The Tavern

Inspired by gnoll thread.
The god gives you a chance (20%-50% depending on piety) to cast a random spell (no mp are spent) from your memorized spells set when you attack with melee weapon or launcher. Similarly it gives you a chance to attack with wielded melee/launcher when you cast a spell. So naturally you are encouraged to have great spells AND melee/ranged.

Just think about all possible fun. Mummy with meph cloud, DD with vampiric draining, hunter with blink... or even quickblade with glaciate...

A close relative of spellforged servitor?

In general I like the idea, I also tried to make such a god some time ago, but it was a mess (Castamour).

Spellforged servitor is limited to conjurations only, also you cannot control frequency via using a different weapon.
The god would be too hard to balance I think but maybe it can be a Xom affect, just imagine how you can have Confuse, Agony or Shadow Creatures on your wielded axe so you try to attack monsters as often as possible.

Random spell casting will also lead to unwelcome effects. I'd rather not have a blink when taking cover behind a flame cloud, or sublimation of blood when low on HP, or invisibility when already glowing. Or are you particularly thinking of destructive spells only? That would be more fun.

You have complete control of which spells to learn so if you learned something bad (like Firestorm), it is your own fault. Remember it is a god you chose to join, not a monster with hostile effect.

Fair enough, but the spells I listed were all utility spells, the spells a hybrid usually relies on. In effect, this god would create a different kind of hybrid.

Yes, this was intended to create unique play style and fun combos

For me a hybrid is not that character who casts spectral weapon, regeneration or song of slaying before attacking in melee. For me a hybrid can kill anything with spells, be it conjurations, summons or discord.

I think there are too many spells that would lead to interface screw/would require weird special casing for this god to work. 'just dont learn the spells' doesn't really excuse the problem.

Even if it worked, it would realistically end up being just another ally god.

That being said, a capstone ability of 'brand weapon with a spell' sounds kind of cool.

If you want to get melee characters to use direct damage spells, you're going to need a more targeted gimmick than this. As amaril says, the obviously best way to use an ability like this is to have it cast summoning spells. You also have to contend with the fact that Nemelex offers very similar mechanics without silly magic system interactions. (Indeed, there'd be a lot to say for a Nemelex rework where Nem just automatically deals cards during combat, like the concept here.)

So, basically, Dithmenos, but shadow mimic gets brands and enchantments, and its spells are random.

It seems to me that some old rod effects can be recycled as weapon brands. Striking brand as perma-infusion (maybe with buffs to make it competitive), ignition brand as a noisy melee crowd control option (could be fun to keep it as a bolt but with the don't-harm-self-or-allies ignition spell mechanics, also a good addition to Firestarter for even more explosions), bolt of inaccuracy/random bolt brand as a swingy but strong damage increase (to contrast with things like vorpal that are more consistent), rod of swarm as an infestation brand that is found rarely but sometimes spawns hornets from dead enemies.

It would be more interesting that many of the existing brands (which includes gems like "more damage", "more damage but not against rF and does some extremely funky things with hydras" and "more damage but not against rC and does some extremely funky things with hydras") anyway.

I think this would be better rolled into Vehumet. Give melee attacks under Vehumet an X% chance of channeling one of your appropriate destructive spells (so no summons etc).

I feel like this would be cast 1-2 spells with a qblade at 0mp cost god.

You could just multiply the chance by your attack delay to prevent that.