Evocations god

[Sandman25]

I always wanted to
1) have a stabber who relies on wands of paralysis/confusion/enslavement
2) have a guaranteed way to get a rod
so here is my suggestion.

God of evocations.
Appreciates:
1) Using evocables except rods (chance to gain 1 piety)
2) Destroying ranged weapons/ammo/throwable weapons (chance to gain 1 piety). Done by praying over tile.
3) Killing monsters who have spells (+HD/3 piety rounded up)

Depreciates:
1) Using ranged/thrown weapon (-3 piety)
2) Casting disabling spells (EH/Confusion/Petrify/Mass Confusion/Enslavement etc) (-5 piety)
3) Casting spells which are supported by Vehumet (-5 piety)

Granted abilities:
-) a) All wands in inventory are identified (including number of zaps). When you pick up a wand it is instantly identified
b) Minimal hunger is 0 instead of 50
c) raw power for wands in increased by piety * 2.
*) Detect evocables (including wands which are held by monsters)
**) Gifts. Wands (except big 3 wands) are eligible
***) a) Sack of spider, bottled efreet become eligible.
b) Rods don't require to be wielded before use.
****) Fast evocation: evoking any item takes 0.7 turn (stacks with Haste), potions and scrolls are impossible to use, costs 4-6 piety.
*****) Request random "new evocable" (phial of flood, stone of tremor etc), costs 40-60 piety
******) Rods and big 3 wands become eligible for gifting

Wrath
1) 50% chance to lose a turn when evoking any item
2) If evocation was successful, there is 50% chance for the item to get broken (wand become empty, other evocables just disappear) and evoked effect takes place on player's tile instead of targeted one. Yes, it means wands of healing/teleportation/hasting still can be useful.
3) Hostile berserked elementals
4) Wrath never ends

[epsilon]

IMO you are suggesting one more Nemelex Xobeh but now with wands. I mean, at the moment Nemelex is our Evocation god. Yes, he's card themed, but no one has this much profit from training Evo, as followers of Xobeh. Also, the way of getting piety you are suggesting is very similar too.
And for what I can see now - It'll be abusable as hell. IIRC, when a god wrath affects you, penance timer gets decreased. So you pick this god, reach max piety, get loads of rare wands, abandon him, zap all wands you don't need, wrath ends.
I kinda understand, that we have numerous gods of magic and only one of evocations. But there is only one skill for evocations instead of like 3 million magic skills.

[Sandman25]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that his wrath never ends.
I think the god is different enough from Nemelex as the god does not give any cards, but allows stabbing (I also initially forgot to write that the god increases power of wands greatly), guarantees new evocables, can grant rods and has ability to decrease action time for all evocables at the cost of temporary inability to use potions/spells. Also no summons/escapes etc.

Edit. Perhaps the god will be too powerful for MuAr but then it will be closer to MuCK than to Mu of Nemelex.

[Sar]

No, I mean literally, it's a god of Evocations that gifts you items that allow you to have Evocations-based ranged attacks, Evocations-based summons and sort-of-Evocations-based escape abilities. His abilities also help you to use these items better and he appreciates item sacrifices. It's Nemelex with some weird and annoying conducts (losing piety every time you blowgun someone does not sound fun).

new post

Nem is very popular for "stabbers" as it is, wands of HW/Hasting/Tele are escape items (well Hasting is much more), most new evocables do produce summons.

Btw, regarding being able to use rods from inventory: I wish that was true for every character.

[Sandman25]

No, I mean literally, it's a god of Evocations that gifts you items that allow you to have Evocations-based ranged attacks, Evocations-based summons and sort-of-Evocations-based escape abilities. His abilities also help you to use these items better and he appreciates item sacrifices. It's Nemelex with some weird and annoying conducts (losing piety every time you blowgun someone does not sound fun).

new post

Nem is very popular for "stabbers" as it is, wands of HW/Hasting/Tele are escape items (well Hasting is much more), most new evocables do produce summons.

Btw, regarding being able to use rods from inventory: I wish that was true for every character.

Stabbing is not very reliable with Nemelex as you are limited with wands and you have low "wand power" even at Evo 27. Did you notice evocation speed increase and wand power increase? It is like ignoring Finesse and Heroism when talking about Oka.

[Sandman25]

Should I remove new evocables from abilities?

[Sar]

Oh. So your concept of Notnem stabber is a guy who lugs around a truckload of para/confuse/invis rods and also trains stealth/short blades and then zaps those wands at monsters/himself and stabs them. And he can't learn actual Hexes too because Notnem hates it because then you don't need to lug around a truckload of wands.
Okay. I don't think it's a very good concept, tbh.

Should I remove new evocables from abilities?

Well that would make this god even more limited so I dunno.

Edit: when I said Nem is great for stabbers I mean Enchanters and I meant that Nem gives you a plethora of options to use vs. things you can't stab (high-MR/magic immune, see invisible monsters) for the low price of training one skill.

[Sandman25]

The god can be used with other builds too, actually it is close to Makhleb also as you can be something like MiFi in heavy armour and train Evocations instead of Invocation to have "greater destruction" and "lesser servants".
Most gods require high Invocation, Nemelex (and the suggested god) require high Evocations, I see nothing wrong with it.
The most useful feature of the god is rods I think. Having several rods of inaccuracy (with probably increased "rod power") is fun.

[Sar]

it is close to Makhleb also as you can be something like MiFi in heavy armour and train Evocations instead of Invocation to have "greater destruction" and "lesser servants"

Makhleb without Greater Servants and health-on-kills, cool.

Having several rods of inaccuracy (with probably increased "rod power") is fun.

Having multiple decks of destruction is fun too, except decks have more effects than rods, scale better with Evo, and have the randomness element to them (which is fun IMO). They are also a finite resource.

[Sandman25]

Sar, so is it a Makhleb or Nemelex?
Does the god limit your play style to just one? No, and it is a good thing, you can be a stabber, a melee fighter with support spells, a necromancer, a transmuter, an almost pure artificer. You can even have permanent allies or intelligent summons (unlike Nemelex who should avoid some decks in this case)
Are the provided abilities versatile enough? I think they are (and if not, we can change it). Pure artificer who destroys most monsters with wands of cold/fire/lightning/draining/fireball could be fun and cannot be played without such god.

[Tiktacy]

Zetsal, god of machines.

Appreciates learning evocations

Depreciates killing machines
Depreciates the use of conjurations and elemental magic


He occasionally gifts you by recharging wands, buffing up rods, and making inert items usable again.

At max piety, he will rarely give artifact rings and amulets with evocable abilities, and could give you access to any kind of evocable effect in the game other than heal wounds, even haste.

He also gives the ability that merges all evocable items into your body and turns you into an armored machine. Your strength is dependent on the total power of all evocables, and you cannot read scrolls or drink potions in this form. Any evocables picked up are immediately merged. Rods are still usable, but in the form of abilities and cost mana instead. Let's call it "steel form"

You can also pray over a stack of evocables to turn them into creatures depending on the power. Sort of like old twisted resurrection.

How's that for unique and interesting?

[Sar]

@Sandman: I don't see the appeal of this god and I think I already expressed why, so I should probably stop posting ITT.

@Tiktacy: the only machines in Crawl I can think of now are "weird machines" in Tukima's Wizlab. Golems are not machines, well, at least usually in fiction they aren't.

[One-Eyed Jack]

Have you tried just playing SpEn and pretending that you're using wands or rods to cast spells

Seems easier

[Sandman25]

Have you tried just playing SpEn and pretending that you're using wands or rods to cast spells

Seems easier

Yes, I have SpEn of Ash win. I had no rod until very late and wands were limited in use so I didn't bother to train Evocations early. My SpEn of Nemelex did train Evocations early and died to own orb of lightning in Lair (the death would be impossible with suggested god).

Edit: Also "easier" is not the only approach. XXBe is easier but it gets boring soon and players start trying different gods even if they don't use spells.

[Tiktacy]

@Sandman: I don't see the appeal of this god and I think I already expressed why, so I should probably stop posting ITT.

@Tiktacy: the only machines in Crawl I can think of now are "weird machines" in Tukima's Wizlab. Golems are not machines, well, at least usually in fiction they aren't.

Iron devils, hell sentinels, statues, gargoyles, earth and crystal golems(they count!), iron imps, iron dragons, probably more that I can't think of. But in general, what do you think of it?

[Sar]

I think you are hijacking Sandman's thread, which is just plain rude.

[Lasty]

This god actually reminds me more of Trog than Nemelex, in that he shuts down a ton of options in exchange for a crazy amount of power. Who needs to be able to cast Bolt of Fire when they can can have a similar-to-higher power version of the same thing by training one skill that has a positive apt for almost all characters? Oh, but you have limited charges? Well, this god also gifts you more wands as well as items that don't have limited charges, and all you need to do to get piety is sit in a corner and spam rod spells for piety, get a gift, burn some piety to request a gift, and then spam more rod spells to get the piety back, along with another gift.

Also, Bolt of Fire takes 10 AUT, whereas this only takes 7, assuming you use the haste-analogue ability that stacks w/ Haste.

I'm not sure the game needs a god who does any of the things you're suggesting, but I think the following things would get this closer to a good proposal:
* Do not gain piety from using evocables.
* Make conducts less restrictive and/or more interesting.
* Make evocable-related conducts, gifts, and support never apply to cards.
* Make wand power scaling piety-dependent, something like wand_power = wand_power * (1 + piety/200).
* Allow god to gift OR the player to request gifts, but not both.
* Remove "evocations haste" ability.
* Add a new dimension to this god so that there can be abilities that don't directly relate to evocations/evokables. Perhaps this is the god of fabrication, covering artificers and alchemists both (e.g. also transmutation).
* Add some new abilities, possibly from this list:
a) Passively increase evocable recharge rate. At high piety, this could recharge wands slowly based on XP gain.
b) Tukima's dance effect for wands and/or rods.
c) Add new evokables that can only be gifted by this god.
d) Passively change the amount of time spent using evokables based on piety.

[dpeg]

Lasty's comments are good. I think the original proposal is way too narrow: Crawl gods should try to be skew to playing styles. (For example, Fedhas may be good for ranged damage users, but the good does not provide ammunition or any other direct advantage to a bow user.) "Kill dudes with a weapon" is a broad enough playing style to support two rather straightforward gods, "kill dudes with evocables-but-not-cards" is not. Note how Nemelex Xobeh gains a lot of flavour and gameplay out of the cards and deck manipulation.

Obviously, gods can be conceived in many different ways, but I'd encourage starting from (at least *also* from) a theme.

[Tiktacy]

I think you are hijacking Sandman's thread, which is just plain rude.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I just thought the thread was about giving ideas for an evocations god, but I guess I was wrong. =/

[Sandman25]

This god actually reminds me more of Trog than Nemelex, in that he shuts down a ton of options in exchange for a crazy amount of power. Who needs to be able to cast Bolt of Fire when they can can have a similar-to-higher power version of the same thing by training one skill that has a positive apt for almost all characters? Oh, but you have limited charges? Well, this god also gifts you more wands as well as items that don't have limited charges, and all you need to do to get piety is sit in a corner and spam rod spells for piety, get a gift, burn some piety to request a gift, and then spam more rod spells to get the piety back, along with another gift.

Also, Bolt of Fire takes 10 AUT, whereas this only takes 7, assuming you use the haste-analogue ability that stacks w/ Haste.

I'm not sure the game needs a god who does any of the things you're suggesting, but I think the following things would get this closer to a good proposal:
* Do not gain piety from using evocables.
* Make conducts less restrictive and/or more interesting.
* Make evocable-related conducts, gifts, and support never apply to cards.
* Make wand power scaling piety-dependent, something like wand_power = wand_power * (1 + piety/200).
* Allow god to gift OR the player to request gifts, but not both.
* Remove "evocations haste" ability.
* Add a new dimension to this god so that there can be abilities that don't directly relate to evocations/evokables. Perhaps this is the god of fabrication, covering artificers and alchemists both (e.g. also transmutation).
* Add some new abilities, possibly from this list:
a) Passively increase evocable recharge rate. At high piety, this could recharge wands slowly based on XP gain.
b) Tukima's dance effect for wands and/or rods.
c) Add new evokables that can only be gifted by this god.
d) Passively change the amount of time spent using evokables based on piety.

Thank you for the detailed feedback!
Yes, piety is not gained for using rods. I forgot to mention it (as it was obvious to me).
Yes, I agree that this god is OP, this is why it has very restrictive conducts.
Support does not apply to cards (again I forgot to mention it). Perhaps the god should depreciate cards.
Wand power is piety dependent (I edited first post some time ago).
Ok, I will remove requests for gift.
I really like evocation haste ability, can we create add another big disadvantage instead? It already prohibits potions and scrolls. Maybe grant vulnerability status which dispels all charms and decreases MR?
I like "Add new evokables that can only be gifted by this god" the most, all other options are OP IMHO.
I will think about it.

Edit. It looks like the god is too bad and cannot be fixed so I will not think about it

[Sandman25]

Lasty's comments are good. I think the original proposal is way too narrow: Crawl gods should try to be skew to playing styles. (For example, Fedhas may be good for ranged damage users, but the good does not provide ammunition or any other direct advantage to a bow user.) "Kill dudes with a weapon" is a broad enough playing style to support two rather straightforward gods, "kill dudes with evocables-but-not-cards" is not. Note how Nemelex Xobeh gains a lot of flavour and gameplay out of the cards and deck manipulation.

Obviously, gods can be conceived in many different ways, but I'd encourage starting from (at least *also* from) a theme.

I used another approach - I thought about play styles which I'd like to try but really can't without some very lucky drops like 3 wands of paralysis, 5+ fire/cold wands or 2 rods before Lair.

[Sandman25]

I think you are hijacking Sandman's thread, which is just plain rude.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I just thought the thread was about giving ideas for an evocations god, but I guess I was wrong. =/

Sorry, there is my fault here also. I should have picked some name for the god and put it in the topic title but I am not good with names, even my characters are always called something like MiFi

[nicolae]

I used another approach - I thought about play styles which I'd like to try but really can't without some very lucky drops like 3 wands of paralysis, 5+ fire/cold wands or 2 rods before Lair.

of the last four gods to be added, Fedhas, Ashenzari, Cheibriados, and Jiyva, how many of them do you think were built around just a single play style, and how many of them were built around a flavorful theme with the appropriate play styles added in later

[Sandman25]

I used another approach - I thought about play styles which I'd like to try but really can't without some very lucky drops like 3 wands of paralysis, 5+ fire/cold wands or 2 rods before Lair.

of the last four gods to be added, Fedhas, Ashenzari, Cheibriados, and Jiyva, how many of them do you think were built around just a single play style, and how many of them were built around a flavorful theme with the appropriate play styles added in later

Actually Jiyva makes it impossible to play with ranged/thrown weapons (except large rocks), Cheibriados makes it extremely hard for melee only characters while surprisingly melee is still a must for him, Ashenzari is bad for unarmed melee but I think I got your point.
wand stabber + wand conjurer + rod spammer, summons support, it's at least 3 play styles but unfortunately Evocations is closely related to Nemelex for historical reasons.

[nicolae]

wand stabber + wand conjurer + rod spammer, summons support, it's at least 3 play styles but unfortunately Evocations is closely related to Nemelex for historical reasons.

Assuming for the moment that "evocable stabbing/conjuring/summoning" is a playstyle that needs to be made feasible, surely there's some idea that isn't just a list of powers that are all entirely related to a single item class. Likewise, a god would have more utility if it encouraged the desired playstyle (using wands and rods) instead of outright banning the alternatives (no ranged weapons, no conjurations, no hexes). Some god ability that lowers monster MR vs. wand attacks, perhaps, or a god who recharges your wands on kills, and then think, what kind of god would have that power, a god of ______, and you can't fill in the blank with "wands", "evocations", or "magical devices". A "god of enchantments" for the first power idea, perhaps, or a "god of renewal" for the latter one (there are probably much more flavorful ideas to work with there). And then once you have the theme, what other powers would that god have that might not be focused on wands or evocations at all? In the end, you will (hopefully) have a god that benefits such a playstyle without necessarily being directly geared 100% around encouraging and forcing that playstyle, similar to how Fedhas works for ranged combat in more interesting ways than simply gifting ammo.