new oddities card: (divine) intervention

[Pollen_Golem]

Nemelex has Famine in the virtual deck of oddities, as well as its opposite - Feast. But he also has the Wrath card in the deck of oddities, and wouldn't it be fun to have its opposite in the deck of oddities too. Because oddity cards are so rare, this new card would have little effect on gameplay, unless you ID the card before using it, and even then god powers are so diverse that you'll never find a situation perfect for any Divine Intervention. But it would still be fun and random, like the Wrath card.

The card picks a god at random and attempts to invoke its great active power, if it has one. The invocation attempt may not be successful and may be unusable (like disaster area or any summoning while you are entombed, or apocalypse if you are exhausted). Your evocation skill is used in place of invocation for determining success rate and power. Eligible invocations may be:
Chei's step from time
Dith's shadow form
Ely's divine vigor
Lugonu's corrupt
Makh's greater servant
Oka's finesse
Qaz's disaster area
Ru's apocalypse
TSO's divine summon
Trog's brothers in arms, with 200*evo/27 used in place of piety
Zin's sanctuary

[jejorda2]

Many of these have durations, damage, or a chance of a bad result that is based on piety or invocations. Should card power be used as a stand-in, should some fixed power be determined, or should Makhleb's demons be summoned with a chance of hostility based on invocations skill?

Should these be on the list:
Ash's scry
Beogh's smite
Fedhas's spores
Gozag's bribe (Maybe just the current level or even LOS)
Jivya's slimify
Kiku's torment (with Kiku's protection)
Sif could refill MP. Or present you with a small list of unknown spells and let you cast one with miscast immunity.
Vehumet could cause a conjuration miscast on enemies.
Xom could perform an act of Xom.
Yred's injury mirror

[Pollen_Golem]

If you're using Nemelex you probably have 0 invocations skill, so I think evocations should be used as a stand-in for invocations skill.

Yeah sure those can be on list, why not. It doesn't hurt and makes it even funnier / more random if you don't know whether you'll get apocalypse or scrying or Beogh's smiting.

Yeah, rolling Sif for divine intervention should just invoke Channel Energy once. That would be hilarious.

Potion petition would be a better choice for Gozag since it fits in better with other god powers.

Vehumet and Xom have no active abilities so nothing should happen if they get chosen. Let's not special-case for the sake of an Oddities card. Xom has his own card anyway.

[edgefigaro]

You can actually fit more abilites due to the way cards work (low mid high teir). A low teir trog would berserk you and a high tier kiku would torment. I really like this card idea. Xom should give decks filled with nothing but xom cards and this card and wrath.

[Chicken]

Sif's big thing is dropping you a spellbook... might be anticlimactic in some situation where you were hoping for HELP, but still... it's a spellbook!

[njvack]

I think a shorter list of interesting (mostly beneficial or arguably beneficial) effects is better than a longer list including a bunch of meh.

[bcadren]

Interesting idea; IMHO remove Greater Servant of Makhleb; it's just a weaker Pentagram anyways.

[Marbit]

Nemelex has Famine in the virtual deck of oddities, as well as its opposite - Feast. But he also has the Wrath card in the deck of oddities, and wouldn't it be fun to have its opposite in the deck of oddities too?

Symmetry in a game is not necessarily good for game design.

Because oddity cards are so rare, this new card would have little effect on gameplay...

If the card has little effect on gameplay... why add it?

[ion_frigate]

Because oddity cards are so rare, this new card would have little effect on gameplay...

If the card has little effect on gameplay... why add it?

Perhaps a better way to put it would have been "This card will have little effect on game balance because it's rare". Rare elements help to keep the game 'fresh' but since they're rare, game balance is less of a concern. Other such examples would be early Jiyva altars or the corrupted Temple.