Proposal: Ecumenical Altar

[Igxfl]

The Ecumenical Altar is found in the Ecumenical Temple in addition to the various god altars.

If you worship at this altar, it assigns your character to a random god and gives you a large chunk of starting piety. (gold instead for Gozag, good initial mood instead for Xom)

The piety boost would typically be a huge benefit through the to mid-D and Lair, but would come with the tradeoff of not necessarily matching the character well.
Having to adapt your character to whatever religion you end up with would be a quality strategic challenge, and the game would reward you for taking it.

[scorpionwarrior]

That's a really cool idea. I think it would be more interesting if it only had a chance to show up, like 25 or 33%. How much piety do you think it should give? * piety seems balanced and it wouldn't make Monks feel obsolete that way

[jejorda2]

I like "altar gives you extra piety, but you don't get to pick the deity."

I don't like guaranteeing it in the temple (I don't know if this was the idea) or limiting it to the temple. This thing ought to sometimes be in random altar vaults and in special overflow vaults as well.


Bikeshedding: I don't like the name: Ecumenical means it involves multiple beliefs. This altar involves one belief system, but you don't know which one. An "Unidentiable altar" or "marred altar" or "Indecipherable altar" would be more sensible. Acts 17:23 mentions an "Altar to an unknown God" that Athenians would pledge fealty to just to be sure they weren't offending someone they didn't know of. I guess an Agnostic Altar could work, since Paul called it an Ἄγνωστος Θεός."

[Pereza0]

I agree with the above but I would probably drop the extra piety aspect, and make it spawn rarely, but outside the temple, before it. Early worship is about as good as extra piety and less potentially broken, could work fine for Monk.

[Greyr]

What about removing the monk start entirely? They're kind of an 'ehh' start anyway and the prospect of extra piety for a random god is more interesting imo. The altar would have to spawn late enough so players don't feel cheated out of their ideal god and start over, however. Idunno, just thinking out loud.

[tasonir]

Monk is an absolutely amazing start and how dare you!

[Siegurt]

I like the idea, I would prefer it not grant piety, not be guaranteed, and that it spawn between levels 1 and 3, and monks are certainly not the worst background on the block, and get more starting dex than anything except assassins.

Besides a monk *taking* a random god and getting bonus piety with (whomever it is) sounds like lots of fun to me

(And yes, I'd like it if it was called something else, if for no other reason than the potential for confusion with the ecumenical temple)

[Jarlyk]

How about Altar to Blind Devotion?

I'm in line with Siegurt, non-guaranteed (possibly even uncommon?) and found very early. I'm uncertain on the piety bonus; it does seem like there should be some sort of incentive for taking the gamble and having it be early doesn't really make it stand out from the other random early altars.

What if, instead of piety, it provided a small boost to XP, like a slightly reduced potion of Experience? The trade-off then is that you get a small boost to your skills and an early god, but you're taking a risk as to what god you actually get.

Would it make sense for Jivya to be included in the possibilities? Not sure if that would be good when you're just getting started trying to find your first items. Perhaps just part of the risk?

[Siegurt]

How about if no other altars could generate in D:1-3 (I think early altars a pretty large bonus, generally, and if the *only* type of early altar was this one, it would make it unique and different)

[godzilla]

I coded up a patch. With it, there's a slightly greater than 50% chance that an altar will occur in the first 3 levels of the dungeon that converts you to a random god. If anyone wants me to I'll put the patch it on Mantis.
EDIT: I forgot the tavern doesn't like patches, so I went ahead and put it on mantis