Miroesh, The Windborne God

[PowerScr3w]

Miroesh, The Windborne

Purpose: Style of melee combat not restricted to corridors.

Background: Once a powerful follower of Ashenzari eons ago, Miroesh came to resent the binding power of her watchful master. Longing to rid herself of the onerous shackles of body and spirit she was bound with, she conspired to eventually rip herself free. This came at a great cost, leaving much of her former body and soul bound under her former idol. Having shed her mortal body and much of her soul, she is now a dancing whisper in the wind, constantly moving in a vain attempt to evade Ashenzari's watchful eye. More a spirit than a god, she has been known to follow and assist those who seek freedom.

Appreciates:
reading decurse scrolls (doesn't have to actually decurse anything in order to avoid boring piety farming- "Miroesh glows as you feel an essence being freed")
killing creatures that curse- "Miroesh appreciates the release of a binding creature"
killing creatures that summon- "Miroesh gleefully watches a soul that would enslave others depart its body"
killing Pikel especially- she hates that guy "Miroesh says "good, he was a godamn jerk" as Pikel's body slumps to the ground"

Depreciates:
enslavement, summoning, hexes, charms- they remind her of her spiritual bondage.
Heavy Armor/Armor Skill/Shields- Heavy armor reminds her of her shackles.
Exploring while cursed- it makes her antsy.
Also if you switch to Ash she gets like super duper mad. Like weirdly mad. She is super weird about it, I dunno.

The Juicy Stuff
*-Miroesh joins you on the wind. EV*1.5 and MR+ for a turn when you move, but AC is halved. passive

**Miroesh guides your arm-You attack a random nearby monster as you move next to them. Biased toward monsters you started next to.weapon speed must be faster than move speed(Your weapon feels too cumbersome to swing as you move). Can attack mutiple times if it will fit. Can only hit monsters if you end next to them. passive

***-Miroesh guides your body- empowers you with the agility to dance past an enemy(to the tile past them). passive

****-Miroesh guides your eyes-(cost- low draining, exh)- Strike at weak points, ignoring 1/2 of enemy AC for a few turns.

*****-Strengthening Wind-Your movement now adds +rF +rC +rElec +rCorr

******-Taken by the Wind(cost- high draining, exh) You become as the wind, your attacks hit all enemies you move next to, and by moving you become able to avoid any danger(50% dodge on everything including torment before regular EV checks) for some turns.


Summary: The point of Miroesh is to add a new style of melee combat, dodging around in and between enemies, with fast weapons and high EV. Later on using Taken by the Wind to decimate large groups and then mop up stronger creatures with the Eye guiding thing. The main point is that there is movement strategy rather than just tabbing. There are tools for gap closing and escape to assist in dealing with late game threats in normally strategically unsavory ways. Ideally it would be used as an incentive to fight dancing around in open areas with short blades, but I'm sure there are some other uses there. Let me know what you think.

[Sandman25]

I considered similar abilities when thinking about my tactics god but thought that it would not be accepted because it breaks Tab functionality. Most players/devs are lazy to use arrow keys, unfortunately. All they care is if they would be able to win in 2 hours as before. (mostly joking in last sentence)

[adozu]

you mean if i move around random tiles during a fight because lag/repeated keypresses/clumsyness i actually get to play optimally? this is an awesome idea.

call her fu k'tab btw.

[tasonir]

killing Pikel especially- she hates that guy "Miroesh says "good, he was a godamn jerk" as Pikel's body slumps to the ground"

It's not often that I actually laugh when reading god proposals. Well done. Add Kirke to this list too, by the way.

I really like the idea of automatically attacking things that you move next to (as many times as your attack speed fits into your movement speed). It would be suprisingly powerful though, and should be more of the ultimate power than an early one. Being able to hit all creatures you end up next to is likely far too strong.

Nagas of this god could hit x2 with 2h weapons, after all. A fair amount of creatures would just die the turn you stepped near them, without fighting back. This is real power. Would be interesting from a speedrun perspective too, since you save all those actions.

I disagree that this breaks tab - tab still works exactly the same as it used to. It may no longer be optimal - but tab is never optimal, tab is about doing a "good enough" action because you're too lazy to pick the best one. You can still do that. If you want to be precise, be precise. If this makes miroesh unpopular, that's fine by me.

[tedric]

tab is never optimal

wut

[treerex5]

Tabstorm will kill us all.






whathaveyoudonemeleenagaguy

[Kismet]

this is cool, I would like to try it. plz code it

[PowerScr3w]

Nagas of this god could hit x2 with 2h weapons, after all. A fair amount of creatures would just die the turn you stepped near them, without fighting back. This is real power. Would be interesting from a speedrun perspective too, since you save all those actions.

Ha, I didn't even think about using a slow fat race for EV god. Come to think of it, axes totally break it as well, so cleave and reach would need to not work with that power. I do like the idea of a super nimble naga slowly cartwheeling around slicing everything in sight up with a min delay executioner axe though .

Perhaps altering the power so that you must start and end next to them in order to attack, so they get a free swing and you absolutely need to be outside of a corridor. It still gets rid of the annoying wait for them to come to you . press either way.

And yes the final power is very strong, but I feel it would need to be to make anyone want to dance around a group of end game enemies without much AC. She is sort of supposed to be the god of non-optimal play, and without something that strong i don't see her followers being able to do Pan Lords or Crypt at all, without just learning magic and blasting them. Part of why I made charms deprecated was so you couldn't just haste or swiftness kite, the idea is that softening up group with offensive spells is ok but you should have to finish them in melee, and that you are trading faster actions with haste with merging movement/attack instead. Also note that you lose all resistances and EV buff (and the massive dodge buff from final power if it is active) if you stand still to cast spells.

I will think more on how to balance move and attack speed.

Thanks for you guys' feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to read my silly ideas.

[Siegurt]

Also I feel like she aught to do something for conjurers, maybe like gift them air spells or something.

[Lasty]

I think this is an interesting proposal that's worth trying out and refining. I particularly like the idea that the god's benefits happen on the move action, because it's relatively simple, but it also is an unexplored and transformative design space. I also like that generally standing and fighting does more damage over time than move-attacking, since you're guaranteed to get full attacks/aut, but move-attacking gives a different set of bonuses and incentives, and opens up additional tactical options.

A few pieces of specific feedback:

• Gaining piety w/ Miroesh will be awkward as written -- very little in the early game will allow you to gain piety at all, since there are few summoners and you don't yet have a stockpile of ?rc. Will piety decay over time? How is the piety condition around heavy armour/shields expressed?
• I'm not sure that specifically losing piety for heavy armour is necessary, given that the god's basic mechanics already heavily discourage it.
• I don't think banning shields is particularly necessary, unless you see it as key to the flavor of the god.
• Penalizing exploring while cursed is pretty painful, given that the god already incentivizes you to burn ?rc. It seems like this will 1) make ?rc management into a tense minigame (intentional?) and 2) really encourage kiting mummies and the like. What's the intention behind this piety condition?
• Move-attacks should probably ignore polearm and axe special attacks.
• How would you implement the interface for "guides your body" as a passive? I think this needs to be an active.
• Why don't "guides your eyes" and "taken by the wind" cost piety instead of (or in addition to) draining?

[Berder]

It's an interesting concept. I have the following thoughts:

• Movement ought to grant flight, at some piety level, for flavor. Or have it be an ability
• For flavor, movement speed ought to be increased, or have that be an ability
• The god seems a bit weak. Not being able to hold a chokepoint while gaining the benefits of this god is a big penalty when you're fighting against a group, especially if you can't have much AC. I think move-attack should have cleaving passively, or else it wouldn't measure up to using a chokepoint.
• For convenience, there should be some option to enable tabbing while fighting in this style. For example, an ability that turns on leaf-mode permanently, which can also be turned off at will. When leaf-mode is active, pressing tab moves you to the nearest square adjacent to an enemy other than your current square, breaking ties by moving to the square adjacent to the fewest number of enemies.
• How would "Miroesh guides your body- empowers you with the agility to dance past an enemy(to the tile past them). passive" work from an interface perspective? Do you just walk into the enemy and instead of attacking them, you end up on the other side of them?
• Miroesh should also deprecate Statue Form, throwing nets, and needles of sleep/paralysis.

[Pollen_Golem]

Penalizing exploring while cursed is pretty painful, given that the god already incentivizes you to burn ?rc. It seems like this will 1) make ?rc management into a tense minigame (intentional?) and 2) really encourage kiting mummies and the like. What's the intention behind this piety condition?

Better for her to de-curse items at a small cost, or automatically at high piety. And yet ?rc is quite common- what if you make it ammo, like Fedhas's fruit?

Yeah, kiting is easier with this god than with spriggans. Move+attack in one turn is too much by itself; if it only works while you're confused like Ambrosia, that might be OK - you take a confused move and Miroesh guides your hand to attack, like tab. See Waffak the god of confusion for details. Miroesh has a history with indecisiveness it seems, so it makes some sense.

With pikel, specifically deprecate killing the slaves. Or maybe, have her track for you all slaves outside your LOS.
You can expand piety gain to the killing of any creature bound to anything - religion, a collective, integrity, personal attachments. Aren't orc priests 'binding creatures' in a sense? Miroesh the individualist.
You could make her like sacrifices of shields/armor, piety proportional to encumberance rating. She may do it without your consent.
BTW you sound like a DoomRL player. See some DoomRL traits - gunrunner, blademaster. But DoomRL's basic system is vastly different. It won't translate to Crawl.

[and into]

If there is a concern that move-attacking becomes so good that tab will very rarely be used (which, in turn, might not be great for interface), one option is to make some of the stronger effects only occur on movement if you have some ability active ("spirit of the wind" or whatever you want to call it) that slowly drains piety. — You could even make turning on/off the ability instantaneous, and that seems like it would fit the flavor quite well. This would prevent you from simply keeping the move-attack thing going constantly, and might also make the god easier to balance.

[WingedEspeon]

I like the Idea of using ?rc as ammo. Personally I think worshipping this god should autocratically uncures everything that you ever weild/wear at no peity cost, for flavor. there are so many rc scrolls curses don't factor in past early game anyway.

EDIT: how will this god interact with polearms? If you hit everything within melee range after moving, MfGl just got a lot stronger than MiBe. If not, polearms just became pointless.