than the kinds of defensive boosts that most gods offer, and increasing health regeneration at the cost of foregoing MP use is a unique and intriguing mechanic. (The god supports casting tloc spells at 0 MP—I would suggest that 0 MP casting of tloc spells incurs a spell level-based piety cost for balance.) — Outside of vine stalkers and some other specific weird gear/species combos, you can't really use HP regeneration as a major source of defense during fights. I've noticed this before and actually had an idea for a god that would support something like it, because that would be a distinct kind of combat compared to the "feel" of combat with EV-centric, AC-centric, or mixed characters, but my idea wasn't as well developed as twelwe's. Beyond that, the god gives you some anti-magic effect to hit enemies in LOS with.

I was worried the proposal would maybe come too close to Lugonu, but this is really well differentiated from that. It needs to be fleshed out more, but I like the idea quite a bit.

[Lasty]

Assuming that it's serious, the hp regen would need tweaking, since characters with large mp pools regen 1 mp pretty frequently, and if that were instead 9 hp, it would lead to insane regeneration.

The suite of powers would also be absolutely nuts for rune/orb stealing, allowing you to sprint directly into a vault from a considerable distance away, apport the macguffin, and then instantly return to a safe distance -- and even blink away from that afterwards with Ultimate Controlled Blink.

I'd like to see one or more powers that allow for tactical repositioning within combat, since I've always wanted more abilities in that vein.

[twelwe]

Assuming that it's serious, the hp regen would need tweaking, since characters with large mp pools regen 1 mp pretty frequently, and if that were instead 9 hp, it would lead to insane regeneration.

supposed to be insane regeneration. the same way berserk is supposed to be insane melee, or channeling is insane mana. God powers aren't supposed to be mediocre.

The suite of powers would also be absolutely nuts for rune/orb stealing, allowing you to sprint directly into a vault from a considerable distance away, apport the macguffin, and then instantly return to a safe distance -- and even blink away from that afterwards with Ultimate Controlled Blink.

corruption is absolutely nuts. rain is absolutely nuts. enter abyss is absolutely nuts.

god powers are supposed to be good

[Lasty]

Yeah, god powers are supposed to be good, but obviously there's an upper cap. 9 hp every time you'd regen mana is better regen than Makhleb's in a lot of situations, in addition to stepping on his territory (signature ability: health regen on kills). This god forces you to give up mana for the privilege, and Makhleb doesn't, but this god also lets you freely spam tloc spells without mana.

Transfocus Teleportation and Ultimate Controlled Blink seem designed not just to be good, but to be good primarily and specifically in allow the player to skip past the areas of the game that are meant to be the most dangerous milestone areas. Maybe I'm underestimating the ability of corruption and rain to do the same thing, but to my mind this seems like the wrong direction to push players.

I would be disappointed if a god got added that was effectively mandatory for speed runs, and it seems like that's the niche this is attempting to fill in the OP. I do think this is an interesting proposal, and I also think there's a lot of open design space in translocations that I'd like to see get explored, but I think the god would be more interesting if more of the abilities were tactically relevant throughout the game, like the blink close ray.

[and into]

My stab at the mechanics twelwe outlined:

Welhas the Traveler

Upon Joining:

-- Drifter of Welhas
Passive: Safe Journey. Protects against translocation miscast effects. Protects against hostile teleportation effects. Scales with piety.
Activated Ability: Sightseer’s Satmina. “Pack light to regenerate more health: If your spirit is unburdened by MP, you regain health each turn.” Your MP is set to zero, and you do not regenerate MP while active. Health regeneration is increased. Health regen bonus scales with piety. This ability has no time-out expiration but can be ended any time through the (a)bility menu.

* Migrant
Activated Ability: Greater Apportation. Piety cost: Small. Blinks target enemy toward you.

** Wanderer
Passive: Travel Insurance. Translocation spells can be cast even if you do not have MP for them; however, if you cast tloc spells you do not have the MP for, it costs piety.

*** Nomad
Activated Ability: Spatial Flux. Moderate piety cost. Enemies that are far away are drawn in close, while those close to you are pushed toward the edge of your LOS.

**** Wayfarer
Activated Ability: Proximity Tether. Piety cost: High.
Player marks current location on ground. For a period of time you can instantly travel back to that spot. If you travel too far from the spot, the tether breaks (you get warning messages that the tether is "taut / strained / about to break" before this happens).

***** Pilgrim
Passive: Improved Tether. Extend duration and range of Spatial Tether.

****** Wheel
Activated ability: Wormhole. Piety cost: Very high. Instantaneous speed.
Your movements are instantaneous. After a certain amount of instantaneous movements have been made, the effect expires. While wormhole is active, moving is the only action you are allowed to make. You may end wormhole prematurely via the (a)bility menu.

[Lyrick]

*** Nomad
Activated Ability: Spatial Flux. Moderate piety cost. Enemies that are far away are drawn in close, while those close to you are pushed toward the edge of your LOS.

Throws the brutes out, and pulls in the squishies. I like it, its like a bait-disjunction

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Yeah, god powers are supposed to be good, but obviously there's an upper cap.

I don't think any individual ability in this thread is as powerful as Zin's Death-Immunity-Zone. My only qualm would be that instead of being totally free, the mana cost for tloc spells ought to be shifted elsewhere (possibly HP since you are regenning a buttload).

The big problem I have with the god is that cTele/-cTele as status effects are terrible mechanics and having a god that relies on them would obviously make it harder to remove them.

and into's version of the god neatly solves both those problems, so thumbs up from me.

[twelwe]

Activated Ability: Sightseer’s Satmina. “Pack light to regenerate more health: If your spirit is unburdened by MP, you regain health each turn.” Your MP is set to zero, and you do not regenerate MP while active. Health regeneration is increased. Health regen bonus scales with piety. This ability has no time-out expiration but can be ended any time through the (a)bility menu.

scales with piety to what degree?

* Migrant
Activated Ability: Greater Apportation. Piety cost: Small. Blinks target enemy toward you.

Don't know what to think yet because the targeting system is not explained. blink Other Close has a penetrating beam so you might get the orc warrior with the orc priest. That is good for a one star piety ability but would probably have to be smite-targeted as a stronger ability. how would migrant work? is it a guaranteed next-to-player ability?

** Wanderer
Passive: Travel Insurance. Translocation spells can be cast even if you do not have MP for them; however, if you cast tloc spells you do not have the MP for, it costs piety.

probably better than what i envisioned

*** Nomad
Activated Ability: Spatial Flux. Moderate piety cost. Enemies that are far away are drawn in close, while those close to you are pushed toward the edge of your LOS.

I think this steps on the toes of disjunction too much, but you could say the same thing about yred abilities regarding necromancy spells.

**** Wayfarer
Activated Ability: Proximity Tether. Piety cost: High.
Player marks current location on ground. For a period of time you can instantly travel back to that spot. If you travel too far from the spot, the tether breaks (you get warning messages that the tether is "taut / strained / about to break" before this happens).

***** Pilgrim
Passive: Improved Tether. Extend duration and range of Spatial Tether.

****** Wheel
Activated ability: Wormhole. Piety cost: Very high. Instantaneous speed.
Your movements are instantaneous. After a certain amount of instantaneous movements have been made, the effect expires. While wormhole is active, moving is the only action you are allowed to make. You may end wormhole prematurely via the (a)bility menu.

i feel the same about these as with my own 4+ star abilities. Wormhole sounds a lot more useful than ultimate blink, but what if you're cornered in?

thanks for your thoughts & prayers

[and into]

@twelwe: Yeah, I feel like the god supports translocation casting pretty well already, and there's a ring and a spell (plus a few exotic sources like cards I guess) that give cTele. So having that added on as an ability felt a bit much, especially if it is tacked on to some sort of antimagic effect on everything in LOS. (What if you want the antimagic without the cTele, or vice versa? It could be a bit frustrating.) On the other hand you are right that the ability I proposed to replace it with is pretty close to disjunction/dispersal; that's definitely a weak point in my version.

A flavored version of your suggestion:

Activated Ability: Road Weariness. Moderate to High piety cost. If you have any MP it is substantially drained, and all enemies in LOS get an antimagic effect.

Beam version of the "greater apportation" (or whatever you want to call it; "tractor beam"?) sounds cool.

Wormhole might need some other balance things (e.g., usable but duration somewhat reduced in -cTele areas, duration greatly reduced if you are wielding the orb). Maybe wormhole could allow for movements and blinking while it is active, but nothing else, rather than allowing only movement.

The health regeneration boost should be noteworthy, as taking 0 MP (with small exception for tloc spells) is a major liability. I do think the health regen should be smoothed out, rather than getting a chunk every time you would gain an MP, however, because the latter might lead to counting auts or doing other weird stuff. But something roughly equivalent to +.25 or +.33 HP per aut at max piety would be fair I think. (Or 2.5 to 3 HP per "turn" [10 auts].)

[Quazifuji]

I like the concept of the god. I tend to be a huge fan of tactical movement-oriented abilities in games (whether moving enemies or yourself), so I like a lot of the ideas here. All of the activated abilities proposed seem really fun to me (well, ultimate controlled blink seems kin of narrow, I like Wormhole better as an ultimate translocation spell).

I'm not sure how the whole "manaless/antimagic" concept combines with the translocations concept, though. Being able to cast translocations at 0 mana is a good way to buff them, but I'm not sure where the flavor of replacing mana regeneration with health regeneration comes from.

Also, this is a new way to handle a spell-oriented god that I think is interesting. So far, every spell-oriented god focuses on giving resources and passive buffs. Kiku, Veh, and Sif all give spells and passive bonuses to help spellcasting (miscast protection on Kiku and Sif, various buffs to conjurations on Veh). Sif gives mana and amnesia, Veh gives mana, and Kiku gives corpses. The only activated ability that any of them gives that doesn't just give resources for spellcasting in Kiku's torment. Basically, all three of them revolve around giving, buffing, and enabling spells that already exist elsewhere in the game.

This god focuses less on buffing and enabling translocation spells, with the mana-less casting being the only thing that affects translocation spells themselves (although it's pretty huge), and doesn't give any pre-existing translocation spells. Instead, it basically gives extra translocation spells as abilities. So in a way, aside from the mana-less translocations casting, this god is almost more like Yred (gives Necromancy-like abilities) than Kiku or Veh (give spells from their schools).

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, just something to think about. To me, the biggest question is how to handle the abilities. Should they function like normal god abilities that just have very translocations-like behavior (like Yred), or should we find a way to make them function more like translocations spells? And if it's the latter, how? Should they be gifted spells instead of abilities (but then adding piety cost is hard, and wormhole and possibly transfocus seem like they'd be overpowered without a piety cost)? I assume at the very least, they should scale with tloc skill.

On that note, why does tftele get buffed by significant amounts at fixed intervals instead of just having its range/duration scale with piety and/or translocations skill more gradually?

Transfocus Teleportation and Ultimate Controlled Blink seem designed not just to be good, but to be good primarily and specifically in allow the player to skip past the areas of the game that are meant to be the most dangerous milestone areas. Maybe I'm underestimating the ability of corruption and rain to do the same thing, but to my mind this seems like the wrong direction to push players.

I would be disappointed if a god got added that was effectively mandatory for speed runs, and it seems like that's the niche this is attempting to fill in the OP. I do think this is an interesting proposal, and I also think there's a lot of open design space in translocations that I'd like to see get explored, but I think the god would be more interesting if more of the abilities were tactically relevant throughout the game, like the blink close ray.

I think you're underestimating the versatility of Transfocus Teleportation. You seem to be treating it as sort of a riskier but longer-range apportation that lets you ninja runes, the orb, and vaults, but I think it's got a lot of cool uses aside from that. You can use it to scout out dangerous areas, open doors from range without disintegrating them (allowing you to reclose them immediately if necessary), scout out dangerous areas, escape some enemies (activate it, run for a while and get them to follow, then warp back to where you started and run the other way), or engage enemies with a built in escape route (activate, run up to an enemy, attack them for a bit, then teleport 10 squares away), or kit an enemy (similar to the last two, you can either activate, run into range of an enemy, shoot them until they get to you, then activate again for more distance, or just shoot an enemy until they get to you, activate, run for a bit, then activate again to get some distance). It's like a delayed cBlink where you determine the location on cast and it automatically triggers after a certain amount of time.

Honestly, it seems incredibly powerful to me in general, not just for stealing the orb, runes, and other vault goodies, but that can be balanced by piety cost. Personally, I think it's a really cool ability.

[dpeg]

First off, I think that a Translocations god can work because positioning (player and monsters) is really important.

That said, I've come to the conclusion that the god works better if not primarily addressed at users of translocational spells: those already have the spatial tools, and might rather look for other techniques. In other words, as far as Translocations go, I think the Yredelmnul approach is better than the Kikubaaqudgha approach.

[bcadren]

In some ways Lucy already fills this role [old banishment spell, semi-free blinking, Abyss yourself as ultimate escape; etc.]
In some ways Cheibriados does (ironically) [Step from time and Temporal Distortion de facto are for positioning reasons]
Yred and Beogh both offer Recall.
Jiyva technically can give cBlink (mutation); but rarely. Same with Nemelex (Helix Card). And Xom (but a lot of good muts from him, HAH).

---

That said...from a flavour perspective I'd been contemplating 'what if Makhleb was a giant being that took up a whole floor in Pandemonium and IS what the Eldritch tentacles are?'
But, since it's not canon that Makhleb is that...why not make this god like that? A giant Eldritch anomaly that has control over space and time; sticking his tentacles into everything.

In terms of powers we need to avoid overlap with the others (no recall, banishment or Temporal abilties) and to a lesser extent the Tloc school.

Concrete Ideas:
Offers cTele intrinsic as a passive. [This was changed to a passive to an (e)voke in the rings because it was thought too powerful for a ring; but for a god?]
Eldritch tentacles?
cBlink is the best tloc spell so copying that one is a spell is probably best.
Teleport other -like- effects would overlap too much with Banishment (and to a lesser extent Zin's prison)
Something I'd thought about as a fixedArt before might fit (giving either autoapportation or adding returning to weapons)...or some kind of portal projectile as a brand. (As many gods that brand weapons...none of them do great work with ranged ones).

[and into]

I think "Yred more than Kiku" is right, but I really like the idea of turning off your MP in order to (substantially) boost HP regen, and letting you cast tloc spells even if you don't have the MP to do so (at cost of piety) would fit with that, I think. And that would fall more into "not discouraging characters with tloc spells" rather than "primarily appealing to characters with tloc spells." The Tloc miscast protection should probably go, however, as it falls much more squarely into the second category.

[MiraclePrism]

The name "Welhas" sounds too much like Fedhas to me, so I took a stab at inventing some other W names. (warning: might be bad, i'm honestly not sure)

Wagyantsu
Wroxsent
Washorn
Whintavias
Wymbelteras

[twelwe]

First off, I think that a Translocations god can work because positioning (player and monsters) is really important.

That said, I've come to the conclusion that the god works better if not primarily addressed at users of translocational spells: those already have the spatial tools, and might rather look for other techniques. In other words, as far as Translocations go, I think the Yredelmnul approach is better than the Kikubaaqudgha approach.

what do you think of Siphon Power?

[Quazifuji]

That said, I've come to the conclusion that the god works better if not primarily addressed at users of translocational spells: those already have the spatial tools, and might rather look for other techniques. In other words, as far as Translocations go, I think the Yredelmnul approach is better than the Kikubaaqudgha approach.

Well, one thing I think the proposals have successfully done so far is differentiate themselves from existing translocation spells well, so that they're not necessarily redundant for someone who already has translocations skill. Blink Other Close isn't something translocations really has (most of its enemy-targeted spells are more about getting enemies away), transfocus teleportaion is pretty unique, and wormhole serves as an even more powerful repositioning tool than controlled blink, which is currently the translocation school's ultimate reposition spell).

I always always find Yred a bit odd since he overlaps so much with Necromancy. I'm not sure if I personally like the way that works, and I'm not sure if I'd want another god like that.

But it does bring up the question: if these proposed abilities work as translocation abilities that fit new niches, why not just make them new translocation spells instead of god powers? One of the biggest draws of Yred over Kiku is that Yred doesn't require training spellcasting or Necromancy so he's good for a character who wants undead minions but doesn't want to invest much experience in spells, but if this god is the god of translocations, rather than the god of translocation-like-abilities, then it doesn't serve the same purpose.

The only thing I can think of is that wormhole and transfocus teleportation may be too powerful to function as normal spells and would need a piety cost attached to them to be balanceable.

[Patashu]

The only thing I can think of is that wormhole and transfocus teleportation may be too powerful to function as normal spells and would need a piety cost attached to them to be balanceable.

This is the big thing, yeah - you can put things that are Too Powerful to be spells on gods, where you can attach other costs besides mana (which is an arbitrarily replenishible resource that doesn't require doing anything). Imagine Lugonu Corrupt as a spell for example.

[khalil]

I always always find Yred a bit odd since he overlaps so much with Necromancy. I'm not sure if I personally like the way that works, and I'm not sure if I'd want another god like that.

The idea is to give melee chars spells without them having to learn magic. The same goes for Malkeb, who gives summoning and conj.

[dpeg]

twelve: Siphon Power (player and monsters in LOS lose all mana; players gains ctele) is a neat idea. There are two issues: this is a power to use easily when you already spent all MP. In other words, if this is a god ability, players are encouraged to cast all the way, then teleport (if situation is not safe) and then Siphon.
The other issue is that monsters have no MP. This could be emulated, of course: they don't cast anything for 3+d3 turns or so. On the other hand, this effect alone is a cool idea: something of a short-term silence.

I always thought that cTele should come with a longer duration until teleport kicks in: you'd be trading greater safety in the destination with higher risk at your starting place. Alone, this is not very interesting: it would just make players use teleportation earlier (i.e. be more conservatively in risk assessment) in dire situations. However, this could well work with your proposal: assuming you have a use for MP, then early safety teleportation + Siphoned cTele wouldn't work! I like that.

[Kate]

I always thought that cTele should come with a longer duration until teleport kicks in: you'd be trading greater safety in the destination with higher risk at your starting place.

That's how cTele does work currently (but cTele generally is quite possibly still worth removing, obviously some hypothetical god could still use controlled translocations in some limited/better form).

Wormhole sounds like this old Cheibriados ability proposal. There was never much interest in replacing current Step from Time with it, functionally it's pretty similar to a controlled blink. Seems like it would be possible to manually apply the patch with a bit of effort if anyone wants to see how it would play, anyway.

[twelwe]

twelve: Siphon Power (player and monsters in LOS lose all mana; players gains ctele) is a neat idea. There are two issues: this is a power to use easily when you already spent all MP. In other words, if this is a god ability, players are encouraged to cast all the way, then teleport (if situation is not safe) and then Siphon.

Siphon Power can be assigned a base mana cost (like Ultimate Controlled Blink)

The other issue is that monsters have no MP. This could be emulated, of course: they don't cast anything for 3+d3 turns or so. On the other hand, this effect alone is a cool idea: something of a short-term silence.

Great,someone start coding it

I always thought that cTele should come with a longer duration until teleport kicks in: you'd be trading greater safety in the destination with higher risk at your starting place. Alone, this is not very interesting: it would just make players use teleportation earlier (i.e. be more conservatively in risk assessment) in dire situations. However, this could well work with your proposal: assuming you have a use for MP, then early safety teleportation + Siphoned cTele wouldn't work! I like that.

Sorry but I've read the last part of this a few times and I don't understand what you mean by that combo not working.

[headcrab0803]

I always thought that a spell version of portral projectile would be really fun for zappers so you can smite attack your enemies with lcs or something like that.
will this ability work with the transloc god?

[twelwe]

WHITNEY TLOC GOD 2.0 or 0.1

------ Player gains a new resource (appearing as a {--- --* -** ***} bar below the Mana display) called Translocation Energy that remains as long as the player is a worshiper of Whitney. Translocation Energy is gained whenever a player kills a monster while at 0 mana. Player may activate an ability Translocational Focus to stay at zero mana. Ending Translocational Focus does not deplete Translocation Energy. While under the effects of Translocational Focus the player gains one health point per point of Translocation Energy whenever mana would have been gained (this includes Potions of Magic).

*----- Player gains activated ability Transpose Beam. Beam targeted blink other close. Costs piety + 1 Translocation Energy. Interrupts any ongoing spells (tornado, aura of abjuration, searing ray etc). Beam penetrates.

**---- While under the effects of Translocational Focus the player gains two health points per point of Translocation Energy whenever mana would have been gained.

***--- Player gains activated ability Siphon Power. Player loses all mana and gains 1 Translocation Energy per third of mana total remaining in mana reservoir. All enemies in LOS are "unable to cast" (ultimate effect to be determined)

****-- Player gains activated ability Transfocus Teleportation. Costs piety + 3 Translocation Energy. Player gains buff tftele and places a mark on the ground. The player returns to that space after 20 turns. May be activated sooner. Unaffected by -ctele. While under the effects of Translocational Focus the player gains three health points per point of Translocation Energy whenever mana would have been gained.

*****- tftele buff lasts 25 turns.

****** Player gains activated ability Reverse Destiny. Player may reverse one turn of action (affects every aspect of the game during one whole turn i.e. reverses damage status effects, player/monster position, restoring consumables and reversing their effects, etc) per Translocation Energy. SIgnificant piety cost per turn of Reverse Destiny used, such that a consecutive Reverse Destiny would not be possible. May cancel effect early to reverse 1 or 2 turns and a respective amount of Translocation Energy and piety. tftele buff lasts 30 turns.

[Lasty]

I think you're saying Translocation energy would be capped at 3. If not, it probably should be, since the optimal choice under this god would be to accumulate ~100 Translocation energy and heal 300 hp/turn.

I like the idea that the absurd HP regen would come at the price of not having access to other powers, and other powers would burn an interesting resource. I'm not convinced that "killing monsters at 0 mp" or "activating siphon power" would constitute interesting ways to gain Translocation energy, since they both are trivially easy to achieve; the latter can be used w/o penalty by just mashing 5 a few times. Perhaps Translocation energy needs to time-out so you can't just safely charge it up between fights?

[twelwe]

bump

move to cyc please

[Wahaha]

Regarding the 2.0 version's last ability Reverse Destiny, I think you should keep either ultimate blink or wormhole or something else. It's not really a god of time and as mentioned in another recent thread the ability is too hard to program in crawl.

[twelwe]

yeah whole alot needs to be changed since it was posted two years ago so with a little feedback this will be great. also needs to be coded up like right now