What gods should exist?

[TeshiAlair]

God proposals are one of the most common it feels like, so I thought it would be useful to discuss what features are things that are lacking from our current pantheon, and what are unnecessary

(inb4 "remove gods")

Current coverage:
Skill buffs
Stat buffs
Conjuration replacements
Permanent allies
Healing
Spell gifts
Weapon/armor gifts
Passive combat abilities
Mobility abilities (RIP old Council)

Current restrictions:
cursed slots
noise
slowness
sacrifices
no corpses
no necromancy
no spells

[Shtopit]

A good thing which you didn't cover is how there is a god that asks for HP instead of MP to use its abilities. I think it makes a lot of difference for characters which use MP for magic. In general, there are 5 activation prices for god abilities I can think of right now: food, MP, HP, piety, and drain.

A theme I once proposed and was well-liked for a god is ignorance, but it's hard to develop it into interesting mechanics.

If I were to state a imho good design goal, it would be to to take a few gods away from allies, simply because there are too many of them. Their implementation is problematic from a control pov, and they drive you insane if you are playing ranged. This is especially true for permanent allies. There's also a lot of overlapping.
A subset would be to have Quaz not destroy the allies he gave you. Turn the elemental force into a bunch of variable HD crystal guardians, which are immune to elements. Or simply give them cloud immunity.

Thing #2 would be to streamline decision processes for the player. The work done on Cheib is great from this pov. Once you had to individually brand your armour pieces by dropping them and praying on them. The brand interfered with weapon egos, I believe. So you had to choose which egos you gave up. Now you just get in the Cheib car, and the car gradually slows, while you become stronger.
In the case of Ash, this was done from an interface pov (you don't need to drop & curse your stuff any more), but not from a decision making pov.

Thing #3 would be to make gods less spammy. I actually am only thinking of jiyva here, she's so spammy, it's terrible. She floods the message area. And remove her random mutation system, because it works bad with inventory management.

Thing #4 is that draconians shouldn't have "surprise conducts" when they mature that take out their colour's advantage. I don't know if TSO was like that with poison, but Dithmenos is like that with red draconians.

[Shard1697]

Thing #4 is that draconians shouldn't have "surprise conducts" when they mature that take out their colour's advantage. I don't know if TSO was like that with poison, but Dithmenos is like that with red draconians.

I was going to mention this as one of the restrictions, because it's by far the worst and I will complain about it anytime I get an opportunity. a mess from a flavor perspective and completely aimless as a gameplay restriction

[yesno]

lugonu
zin
makh
dith
sif
kiku
trog
oka
xom

[moocowmoocow]

Randomized god... god that is okay with polyamortheist relationships.

[duvessa]

sif muna should exist and she should be my girlfriend

[TeshiAlair]

Qaz destroying his allies is literally one of the most stupid things in this entire game.

[crawlnoob]

Gods should exist which serve to alter existing game mechanics in an interesting fashion.
Game mechanics should not exist in order to support a pre-existing god.

Good bye, ash.

[Siegurt]

Gods should exist which serve to alter existing game mechanics in an interesting fashion.
Game mechanics should not exist in order to support a pre-existing god.

Good bye, ash.

Note that ash was created to alter and enhance the existing curse mechanic at the time, so by your logic ash should exist.

(I am not sure "which came first" is really the best way to evaluate the current state)

[mattlistener]

To the list of restrictions, add
no mutation
no fire
no poison/stabbing
reduced health
buffet of restriction choices (Ru)

To the list of ability cost types, add Breath (Zin).

[Siegurt]

To the list of restrictions, add
no mutation
no fire
no poison/stabbing
reduced health
buffet of restriction choices (Ru)

To the list of ability cost types, add Breath (Zin).

Also exhaustion for an ability cost (berserk et al)

[crawlnoob]

Gods should exist which serve to alter existing game mechanics in an interesting fashion.
Game mechanics should not exist in order to support a pre-existing god.

Good bye, ash.

Note that ash was created to alter and enhance the existing curse mechanic at the time, so by your logic ash should exist.

(I am not sure "which came first" is really the best way to evaluate the current state)

My point was that ash should have existed, at the time. But as time went on, Ash became an anchor to keep a mechanic that should otherwise have been changed. Gods should not retard game development, the mechanics should be entirely free to evolve and the position of a God should take a secondary priority to this, or the game develops points of stagnation. If their reason for existence needs to change, or even be removed entirely, the God should follow suit. They should not be immortal.

[Siegurt]

Gods should exist which serve to alter existing game mechanics in an interesting fashion.
Game mechanics should not exist in order to support a pre-existing god.

Good bye, ash.

Note that ash was created to alter and enhance the existing curse mechanic at the time, so by your logic ash should exist.

(I am not sure "which came first" is really the best way to evaluate the current state)

My point was that ash should have existed, at the time. But as time went on, Ash became an anchor to keep a mechanic that should otherwise have been changed. Gods should not retard game development, the mechanics should be entirely free to evolve and the position of a God should take a secondary priority to this, or the game develops points of stagnation. If their reason for existence needs to change, or even be removed entirely, the God should follow suit. They should not be immortal.

I think you may have misunderstood the reasons for curses not being changed significantly. If there was both significant agreement on something specific to be done to change curses and someone on the dev team with the inspiration and time to do it, ash wouldn't be a stumbling block, he would either be incorporated into said changes or removed.

[crawlnoob]

Ive been lurking these forums for quite some time, I cant even remember all of the game design threads that have mods remarking along the lines of "but that would interfere/nerf/obsolete X" where X is a God (and very often Ash but there are others).

Maybe thats not how the game gets coded in the end, but its obvious that the argument carries a fair amount of weight in the process, and it really shouldnt.

On the other hand, I have also seen dozens of threads discussing the broken curse mechanic, and some of them have even offered some pretty good proposals for changing this problem, yet we still have cursed items vis-a-vis the old mechanic. And Ash. (at least the old curse X scrolls got removed, that did happen.)