Blades Runner
Posts: 561
Joined: Friday, 18th January 2013, 01:08
Location: Medical Mechanica
Sunday, 15th December 2013, 11:16
Rule proposal: Holy mummies
I can foresee a rain of stones coming down on me from every corner, but I had this idea floating around in my head, and someone else just made a proposal for a mummy buff, so what the hell, here is mine.
Make mummies unique among the undead in that they are allowed to join good gods.
Mummies have always been holy, religious things, and while that can be true in Crawl for neutral and evil gods, the concept of a mummified person makes perfect sense for solar/light/pure religions too. The mummy concept doesn't include a predatory lifestyle (such as vampires or ghouls) nor are they inherently touched by evil (such as demonspawn). Even better, by definition, they aren't predatory at all, unless you count mummies using Sublimation of Blood, Vampiric Draining or vampiric weapons, which are by themselves shunned by the good gods anyways.
In fact, mummies can't even drink blood, commit cannibalism, eat the flesh of sentients, gain mutations or cast self-transmutations. All this means that, behavior-wise, the good gods could rest assured that any mummies dedicated to them would actually be much more unlikely to offend them than mortals.
The rationale behind this could be that mummies aren't necessarily animated by necromancy, but can be created through advanced burial rituals too, deities willing.
An in-game argument for this is that mummies *can* be touched by the light of Elyvilon.
Caveats:
Holy energies from god abilities (such as cleansing flame, recite or sanctuary) could exact a toll on mummies, similar to how some necromantic effects harm the living. Elyvilon's self-healing could have a reduced effect, similar to how the healing invocations are less effective on the undead. Also, holy wrath and retribution from good gods would be much, much harsher on a mummy.
Other, non-god related undead limitations still apply in full: Mummies would still be unable to wield holy wrath weapons, and other holy effects would have their usual negative effects. Really, good god abilities are the polar opposite of necromancy (that's why there's no spellcasting holy magic) so holy mummies would be in a very similar position to a living necromancer without being an exact mirror image (wasn't one of the design philosophy guidelines the "subtle symmetry"?)
Basically, holy mummies would have to face:
-Undead forced restrictions on holy items and effects.
-Undead limitations on transmutations, necromancy and other effects that "only affect the living".
-Religious commandments on evil / chaotic / necromantic effects.
-Mummy-exclusive food clock related restrictions.
...quite a bunch of restrictions piled onto more restrictions, in exchange for better access to healing, stat and rot healing, cure confusion and stat buffs; which are three things that mummies are hard-pressed to find.
Fedhas Madash would still reject mummies on the grounds of violating the natural cycle of birth and death. While we're at it, we could set mummies' invocations aptitude to 0, just like their necro aptitude.
I think there's a guy selling stones on the way out, don't forget your fake beards either
Make mummies unique among the undead in that they are allowed to join good gods.
Mummies have always been holy, religious things, and while that can be true in Crawl for neutral and evil gods, the concept of a mummified person makes perfect sense for solar/light/pure religions too. The mummy concept doesn't include a predatory lifestyle (such as vampires or ghouls) nor are they inherently touched by evil (such as demonspawn). Even better, by definition, they aren't predatory at all, unless you count mummies using Sublimation of Blood, Vampiric Draining or vampiric weapons, which are by themselves shunned by the good gods anyways.
In fact, mummies can't even drink blood, commit cannibalism, eat the flesh of sentients, gain mutations or cast self-transmutations. All this means that, behavior-wise, the good gods could rest assured that any mummies dedicated to them would actually be much more unlikely to offend them than mortals.
The rationale behind this could be that mummies aren't necessarily animated by necromancy, but can be created through advanced burial rituals too, deities willing.
An in-game argument for this is that mummies *can* be touched by the light of Elyvilon.
Caveats:
Holy energies from god abilities (such as cleansing flame, recite or sanctuary) could exact a toll on mummies, similar to how some necromantic effects harm the living. Elyvilon's self-healing could have a reduced effect, similar to how the healing invocations are less effective on the undead. Also, holy wrath and retribution from good gods would be much, much harsher on a mummy.
Other, non-god related undead limitations still apply in full: Mummies would still be unable to wield holy wrath weapons, and other holy effects would have their usual negative effects. Really, good god abilities are the polar opposite of necromancy (that's why there's no spellcasting holy magic) so holy mummies would be in a very similar position to a living necromancer without being an exact mirror image (wasn't one of the design philosophy guidelines the "subtle symmetry"?)
Basically, holy mummies would have to face:
-Undead forced restrictions on holy items and effects.
-Undead limitations on transmutations, necromancy and other effects that "only affect the living".
-Religious commandments on evil / chaotic / necromantic effects.
-Mummy-exclusive food clock related restrictions.
...quite a bunch of restrictions piled onto more restrictions, in exchange for better access to healing, stat and rot healing, cure confusion and stat buffs; which are three things that mummies are hard-pressed to find.
Fedhas Madash would still reject mummies on the grounds of violating the natural cycle of birth and death. While we're at it, we could set mummies' invocations aptitude to 0, just like their necro aptitude.
I think there's a guy selling stones on the way out, don't forget your fake beards either
Hirsch I wrote:Also,are you calling me a power-gamer? this is highly offensive! now excuse me, I have to go back to my GrBe game, that I savescummed until trog gave me a Vampiric +9 claymore.
