New God: Dang, the Shadowed

[nicolae]

Great to see a new god!

He says:"Let there be no light!"
and there was no light.
"U can use lightning, though, no problem!"
*sets all the forests to fire with a wand of lightning

--

Shouldn't lightning be banned, too, to fit the theme?

This came up in ##crawl-dev a while back while we were tossing around ideas for new piety rules and conducts, since "likes: killing things, doesn't like: not killing things" is kind of boring. Eventually we realized that banning every spell that might conceivably cast light would be awkward, and so it's just things whose description specifically involves illumination (though personally I think the criteria here are still too general) and additionally, a proscription against fire for more symbolic reasons.

[Galefury]

I haven't played with Dith yet, so I can only theorize. While the no light conduct fits with the shadow flavor, from a purely gameplay point of view it seems inconsistent and arbitrary. Banning lots of completely different things because hey, why not, does not sound like a good idea to me.

Some examples of good conducts are Trog's noncasting, and the good gods no Necro. Banning casting completely leads to very different gameplay and different approaches to many situations. Also banning a spell school with many unique utility spells that basically every character can benefit from is interesting. Minor stuff like Yred not allowing statue form is fine too in my opinion, because it's nice flavor and doesn't affect gameplay in a major way.

Dith's conduct is different, because Dith dislikes a lot of things, and almost all the stuff Dith dislikes has equivalent or near-equivalent alternatives. It just means that some loot you might have otherwise used does not exist for you. To me it seems like it does not add anything to the gameplay, mostly it just means you cant play FE of Dith. The only somewhat interesting part from my purely theoretical perspective is noglow on a god that supports stabbing. One thing I liked a lot about the original proposal was the lack of weird piety rules and conducts. Simple rules, but certainly not boring. Too bad.

[Leafsnail]

I think it should just be reduced to "Dith doesn't like fire, the ancient enemy of shadows". That would seem a lot more cohesive (a skill and a few items with obviously connected flavours) than banning a set of arbitrary bright objects.

[dck]

Funny you should mention that, that was basically my own train of thought when I first heard about the fire thing. It felt pretty arbitrary to me and while I don't really care about fire magic since it's for the most part a pretty silly school I didn't see any point in it. But thinking about it what the restriction does is just letting you use a less wide selection of damage dealing wands, spells and brands. In short, it lowers your potential offense while offering you a big set of tools to use instead.
Surely it won't actually be very relevant in most games, but in some it may be and it could actually be to some interesting degree.
I don't see much point in not letting Dang worshippers use ]starlight and plutie and the rest, but well.

I'm a lot less comfortable with good gods forbidding necromancy than I am with Dith irrationally hating fire, since necromancy is actually relevant in a lot of games and most of its spells are just gross rather than evil. Fedhas gets it a lot better and doesn't even mind you rot corpses your own way.

[dpeg]

dck: This is because the "good hates evil" and "Necromancy is evil" are so deeply engrained in our (pop) culture. Sure, it doesn't make too much sense but is the standard. Fedhas is farther removed, so has a more sensible conduct.

For the shadow god, I agree a simple conduct is best. "No fire" would be one such, excluding the Fire school and a weapon brand. Another would be dislike of noise, which is a slight twist of the flavour but certainly doable.

[nicolae]

dck: This is because the "good hates evil" and "Necromancy is evil" are so deeply engrained in our (pop) culture. Sure, it doesn't make too much sense but is the standard. Fedhas is farther removed, so has a more sensible conduct.

For the shadow god, I agree a simple conduct is best. "No fire" would be one such, excluding the Fire school and a weapon brand. Another would be dislike of noise, which is a slight twist of the flavour but certainly doable.

Which things count as fiery is certainly easier to convey to the player than which things count as illumination, at least.

[duvessa]

Dislike of noise sounds like a pretty weird conduct, considering that nearly everything except moving, waiting, and stabbing makes a bunch of noise.

[dpeg]

duvessa: obviously, it'd be just a piety hit, scaled with volume.

[nicolae]

duvessa: obviously, it'd be just a piety hit, scaled with volume.

Dislike of noise would make sense but there's not much indication to new players when they generate noise and how much they've generated, which means that there might end up being quite a few new players who play Dithmengos and wonder why the hell their god doesn't like it when they hit somebody real hard.

[Wahaha]

It's the god of shadows, not the god of stabbers. Dislike of noise doesn't make sense. This sounds like a thematic reason, but "not the god stabbers" is the gameplay reason.

[nicolae]

It's the god of shadows, not the god of stabbers. Dislike of noise doesn't make sense. This sounds like a thematic reason, but "not the god stabbers" is the gameplay reason.

True, but for many conducts it's not hard to tweak the god's flavor to make it fit, so as long as the conduct is interesting and mostly intuitive, a slight disconnect in flavor can be papered over. After all, cursed equipment doesn't have a whole lot in common with divination besides a flavor justification. Maybe Dith prefers quiet as well as darkness because they like sensory deprivation, or they like stabbers after all, or maybe they have a killer hangover for all eternity. (I'm not sure dislike of noise is a great idea, but because it's spoilery and you're always making noise, not because of flavor reasons.)

[Leafsnail]

Shadows are silent. Reduction in melee and spell volume might be interesting abilities for Dith, incidentally - very helpful for stabbers, but also with some utility for other players.

[and into]

If it is felt that Dith needs a different (or additional) conduct, one thing I mentioned before might work:

Dith doesn't like for you to be noticed by enemies for extended periods, except when you are actively attacking ("extinguishing the light") of enemies. This effect could scale up with piety, so at lower piety (when you are less "attuned" to the shadows) it isn't noticeable, but at high piety you are penalized for major failures in using Dith's abilities and concealment to your advantage.

Communication in game:
"The more attuned to the shadows you become, the more Dithmengos disdains his followers' being seen, except when they are actively snuffing out their enemies." (Or something to that effect.)

Mechanism:
Any time 1.) an enemy has been fully aware of your presence and in LOS for at least X turns; and 2.) you have not been attacking any enemy for at least X turns; then you get a piety hit proportional to the number of turns beyond X for which 1.) and 2.) have been the case. Piety loss from this effect is capped at Y per turn. X gets smaller and/or Y gets larger as piety grows. A red-texted, but not force_more message is given for when you just begin to lose piety.

Thematically fits, and in terms of game play this basically just makes Dith encourage what is already good tactics and punish over-reliance on extended use of kiting. And his abilities give you ways to circumvent situations where you would lose piety, anyway. So something along these lines would be a good fit IMO.

[and into]

Shadows are silent. Reduction in melee and spell volume might be interesting abilities for Dith, incidentally - very helpful for stabbers, but also with some utility for other players.

This could be a separate ability, or else you could have Shadow form, in addition to its other benefits, drastically reduce volume from all player actions.

[XuaXua]

Dithogghua

I like the god, but I'd rather prefer to be able to train Invocations if nothign else than for the extra MP when I'm playing characters who have low Spellcasting/Evo and I want Spirit Shield.

[ontoclasm]

I was one of the ones who suggested the god hating noise, and the idea wasn't to just lose piety on making any noise at all - it'd be dumb to get punished for hitting stuff hard with your weapon or whatever. The god would pretty much just dislike:
a) intentionally shouting or singing, and
b) spells and maybe items that make noise louder than X, where X is set to block stuff like fireballs and meph but not much else. You can use icicles, but not tornado.

Bad stuff would of course show up in red so there'd be no guesswork about it. I'm sure I'm forgetting some obvious category of stuff, but "any action that makes noise loses you piety!" was not what I was going for.

As somebody mentioned, conducts only really make sense if they cost you something, and I'm not sure this would be a big deal. Cutting out loud spells does mean no big conjurations, though, which stings at least a little bit.

My flavour excuse for this was essentially to steal some of the fluff from this and make D. a sort of sleeping god. He/she just wants some rest, but all those stupid mortals are constantly disturbing the nice, quiet night with their bright lights and noise. The player's job is to essentially get the downstairs neighbors to turn off their damn rock music so D. can get some sleep.

Note that the dead are fairly quiet, generally.

[and into]

Note that the dead are fairly quiet, generally.

Well, assuming that you are worshiping D. and not Kiku or Yred, that is.

[Galefury]

But thinking about it what the restriction does is just letting you use a less wide selection of damage dealing wands, spells and brands. In short, it lowers your potential offense while offering you a big set of tools to use instead.

Hm, yes, sounds like it could be pretty interesting after all, especially the wands are relevant. No fire also is consistent and clear, so I'm happy Dith was changed to just hate fire.

[epsilon]

I have a question. Is it really necessary to list every type of enemies god appreciate you to kill? Why not shorten it to something like: "Your god likes when stuff dies"?

[Scalding Steam]

This probably sounds terrible (I'm bad at coming up with names), but what do you think about naming this D-dude Dirge?

[nicolae]

But thinking about it what the restriction does is just letting you use a less wide selection of damage dealing wands, spells and brands. In short, it lowers your potential offense while offering you a big set of tools to use instead.

Hm, yes, sounds like it could be pretty interesting after all, especially the wands are relevant. No fire also is consistent and clear, so I'm happy Dith was changed to just hate fire.

It appears that the anti-illumination is still in, it was just tweaked down to only hating haloes, Corona, and Sunray.

[nicolae]

I have a question. Is it really necessary to list every type of enemies god appreciate you to kill? Why not shorten it to something like: "Your god likes when stuff dies"?

Not all gods like the same kind of stuff to die.

[epsilon]

Not all gods like the same kind of stuff to die.

Well, I know that. I mean this particular god there.

[evilmike]

I'm posting this not as a criticism of the design of this god, but to outline what I think makes for good piety rules, and what makes for bad ones. The examples I use are mostly hypothetical, only slightly based on the current design of dith.


I don't care much for piety rules involving killing things. Getting a small boost for killing fiery monsters, glowing monsters, etc doesn't bug me, it's not something the player can game or even care about since it still boils down to "piety for killing stuff". It's just a flavour thing.

But, for conducts, things need to be defined better. Gods which prohibit necromancy are fine, because necromancy spells are explicitly defined in gameplay. A no-poison rule is fine too, because poison damage is a thing that exists. Same with chei and his rules against speeding yourself up.

A "no light" rule, however, is terrible unless it is restricted to only a few things. Light is generally not a game mechanic in most cases. The only thing that defines this is the descriptions of spells (which often have very little thought put into them and shouldn't affect important matters of game design) and the general intuition of players that certain things are "bright". Neither of those is clear-cut enough to rely on it for the rules here. Therefore, the list of effects the "no-light" conduct should cover is very short: Corona, anything with a halo (mace of brilliance for example), and the "glowing" status are the only three that actually come to mind at the moment. It's still flavourful but the main feature is really the "no glowing" conduct.

"No fire" on the other hand, would be a reasonably acceptable conduct for the player. This is because fire magic is a thing, and fire damage is a thing, and it's clear what things fall under that.

"Be quiet" falls somewhere between, since noise is an actual game mechanic and not just some vague idea. But, noise is also incredibly opaque. Certain actions make much more noise than you'd expect, and others make much less. Spell descriptions don't always give the whole story. Melee uses especially weird values for noise. And so on. While it is actually quite easy to define a rule for such a conduct, it would be hard for players to understand how the hell it works! Therefore, a conduct which encourages you to be quiet (or discourages you from being loud) would be bad. Even if you tried to restrict it to more obvious stuff (e.g. no scrolls of noise, no shouting, wizardry boost for silence spell...) it would feel arbitrary or tacked on.

In summary, god conduct rules should be based on well-defined game mechanics that are easily understood by the player.

[dpeg]

evilmike: I agree. Also, I actually think the first incarnation of the god doesn't need a conduct. There are various possibilities but I feel the god is quite round without a conduct already.

[XuaXua]

Observation: D. still allows arrows of flame to be used for Sticks to Snakes without penalty. Good.

[sanka]

I have joined the god with a summoner and I have noticed that she gives no piety for summons' kills. I'm not sure about this aspect of god design, but I feel that most gods (whose piety mechanic is to give piety for kills) should simply give the same piety for summons' kills. This would just give more options for summoners on god choice.

[DracheReborn]

I have joined the god with a summoner and I have noticed that she gives no piety for summons' kills. I'm not sure about this aspect of god design, but I feel that most gods (whose piety mechanic is to give piety for kills) should simply give the same piety for summons' kills. This would just give more options for summoners on god choice.

If I'm reading godconduct.cc correctly, only Mahkleb, Beogh, and Lugonu (and Trog, ha) give piety for ally kills in general. Kiku and Yred only give piety for kills by undead allies. TSO and Zin only give piety when allies kill unholy or unclean, respectively. Oka and Veh don't give piety for ally kills at all. Not sure where Dith should fall in this spectrum.

[One-Eyed Jack]

No piety for ally kills sounds bad in general because it encourages the stupid tactic of telling your allies to stop hitting a guy so you can kill it

[Roderic]

My suggestion. The god frowns upon any act that makes you noticeable such as making loud noise or awakening sleeping monsters that also shout to you because of your clumsiness.

[duvessa]

No piety for ally kills sounds bad in general because it encourages the stupid tactic of telling your allies to stop hitting a guy so you can kill it

It's worth noting that currently even the gods that give piety for ally kills give less piety for ally kills, for some reason. So Yred and Beogh give you allies then punish you for using them.

[Leafsnail]

I think it would be much better if ally kills just gave the same rewards as your own kills in all cases. Having it any other way just gives rise to annoying tactics and doesn't really add anything.

[ontoclasm]

I agree with evilmike's assessment. However, if a noise conduct is judged to be interesting enough, I think we could manage to make it transparent, possibly with a little bit of tweaking (which should probably be done anyway). I'm going off of the wiki pages for Noise and Spell Noise for the numbers here; obviously they might be outdated or inaccurate, but what can you do.

Things that would be penalized:

• Shouting or singing, on principle.
• Obviously noisy items: ?noise, the Gong, the Singing Sword and any other {noisy} arts. Maybe disc of storms.
• Spells that are "very noisy" or louder. This means a noise of 15 or over. Now, of course, we have to be careful to make this intuitive, so to check, I went through and found all the spells that would be banned: Chain Lightning, CBL, (Delayed) Fireball, Excruciating Wounds, Fire/Ice Storm, LRD, Lightning Bolt, Mephitic Cloud, Shatter, Tornado. I think if you'd asked me to list noisy spells before I'd looked at this page, I would've come up with a pretty similar list, so this seems pretty reasonable to me. Fulminant Prism and Inner Flame are the edge cases; see below.

Things that explicitly are not penalized:

• Melee and ranged attacks, regardless of the noise they make. There are myriad reasons for this, but I'll just go with "it would be silly." Elec weapons could maybe be banned, on account of the explosion of sparks being fireball-loud (e: no it's not, nevermind, I can't read), but I wouldn't bother.
• Any random action that happens to make a lot of noise. As evilmike noted, the amount of noise various actions make can be quite unclear. Spells list it explicitly, but nothing else does. It's just not worth it, so I'd just give carte blanche for other stuff. However, I should note that the above pages don't actually list any other actions of noise 15 or louder, so maybe it'd be consistent anyway.

It could be worded as: "D. dislikes it when you shout, or use items or spells which are too noisy." This clears up the ambiguity about melee and so on.

The problem with Inner Flame and Prism is that, while the actual casting is quiet, the resulting explosions are very loud. Unfortunately, the spell desc. pages list the cast noise, so Inner Flame is "Quiet (3)." This is, among other things, inconsistent with CBL, so it should probably be changed or clarified, regardless of what is done with Dith.

[Leafsnail]

Elec weapons could maybe be banned, on account of the explosion of sparks being fireball-loud (why?), but I wouldn't bother.

I never even realized this, there doesn't seem to be anything in the game to suggest it makes any noise at all. Noise in general could really do with becoming more transparent.

[Kate]

I don't see "no noisy things" making for a great conduct. Being noisy is already a bad thing generally, and in addition to that it's penalised further when worshipping Dith (you can't shadow step to things if you've woken them up by being noisy).

The fire/light conduct was already simplified to "no fire, no corona, no halos", which seems reasonable to me in terms of clarity at least. Not sure yet how good it is gameplay-wise.

[njvack]

The other thing that comes to mind from evilmike's post is "wow noise is really important but really opaque, can it be made less opaque?" Which is better addressed in this topic.

[twelwe]

I would hate it if shouting was banned conduct. sometimes you just have to hit 'tt' instead of chasing an unaware monster for 20 turns, which happens when you have umbra and pumped stealth, even though you are playing an ogre

[Siegurt]

I usually throw a rock/dart/whatever the hell I have quivered at said creature if I want their attention, makes less noise, does some damage and still draws their attention to you.

[duvessa]

It's also really convenient to e.g. be able to get stuff out of vaults using a wand of lightning. I don't think I'd enjoy it if making noise had an additonal penalty beyond being noisy.

[dialectric]

Has the 'you slip further into the darkness of the dungeon' demonspawn mutation been removed from the game? I haven't seen it in a while, but it seems like it would fit well with Dith, reducing your field of vision, while avoiding enemies (or not, if used as a god's punishment)

[tasonir]

The problem with Inner Flame and Prism is that, while the actual casting is quiet, the resulting explosions are very loud. Unfortunately, the spell desc. pages list the cast noise, so Inner Flame is "Quiet (3)." This is, among other things, inconsistent with CBL, so it should probably be changed or clarified, regardless of what is done with Dith.

This could be easily explained that Dith doesn't care about other things being noisy. He doesn't want you to draw attention to yourself; if some orc to the side makes a loud explosion, he's attracting attention to himself. Or the fiery stump where he used to be. Same thing with prism - you could even consider it to be akin to the old spell projected noise. Dith likes sneaky distractions, making noise away from yourself is perfectly okay.

[nicolae]

Has the 'you slip further into the darkness of the dungeon' demonspawn mutation been removed from the game? I haven't seen it in a while, but it seems like it would fit well with Dith, reducing your field of vision, while avoiding enemies (or not, if used as a god's punishment)

Someone suggested this in ##crawl-dev and mikee's response was an emphatic "no", it's considered a pretty annoying mutation to get.

[snow]

I've tried the new god and I'm not really impressed.

I tend to compare all gods to Trog. Why should I pick this god over Trog?

First, I don't get why the invisibility ability isn't just plain old invisibility. It's kind of like if a god gave you a levitation ability when there's a flight spell and flight ring... what's the point? By the time you can use it you usually have the better source anyway.

Let's pretend other forms of invisibility don't exist for a second though. The invisibility ability doesn't really compare to BIA not does the jump ability compare to berserk. Also Trogs weapon gifts are better than the slight buffs from this god.

I get that stabbers are good. But a stabber of kiku/trog/nem/etc. would be better than a stabber of this god. It sort of acts like a stabbing enabler, but if you survive the early game and have a different stabbing enabler, this god just becomes redundant. Also it's not very helpful early game anyway.

I currently have a tengu assassin of the shadow god and grabbed the spider rune with it. So far the shadow god just hasn't been all that helpful.

[and into]

I've tried the new god and I'm not really impressed.

I tend to compare all gods to Trog. Why should I pick this god over Trog?

First, I don't get why the invisibility ability isn't just plain old invisibility. It's kind of like if a god gave you a levitation ability when there's a flight spell and flight ring... what's the point? By the time you can use it you usually have the better source anyway.

Let's pretend other forms of invisibility don't exist for a second though. The invisibility ability doesn't really compare to BIA not does the jump ability compare to berserk. Also Trogs weapon gifts are better than the slight buffs from this god.

I get that stabbers are good. But a stabber of kiku/trog/nem/etc. would be better than a stabber of this god. It sort of acts like a stabbing enabler, but if you survive the early game and have a different stabbing enabler, this god just becomes redundant. Also it's not very helpful early game anyway.

I currently have a tengu assassin of the shadow god and grabbed the spider rune with it. So far the shadow god just hasn't been all that helpful.

I couldn't disagree more. I played (am playing) a DrEE of Dith, with some small investment in stealth but no use of stabbing—using staff of earth, not sblades. So not at all a stabber. And I am really enjoying Dith. I feel like the shadow mimic, umbra, and cloud-bleed passives are in terms of overall power *at least* as good as (though very different from) Vehumet's or Ash's passives, shadow step is more situational for my non-stabbing character but still useful. For stabbers Dith might have a lot more offense possibilities, but for non-stabbers he is an excellent defense-oriented diety, which Crawl doesn't really have (and he still gives you a very noticeable attack boost through shadow mimic). I am hoping to give him a spin on a more melee-centric build and also with an assassin or enchanter but I first wanted to test out Dith's broad appeal. It isn't lacking. — In that particular sense he feels a lot like Ash.

Oh and shadow form is not primarily about invisibility. You get majorly reduced damage and start pumping out more fog, and you get immunity or resistance to a lot of effects. You can use it as a really piety-expensive way to invisi-stab, I guess, but that's really a waste. It is better IMO for situations where giving up some offense for much greater resilience makes sense, and in particular is a good escape tool so long as you manage to activate it a few turns before things get really dire (escape is the main use it is shaping up for on my caster, and it doesn't feel underpowered strictly in that role).

[Yermak]

I've tried the new god and I'm not really impressed.

I tend to compare all gods to Trog. Why should I pick this god over Trog?

First, I don't get why the invisibility ability isn't just plain old invisibility. It's kind of like if a god gave you a levitation ability when there's a flight spell and flight ring... what's the point? By the time you can use it you usually have the better source anyway.

Let's pretend other forms of invisibility don't exist for a second though. The invisibility ability doesn't really compare to BIA not does the jump ability compare to berserk. Also Trogs weapon gifts are better than the slight buffs from this god.

I get that stabbers are good. But a stabber of kiku/trog/nem/etc. would be better than a stabber of this god. It sort of acts like a stabbing enabler, but if you survive the early game and have a different stabbing enabler, this god just becomes redundant. Also it's not very helpful early game anyway.

I currently have a tengu assassin of the shadow god and grabbed the spider rune with it. So far the shadow god just hasn't been all that helpful.

Oh, man! You couldn't be wrong more. You are so not into being a real soul stabber! I'd play this god if it had umbra aura only!
I promise I'll make under 30k 15-rune speedrun when this god will be put into trunk along with his umbra aura.

[Roderic]

Does this umbra affect only the attacks of non-evil critters or is it more generic?

[Galefury]

Undead and demons are immune. Yred and Dith worshipers too.

[Roderic]

Undead and demons are immune. Yred and Dith worshipers too.

Then how useful does it remain in deep branches like hells or Tomb/Crypt or Abbyss?

[HenryFlower]

I get that stabbers are good. But a stabber of kiku/trog/nem/etc. would be better than a stabber of this god. It sort of acts like a stabbing enabler, but if you survive the early game and have a different stabbing enabler, this god just becomes redundant. Also it's not very helpful early game anyway.

I currently have a tengu assassin of the shadow god and grabbed the spider rune with it. So far the shadow god just hasn't been all that helpful.

I have an SpEn of Dith up and running who's cleared Lair, Orc and Shoals. Umbra alone is worth the price of entry -- stealth just works that much better, and the effective enhancements to EV (umbra to-hit malus) mean that squishy but dodgy guys benefit nicely. Passive fog has saved my life a couple of times, and the shadow mimic gives me a stabbing bonus when he distracts bad 'uns. Haven't tested shadow step yet -- haven't needed to. Anyone I've really wanted to die has gone down.

Is Kiku/nem better for a SpEn? Different, that's for sure. Dith is fun without much effort.

[neil]

Undead and demons are immune. Yred and Dith worshipers too.

Demons haven't been immune to umbra since 0.11.