Temple Termagant
Posts: 7
Joined: Monday, 9th June 2014, 23:43
Friday, 15th November 2019, 16:11
Xom Rework
Posted this on Reddit,though I'd crosspost here as well to hear some thoughts.
I'll start by explaining why Xom as he stands now is a problem. As a god, Xom is frustrating, confusing, and exploitable. Also incredibly opaque.
Not only does Xom have a piety system unlike any other god, he actually has ANOTHER piety system that sits underneath the first. This is known as the amusement system. It is designed so that if you sit around and do nothing, Xom will get bored as a hidden!! amusement value can decay to 0. It is also designed so that you're not supposed to be able to really affect this amusement value... except sometimes randomly you do... and if Xom is bored, then bad stuff happens. I don't know what happens when Xom is bored, but it's bad. More opaqueness.
Here's the best part, you can game the amusement system, and it's actually pretty easy. The wiki has a list of such actions you can take. However, the list is not exhaustive, and it misses one easily exploitable way, and here it is! If you cast mephitic cloud, and become confused, then go up or down stairs and hurt yourself, Xom will be highly amused. So if you knew this, you can safely wait out Xom's bad piety spurts and don't have to worry about him getting bored. If the devs patch this, then I'm sure another method will still be exploited that isn't widely known. Like fighting enemies in shallow water so they stumble.
Okay, so that's why the first piety system is bad. This directly sabotages the second, main, piety system. Xom's piety fluctuates from 0-200. The higher the piety, the better the actions you get. You as a player, cannot wait out bad piety episodes, or else Xom will get BORED. So even if you're at 1 pip, and the next least dangerous floor is Shoals:4, tough luck champ. Hope you like getting confused in front of Merfolk javelineers. Again, you can game the system by waiting on down stairs and doing something stupid like confusing yourself and falling down while waiting for piety to go up. NEITHER option should be necessary, namely going down into a dangerous floor with min piety nor exploiting the amusement system so that Xom doesn't get bored.
Finally, Xom is frustrating. In Crawl, if you get Xom's aid and absolutely destroy a pack of yaks, you don't get much out of it. On the other hand, if you are at low Xom piety, you can get banished to the abyss, or be overwhelmed by a pack of demons on top of the Yaks. In other words, all you need is Xom to screw you over badly one time to completely override all the good luck that you've received. This can also happen in the form of getting teleportitis or misshapen body, or frailness, all of which can greatly increase your chances of splatting and are for the most part out of your control.
All that being said, I really like Xom, and I have some changes in mind.
First major changes being, completely remove both piety systems, Amusement and random piety. Change Xom into a standard, exploration based piety system. In other words, you get piety for exploring, and it decays pretty quickly. 0 piety does NOT mean bad random effects, just LESS good effects.
Replace all random mutations with the following: Everytime you would receive a bad mutation, roll a piety dependent chance to reroll the mutation (up to 50% to reroll a bad mutation).
Remove some of the just plain rippy effects. Mainly just the random teleport carousel, which is more obnoxious than anything, as well as random torment and abyss banishment, and all random mutation as discussed.
Some new effects!
Chaotic disposition: All melee attacks have a piety dependent chance to apply a chaos brand to the attack. All spells have a static chance to cast a random spell from the same tier. (Probably excepting silence and other really dangerous ones.)
Chaotic luck: Whenever a consumable is picked up, piety dependent chance to double the item, probably up to 10%.
Grand Chaos: Cast an ressistable invocation based polymorph on all creatures in LOS excluding caster. This one is just for fun.
Everything not explicitly charted for removal would remain as is.
Everything is open to feedback. Thoughts?
I'll start by explaining why Xom as he stands now is a problem. As a god, Xom is frustrating, confusing, and exploitable. Also incredibly opaque.
Not only does Xom have a piety system unlike any other god, he actually has ANOTHER piety system that sits underneath the first. This is known as the amusement system. It is designed so that if you sit around and do nothing, Xom will get bored as a hidden!! amusement value can decay to 0. It is also designed so that you're not supposed to be able to really affect this amusement value... except sometimes randomly you do... and if Xom is bored, then bad stuff happens. I don't know what happens when Xom is bored, but it's bad. More opaqueness.
Here's the best part, you can game the amusement system, and it's actually pretty easy. The wiki has a list of such actions you can take. However, the list is not exhaustive, and it misses one easily exploitable way, and here it is! If you cast mephitic cloud, and become confused, then go up or down stairs and hurt yourself, Xom will be highly amused. So if you knew this, you can safely wait out Xom's bad piety spurts and don't have to worry about him getting bored. If the devs patch this, then I'm sure another method will still be exploited that isn't widely known. Like fighting enemies in shallow water so they stumble.
Okay, so that's why the first piety system is bad. This directly sabotages the second, main, piety system. Xom's piety fluctuates from 0-200. The higher the piety, the better the actions you get. You as a player, cannot wait out bad piety episodes, or else Xom will get BORED. So even if you're at 1 pip, and the next least dangerous floor is Shoals:4, tough luck champ. Hope you like getting confused in front of Merfolk javelineers. Again, you can game the system by waiting on down stairs and doing something stupid like confusing yourself and falling down while waiting for piety to go up. NEITHER option should be necessary, namely going down into a dangerous floor with min piety nor exploiting the amusement system so that Xom doesn't get bored.
Finally, Xom is frustrating. In Crawl, if you get Xom's aid and absolutely destroy a pack of yaks, you don't get much out of it. On the other hand, if you are at low Xom piety, you can get banished to the abyss, or be overwhelmed by a pack of demons on top of the Yaks. In other words, all you need is Xom to screw you over badly one time to completely override all the good luck that you've received. This can also happen in the form of getting teleportitis or misshapen body, or frailness, all of which can greatly increase your chances of splatting and are for the most part out of your control.
All that being said, I really like Xom, and I have some changes in mind.
First major changes being, completely remove both piety systems, Amusement and random piety. Change Xom into a standard, exploration based piety system. In other words, you get piety for exploring, and it decays pretty quickly. 0 piety does NOT mean bad random effects, just LESS good effects.
Replace all random mutations with the following: Everytime you would receive a bad mutation, roll a piety dependent chance to reroll the mutation (up to 50% to reroll a bad mutation).
Remove some of the just plain rippy effects. Mainly just the random teleport carousel, which is more obnoxious than anything, as well as random torment and abyss banishment, and all random mutation as discussed.
Some new effects!
Chaotic disposition: All melee attacks have a piety dependent chance to apply a chaos brand to the attack. All spells have a static chance to cast a random spell from the same tier. (Probably excepting silence and other really dangerous ones.)
Chaotic luck: Whenever a consumable is picked up, piety dependent chance to double the item, probably up to 10%.
Grand Chaos: Cast an ressistable invocation based polymorph on all creatures in LOS excluding caster. This one is just for fun.
Everything not explicitly charted for removal would remain as is.
Everything is open to feedback. Thoughts?
