Xom's chesspieces (warning: whining inside)

[Sar]

So, at some point recently these things were added:

  Code:

Pieces from Xom's Chessboard.

Create an item that when evoked has Xom Rearrange the Pieces,
with a check against evocations skill to instead just draw a bad
Xom action. Followers of Xom are immune from this check. The effect
is sufficiently double-edged that, with the added chance of a bad
Xom action, spamming this item to confuse everything in sight will
probably get the player killed instead. The severity of the bad
Xom action might need a minimum higher than zero.

As a further protection against spamming it's got a small chance
of disappearing (being taken back by Xom).

Acquires at the same weight as Box of beasts. Has a chance to be
given to a wanderer on game start.

And then, of course, this happened:

  Code:

Remove worship/penance interactions from Xom chess pieces

Behaving differently depending on whether you worship Xom or are in penance
might be good flavour but isn't a good gameplay mechanic.

My question is: why? How is having a special interaction for Xom worshippers with things named for Xom and invoking a Xom-themed action "bad gameplay"? What, it would force people to drop their gods and pick Xom when they find one of these? Does it make probably-not-worse-than-atheism-but-worse-than-almost-any-other-gods god too good? Does it make those too bad for non-Xom worshippers (maybe they should be buffed then, not nerfed)? The commit reason almost reads like "this might be good flavour, so let's delete it before people get stupid ideas that things like flavour matter".

[WingedEspeon]

Does it make probably-not-worse-than-atheism-but-worse-than-almost-any-other-gods god

You are overrating Xom/underrating atheism.

[Sar]

I'm just repeating what some good player said, I don't really rate gods or species anymore.

[dynast]

I think the bad Xom action is what makes this item fun.

[duvessa]

I don't understand what the intended purpose of the item is in the first place.

[ebering]

To be honest when I wrote that patch it was all about flavour (well varietal, if we're going to mince hairs).

[bcadren]

Xom's Chesspiece is a really powerful item. It's less powerful than ?Blink, but somewhat similar in use cases while being essentially limitless in evoke times.

[ydeve]

Can someone explain what the item does? I don't understand what it means for Xom to "rearrange the pieces."

[ontoclasm]

Some creatures in LoS (including you) swap positions at random. So if you can see an orc priest and a killer bee, maybe you swap positions with the orc priest and the bee doesn't go anywhere. Then maybe some of those creatures (again, possibly including you) get confused for a while. I'm not sure exactly how it changes as power increases but I think you get longer confusion times and maybe more swapping.

[le_nerd]

Indeed, its super powerful spammable no-MR confuse right now.