Vampiric God

[bcadren]

Rough Idea. Deep Dwarves and Vampires are two of the most complained about races for different reasons. This proposal is basically 'destroy those races and create a god from their gimmicks,' which hopefully is more reasonable than either of the original races. It does eliminate the abusive combos of current deep dwarves, while keeping around their gimmicks.

{Name} the God of Vampires

Piety:

• Piety is gained with Experience.
• Piety cannot be lowered by any means.
• Faith has no effect on this god.

Cost of Worship:

• !Curing and !Heal Wounds healing are lowered by Piety/4% [Halved at max piety.]
• Slow Healing:
  • * : I
  • *** - II
  • **** - III
• At **** you become Vulnerable to Dispel Undead and Holy Wrath and can no longer wield Holy Wrath.
• From **** and higher you can no longer cast the following spells: Regeneration, Necromutation, Death's Door, Borgjnor's Revivification.
• HP Decay - At **** and higher, you lose 1 HP every 250 turns.

Passives:

• Damage Shaving - All damage reduced by 1d(2 + (1d(1 + experience level / 3)*(Piety Level/200) - 1)).
• Hunger Rate -(Piety/1.75)%
• Vampiric Fangs:
  • * - I
  • ** - II
  • **** - III
• Undead Resistances:
  • * : rN+, rPois
  • *** : rN++, rC+, rRot
  • ***** : rN +++, rPois+
  • ****** : rTorm, rC++
• Vampiric Boost - Vampiric Weapons drain HP on every hit.

Active:

• ** - Bat Form - (Free) - You turn into a vampire bat.
• **** - Dark Ritual - (Experience) - You may sacrifice some of your experience (you lose a level and some skill experience permanently) in order to fully heal yourself. You may not use the skill again until all experience used is regained.
• ****** - Brand Weapon - You may once pray at an altar to brand a weapon Vampiric.

Notes:

• Mutation still works as normal.
• Transmutation forms may be used for their resistances and UC boosts; but do not give bonus HP.
• As the game counts you as undead while worshiping, you cannot switch directly to a good god (not that wrath is a good idea).

Wrath:
For one experience level, you keep Slow Healing III, but not Damage Shaving; Vampiric Weapons will not work for you during this time.

Now that I drafted it. I think it's reasonable that it would be less fidgety and better to play than current DD or Bloodless Vp, since it offers enough benefits to keep you alive; but I'm unsure if it's remotely likely to be accepted, due to the popularity of Deep Dwarves.

[dowan]

[*****.] Device Recharging - (Drain) - You expend some of your own experience to recharge a device.

That's absurd! Either the drain has to be so high as to be crippling, which means it'd be a bad idea to use this, or you've effectively given them infinite charges with wands. Deep dwarves have to give up a permanent resource to recharge devices, drain isn't permanent.

The rest of the proposal is interesting, although I highly doubt the devs would go for it.

[archaeo]

I'd be in favor of finding a way to turn Vampire: The Species into Vampire: The God. That seems like a fine idea, if people really want to preserve the Vp mechanics.

[Bart]

•Damage Shaving - All damage reduced by 1d(2 + (1d(1 + experience level / 3)*(200/Piety Level) - 1)).

You might want (Piety level /200), unless it's a god of segmentation fault at 0 piety.

•Your Regeneration Rate (all sources, not just natural) is reduced -(Piety/1.6)%

No regeneration above 160 piety? God no, it's the same issue as with DD, but you even cannot take makhleb anymore.

Full torment protection + dragon form + borg / ddoor sounds like a bug.

Other than that, it would be good to see Deep Dwarves and Vampires go.

[savageorange]

For one experience level, you keep Slow Healing III, but not Damage Shaving

This needs more definition: What does 'one experience level' mean if you are at XL27?

[bcadren]

For one experience level, you keep Slow Healing III, but not Damage Shaving

This needs more definition: What does 'one experience level' mean if you are at XL27?

Ashenzari's Wrath works like this. At XL27 it's the equivalent amount of XP as quaffing two !experiences (but I think it excludes sources like that).

[Lasty]

I didn't think I was going to like this proposal, but it's growing on me. The DD/Vp attributes go together pretty well to make a complete and less-fiddly package; of course, it'd also be one of the strongest gods thanks to the guaranteed super-charged vampiric weapon. That said, I'd recommend the following changes:

* Make mutations and transmutations consistent with other undead.
* Remove the device charging ability -- it's out of place here and unnecessary.
* Drain stab feels pretty arbitrary, and should probably be removed.

I don't think I'd be able to convince any other devs that removing Vp/DD is a good idea tho, so it's probably not going to happen.

[bel]

I somehow like this as well. At full piety you become a bloodless vampire + DD. Also, you get a great vampiric weapon. Might be a bit overpowered.

[archaeo]

I don't think I'd be able to convince any other devs that removing Vp/DD is a good idea tho, so it's probably not going to happen.

I was under the impression that Vp, at least, has never been well-loved by the devs in its current incarnation.

[tasonir]

The game continues to define experience levels past 27 for various obscure purposes, like felid life gaining. Using that here is fine. Agree that device recharging for only drain is too strong, and you may not need it at all. I'm not sure there's any difference between what you call rPois and rPois+, there's only poison resistance and immunity for players, don't know if you intended to give immunity.

rTorment is 50% or immunity?

There are no active abilities that cost mana - is there piety decay? If not, it would be fairly simple to ensure you stay at 200 piety, keeping the various things like hunger rate at 0 always. That does mean you've removed the hunger and piety clocks entirely, though.

Brand weapon comes as you're completely unable to regenerate (it would be really, really slow before this though), maybe move this up to 5* so the player can get the replacement healing method just before going full DD?

I'm not sure how much support this would have - but I'd love to see this god make vampiric weapons work on non-living targets, giving you vampiric effects in extended. This is already possible through TSO, Makhleb, and black mark, so I don't think it would be overpowered. You could have it heal for half if you want, I just want some healing

[rockygargoyle]

Black Mark doesn't have the vampiric effect anymore.

[WingedEspeon]

Can we not remove vampires please? They are fun.

[Hirsch I]

would this god manage into trunk without removing DD and Vp?

[and into]

I like it, and I do think most of the DD and vampire attributes would work way better if retooled as a god. I agree with some up-thread posters that device recharging seems out of place.

One idea: The god would be more widely applicable, and also differentiated from the vampiric brand, if instead of branding a weapon he gave you HP passively whenever any enemies in LOS are damaged. You passively steal the life-force and feed off of the suffering of those around you, to a degree that scales up with piety. Instead of device recharging and hoping for a wand of HW, I'd just go with an ability that could let you get out of a situation where you are low in life, but no easy enemies are around to get you back on your feet, like so:

Dark Ritual. Sacrifice a character level in order to restore a large amount of your HP and MP. Give it a cool-down linked to experience gain. (Roughly, you have to gain back the level you sacrifice, plus somewhere around 50 to 75% toward next level, before you can use it again).

A few things can also perhaps be simplified or stream-lined... I'd say just make all HP gain via items less effective by half, from the start, for example.


So, putting it all together, and trying to simplify things a bit:

You gain piety as you gain experience, and cannot lose piety. Faith has no effect.

Upon joining, all HP gain via items is cut in half. You cannot use weapons of holy wrath (no loss of piety upon use—you just cannot use them).

*----- You steal energy from living creatures in your LOS that lose life (scales up with piety). rN+, Fangs I.
**---- Damage shaving (scales up with piety). Bat form ability. rN++, rPois, Fangs II.
***--- You cease regeneration, and require no food. Dark ritual ability. rN+++, rPois, Fangs III.
****-- Undead vulnerabilities. Poison + rot immunity, rN+++, rC+, rTorment, no berserk. (Not sure whether to allow mutations and forms....)
*****- You can sustain yourself from the suffering of all things, not just living creatures.
****** No new abilities, but damage shaving and passive life-drain both max out.

Slow HP regeneration does weaken a character, but it also adds a lot of annoyance. Best to have HP regen stop in one fell swoop, I think, and it makes sense to get the Dark Ritual ability at the same time. Around *** seems right, IMO, as at that point in your piety, you also have bat form and your passive life draining and damage shaving will be reasonably powerful.

I do worry a bit that you might want to delay hitting three stars of piety, though there would be limits on exactly how long you could put that off...

[Blobbo]

It's like the opposite of TSO for extended, I like it.

[Pollen_Golem]

Great proposal, although after reading the thread title, I thought this was going to be a god who only accepts vampires, a la Beogh.

I think the basic mechanic of Crawl - passive HP regeneration - is really silly. It's a shame that only one race is fully exempt from it, and it's a race with skewed aptitudes and a strange mapping ability.

If drain is an absurd cost for device recharging, it can be changed to losing one permanent MP, basically granting an innate deep dwarf ability. By the way, Ru gives HP (and other perks) for draining/exhausting yourself, which is functionally equivalent to bcarden's suggestion.

There's no reason to mess with the hunger clock. Ghouls are undead, but they eat. No reason why you can't have a herbivore vampire IMO. Only lichform and mummy players don't eat.

Kiku makes you choose between the pain brand and the necronomicon. This god could make you choose between the vampiric brand and a wand of heal wounds.

This god could give you temporary regeneration after killing demonic (and/or undead?) enemies with any weapon/spell. (Because of the satisfaction your god gets from it?) That's at least something to differentiate from Makhleb's HP on kills. One of the Demonspawn mutations does something similar.

Why are the undead not allowed to take on forms, anyway? Is it just flavorfully consistent with mutation immunity?

[dowan]

If drain is an absurd cost for device recharging, it can be changed to losing one permanent MP, basically granting an innate deep dwarf ability. By the way, Ru gives HP (and other perks) for draining/exhausting yourself, which is functionally equivalent to bcarden's suggestion.

HP is a tactical resource which regenerates on its own(mostly). So it's fine to have a tactical cost to a resource that regenerates to get it back.

Wand charges are a strategic resource which do not regenerate on their own. So it's not really reasonable to be able to pay a tactical cost of a regenerating resource to refill it.

In the most extreme example of why that is a problem, imagine the character who recharges his wands, getting into deep red drain, then runs around on cleared dungeon floors to slowly get rid of the drain (Especially problematic on a god with no piety decay and no hunger!)

In a less extreme, but still problematic example, one might just recharge all their wands before doing orc, or they might save elf until they want to recharge some wands.

[bcadren]

Edited a bit; notes:

• Because of complaints that lack of any countdown timer would lead to abuse, I added an 'HP decay' with a speed similar to Ashenzari's Piety Decay.
• Wand charging changed to 'Dark Ritual', per and into's suggestion.
• Transmutations work differently than normal; but do work (except necromutation, obviously). They do not provide any bonus HP, but can be used for the UC bonus. (to be inline with Vampire Bat being a form and vampires being good at shapeshifting).
• Mutations I'm undecided on. Working like normal undead is fine by me; the way vampires currently work is they always mutate as normal, but while undead only ones that are physical (IE Claws) actually do anything. Just 'as normal' or 'as an undead' is less fidgety than the inbetweenness.
• Drain Stab is gone. (I copied that from current Vampires, but it is indeed fidgety); making the fangs auxiliary attack Vampiric branded is much more reasonable.
• I do think Vampiric Weapons and a boost to the weapon's vampiricism is more reasonable than 'healing from other's pain' as the latter steps on Makhleb's toes too much (and would be too strong). Having only a few sources of healing (even if one is a great weapon) is much more tactically interesting than constantly healing. Current Vampiric Boost for Vampires is hits with vampiric weapon ALWAYS heal and they heal for the full amount of damage caused (instead of half). I did half that boost in the proposal, but also ignoring rN or similar may be necessary to be well balanced. It is the only -guaranteed, reliable - healing source here.

[Aethrus]

How about including drinking / bottling blood to grant regeneration but supress your vamp powers as well? You'd focus on your draining abilities in fights, and drink blood to heal afterwards?

A zealot vampire background would be amazing.

[Pollen_Golem]

A zealot vampire background would be amazing.

Starts at full piety.

[bcadren]

Well I made a list of stuff needed to actually test this god; though no idea if I (can/want to) write all of it, myself. The List.

[Aethrus]

Well I made a list of stuff needed to actually test this god; though no idea if I (can/want to) write all of it, myself. The List.

A vampiric weapon to start would make this start ridiculously strong. I was thinking maybe a different tactic to go with might be a spellbook.

Pain, Ensorcelled Hibernation, Call Imp, Vampiric Draining, Confuse (?)

EDIT: its missing Wrath. Summon vampires to attack you, drain your health / exp / mana, give enemies vampiric weapons, vampiric weapons / draining of your own fails?