Merge Ash and Chei

[TeshiAlair]

I very much enjoy both gods, but Ash is fiddly and a blocker for curse reform, and Chei is considered by many to be pretty bad. Both are focused around passive empowering, and I think thematically it could work quite well.

The TL:DR is that a lot of Ash's passives are merged into Chei, and he increases time taken to swap items in addition to the movement delay, thus preserving that aspect of Ash.

Proposed merger:

Cheibriados is a god of deliberation. Those following Cheibriados travel more slowly the further they progress in their faith, and are forbidden from using any means to hasten themselves. In the process of so imitating their god, they attain perfection of mind and body, and the mysteries of time and space unfold before them. Especially devout followers may even momentarily abandon the flow of time and its needless disturbances.

Followers of Cheibriados move more slowly as they gain favour, and are rewarded for killing creatures who are faster than they are. Moving too quickly or using magically hastened weapons is frowned upon. Cheibriados rewards the faithful with a slowed metabolism, the power to slow other creatures, increased perception, the power to distort the flow of time, the power to harm those who move more quickly than they do, and, finally, the ability to step out of the flow of time entirely.

Cheibriados likes it when you kill fast things, relative to your speed.

Cheibriados strongly dislikes it when you hasten yourself or others or use unnaturally quick items.

Piety Level -: "Sluggish Foo"

Raises the support of your attributes and skills: Cheibriados increases your Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence and skill levels as your piety increases. Each increase comes with an incremental decrease in your movement speed and time to swap items. Further increases occur at higher ranks of piety. At maximum piety you receive +10 to all stats, and a boost of piety rank - skill_level / 4 to all skills, and your movement delay is doubled.
Bend Time: Slows everything adjacent to you. Monsters resist based on their HD rather than their Magic resistance, which means that it can affect magic immune enemies. (Costs 3 MP, 50-100 Food, and 1-2 Piety)

Piety Level *: "Deliberate"

Slows and strengthens your metabolism: All actions have their satiation costs reduced to 75% normal. Also, the duration of sickness is cut in half, as is the rate at which poison damages you. This effectively doubles the duration of poison, but makes it much more survivable, especially in severe cases.

Piety Level **: "Unhurried"

No new Abilities.

Piety Level ***: "Contemplative"
Enhanced Mind: See invisible and Clarity. Can sense location of portals.

Temporal Distortion: Moves nearby monsters forward through time, relative to you. In effect, this forces ranged opponents to move adjacent to you, but may also place them one spaces away. (Instant, 4 MP, 200-400 Food, 3-5 Piety)

Piety Level ****: "Epochal"

Can sense the presence of enemies faster than you nearby.

Slouch: Damages everything in LOS (including invisible enemies) that's faster than you (Damage = [Speed Difference] × 4d3 / 2). Only monsters that have detected you take damage from Slouch. (Costs 5 MP, 100-200 Food, and 8-12 Piety) Damage is based on monster movement speed.

Piety Level *****: "Timeless"

Step From Reality: Moves you to nowhere and lets time pass. During that time, monsters wander away and may even go to sleep, and all nearby walls become transparent to you. Monsters that end up in your LOS must perform a fresh check against your stealth to notice you. (Costs 10 MP, 200-400 Food, and 10-15 Piety)

Piety Level ******: "Foo Aeon"

No new abilities.

In addition, Cheibriados does the following:

Dramatically reduces the monster spawn rate and map morphing rate in the Abyss. (Passive)
Prevent the speed bonus from going berserk through the Berserk mutation. (Passive)
Reduces the Orb run monster spawn rate.
Passively identifies items

[Factorialite]

Merge them into one god, then delete it

[Majang]

I would certainly appreciate these boosts to Chei, but I don't really think that he needs them. Chei is a weak god from the perspective of those who can only imagine themselves playing "optimally". There are other players, and they evaluate Chei quite differently.

[TeshiAlair]

I would certainly appreciate these boosts to Chei, but I don't really think that he needs them. Chei is a weak god from the perspective of those who can only imagine themselves playing "optimally". There are other players, and they evaluate Chei quite differently.

He's in a weird place: he's weak for optimal players, and he's weak for players still getting the hang of the basics (when to use consumables vs saving them, positioning, etc). I sure as hell am in the latter category. I did try to include some minor nerfs (+10 to all stats instead of +15, slot swapping delay), but I feel that the buffs work well with smoothing out the highs and lows of playing Chei, and are more interesting than Ash solo.

[njvack]

I don't quite get the transparent walls part of step from reality. It seems like you're trying to preserve scrying, but I don't think you'd use it like scrying -- it's too expensive to use as anything other than an emergency ability, and being able to move while scrying is pretty useful.

[Shtopit]

The problem with Cheib is that it's actually good. Not from a power pov, but from a "I like this game cuz I'm having fun" pov. Cheib:
- Makes resetting impossible
- Makes any action have more important consequences (repositioning becomes a big deal, but you also inflict heavier damage, better spell chances etc)
- Gives you a huge number of options on a strategic level (weapons+spells+stealth), but asks you to carefully choose what you do on a tactical level.
- Is built in such a way that you want the most possible of its disadvantage to have the most possible of its advantages, unlike e.g. Quaz.

...which makes it a symbol of the fact that Crawl's fun is the opposite of optimal.

[TeshiAlair]

I don't quite get the transparent walls part of step from reality. It seems like you're trying to preserve scrying, but I don't think you'd use it like scrying -- it's too expensive to use as anything other than an emergency ability, and being able to move while scrying is pretty useful.

It's a buff to an already strong ability, and a nerf to scrying itself which was one of the best things about Ash. Basically, it's just a tool to give you even more ability to assess a situation prior to continuing.


And yeah, I do really like Chei, which is why I tried to preserve those elements and use Chei as the base for the combined god