New Race: Mentoble

[Landsknetch]

Just came up with a fascinating race idea, called a Mentoble- which is a portmanteau of Double Mind in Spanish, any better names welcome!..
The Mentoble is a being very similar to humans except in one way: they have two faces. These faces are each capable of individual thought as well. Because of this, Mentoble are very intelligent, and are able to learn things quickly.
The most unique advantage of the Mentoble is their ability to worship two gods at once, though this comes with certain drawbacks- if worshipping two gods at a time, their piety gain for each god will be greatly reduced. Mentoble are also unable to dual worship opposing gods, eg. Vehemut and Trog.
Mentoble also have a small chance of their "lesser half" (as one side of the head is always dominant) recasting a spell (a bit like a battlesphere).
Mentoble may not always be in perfect unity, and may at times shout loudly at each other/themselves.

So, that's my idea. Not sure how balanced it would be, but it's rather unique compared to most races I think

[kroki]

id play a MeBe^trog/makh

[kuniqs]

https://sites.google.com/site/cherrypickedbadideas/

Ettin species: dual wield and worship two gods. AI controls your character every other turn.

[Lasty]

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ng:wont_do

Two-header player species. In particular, no to two-headed playable ogres, double no to wearing two amulets at once and triple no to simultaneous religions.

[XuaXua]

Jesters.

[comebackshane]

Mentoble are also unable to dual worship opposing gods, eg. Vehemut and Trog.

Ashenzari vs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Beogh vs. All good gods

Cheibirados vs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯* *One could argue Trog and Okawaru, as both grant an ability that speeds you up, but it's a bit of a stretch.

Dithmenos vs. Qazlal Stormbringer, Makhleb (burning altar), possibly Vehumet ("Let it end in hellfire!)

Elyvilon vs. All evil gods, Trog

Fedhas Madash vs. Kikubaaqudga, Yredelemnul

Jiyva vs. Zin

Kikubaaqudgha vs. All good gods, Fedhas Madash

Lugonu vs. All good gods, possibly all other gods

Makhleb vs. all good gods

Nemelex Xobeh vs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okawaru vs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Qazlal Stormbringer vs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ru vs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ OR all other gods, depending on how you look at it. Only he/she opposed creation, but doesn't care if you switch to another god.

Sif Muna vs. Trog

The Shining One vs. All evil gods

Trog vs. Sif Muna, Vehumet, Kikubaaqudga

Vehumet vs. Trog

Xom

Yredelemnul vs. All good gods, Fedhas Madash

And the grand price to the god with the most enemies (I write the evil gods out this time) goes to *drumroll* Zin the Lawgiver!

Zin vs. Beogh, Makhleb, Lugonu, Kikubaaqudga, Yrdelemnul, Jiyva, Xom

[njvack]

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:planning:wont_do

Two-header player species. In particular, no to two-headed playable ogres, double no to wearing two amulets at once and triple no to simultaneous religions.

Dual-wielding is on there, too, and we have Gyre and Gimble. Which, of course, gets around the prohibition by only kind of being dual-wielding.

So! I'd suggest that there might be some mechanic that would let you kind of worship two gods (probably from a very limited set of the pantheon) in a very particular way that would kind of work and not be broken. Not that I think it would be interesting enough to actually do, mind you.

[Lasty]

I was pretty surprised that gyre and gimble were added. :stares at wheals: Allowing dual-worship is much, much more complex to implement.

[kuniqs]

Gods in crawl have been designed to have strong, but non-overlapping powers (Makhleb restores your hp, Vehumet your mp; Kikubaaqudgha - necromancy, Yredelemnul necro invocations etc.)

Allowing to combine them would be kinda, broken, I guess.

[and into]

This is not a very fleshed out proposal (yet), and the whole "dual worship" thing as described in OP is probably a non-starter, so I'm moving this to CYC, at least for now.

I don't know how the devs would feel about this, but a species that gets innate abilities that require and use up piety, regardless of god choice (unless you are worshiping Xom, perhaps), which is a pseudo-"dual worship" kind of thing, might be in the realm of possibility.

[duvessa]

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:planning:wont_do

Two-header player species. In particular, no to two-headed playable ogres, double no to wearing two amulets at once and triple no to simultaneous religions.

Dual-wielding is on there, too, and we have Gyre and Gimble. Which, of course, gets around the prohibition by only kind of being dual-wielding.

So! I'd suggest that there might be some mechanic that would let you kind of worship two gods (probably from a very limited set of the pantheon) in a very particular way that would kind of work and not be broken. Not that I think it would be interesting enough to actually do, mind you.

I think the conclusion here should be that adding gyre and gimble and commands for specific allies was fucking insane, not that crawl should add all the other items on the won't do list too.

[nicolae]

I was pretty surprised that gyre and gimble were added. :stares at wheals: Allowing dual-worship is much, much more complex to implement.

I was under the impression that dual-wielding referred to the Nethack-style mix-and-matching of two distinct weapons with their own properties, not a single two-handed weapon that is flavored to still count as a short blade.

[Aean]

Mmm, while I don't know that it's a good idea - especially what with the devs' openly stated opposition to it - a couple thoughts:

1. As stated above, have to find a way to reconcile the whole "believing in multiple gods" thing, as people have mentioned above. Lots of gods are/would be openly hostile to each other. Possibly you could swing this by setting inherent limits, the same way we sort of have with the "Good" gods already, and their piety-sharing. So maybe you get something of a pantheon - all the likes/dislikes shared, piety gain divided by the gods involved. So maybe you get Ely + ZIn + TSO, or Kiku + Yred, etc.? That could get really complicated, though.

2. You'd definitely have to put some powerful limitations in there. This is giving the character the potential for a massive power boost, with only slow piety gain as a drawback. And given that around/after the mid-game, piety is usually pretty overflowing, it wouldn't be a huge drawback. Maybe you'd be limited to abilities at *** or lower? Or you could introduce a more direct counter: let them keep the massive power boost from having more than one god, but, say, cut max skill levels in half (each 'mind' can only absorb so much information).

...maybe more thoughts once I get some coffee.

[Giant Orange Brainbow Dash]

The species loses access to all traditional head-slot armour. Instead, it starts with two heads. You can only wear one head at a time, but faith and piety are tracked separately for each head. Tearing one's head off and replacing it takes as long as swapping armour, thus making it inconvenient to do mid-battle, and hits you with torment-style HP halving, thus making it dangerous. If you leave a head alone for too long, the god it worships gets pissed and hits it with divine wrath, reducing its, er, enchantment level by 1.

While I like this idea for silliness, I somehow doubt it'd ever be optimal to regularly swap between the two heads for more than just the occasional Zin mutation cure or to possibly snag a holy wrath brand from TSO before returning to your wicked fun god ways.

[tasonir]

regularly swap? Probably not. But it would be horrifically abusable to worship Jiyva, get a good mutation set, and then switch to another god, so you could lock in your jiyva set since you're now worshipping another god, without having to abandon jiyva to get malmutated. This might be mitigated by how hard it is to find jiyva quickly, but still. I'm sure there are other combinations that would be nearly as bad - you could raise up a couple of beogh warlords, then switch to another god and keep your allies around, for example.

[Pereza0]

The species loses access to all traditional head-slot armour. Instead, it starts with two heads. You can only wear one head at a time, but faith and piety are tracked separately for each head. Tearing one's head off and replacing it takes as long as swapping armour, thus making it inconvenient to do mid-battle, and hits you with torment-style HP halving, thus making it dangerous. If you leave a head alone for too long, the god it worships gets pissed and hits it with divine wrath, reducing its, er, enchantment level by 1.

While I like this idea for silliness, I somehow doubt it'd ever be optimal to regularly swap between the two heads for more than just the occasional Zin mutation cure or to possibly snag a holy wrath brand from TSO before returning to your wicked fun god ways.

The heads should also fall off and roll around in the way a confused bat would move.

This often happens in the middle of tense situations for comic relief