Caveman God: Rogg

[pubby]

Rogg the Prehistoric

A god based on fictional cavemen. Rogg takes stupid, barbaric monkeys and turns them into smart and talented adventurers.

Likes:
- Training non-weapon/non-archery skills. Rogg wants your brain to develop.
- Exploring. Your tribe must expand!

Dislikes:
- Using evocations. Rogg doesn't trust these mechanical devices.

Can't worship:
- Species that didn't evolve: Fe, Gr, Gh, Mu, and Vp.
- Demigods.

Join bonus: Upon joining, Rogg immediately gifts you a "bone club". The club has the same stats as a morningstar and is enchanted to +2. The club cannot be used by non-worshipers.

Abilities:
Note: Rogg uses invocations for his abilities.
* Hide Wearer (passive): The encumbrance rating of all hides is divided by 2, and the base AC is multiplied by 2.
** Fire Starter (active): Conjure flame effect that can only be cast adjacent to you. High chance to fail, but no piety cost.
*** Hunter Gifts: Rogg gifts you stacks of plain, non-branded ammo.
**** Dinosaur Summon (active, food, piety): Destroy a ration to summon a dinosaur. Carnivore ration = t-rex. Herbivore ration = triceratops. Omnivore ration = pterodactyl. Duration is based on nutrition value.
****** Fossilize (active, piety, mp): Creates a cloud of petrifying dust around you. Big piety cost.

Passive INT effect: You int is scaled based on your piety. With low piety, you receive a large int penalty. With high piety, you receive a large int boost. Here's a formula:

  Code:

int = (int * piety + 50) / 150

Punishments:
Hostile dinosaurs, int drain, and random mutations.

[Wahaha]

The 1st ability is useless with the current hide stats. I like the flavor though, maybe you could change the numbers. AC should be multiplied by 3 at least. If hides get stats good enough to wear them over say, a +2 dragon armor, so that people actually wear hides with this god at least sometimes, it creates an interesting situation where the character can change to a different hide at any time without wasting an EA scroll investment. The EA scrolls could go into other armor slots instead.

The club gift is strange. I don't like that it's only for a specific weapon type.

Fire starter is kind of nice but I don't think it would make me pick this god over other gods with good 1 * abilities. Since he doesn't offer any other useful abilities until 4 *, I would only pick this god with hunters.

[1010011010]

If by hides you include leather and dragon armour, then this could be a very good god for battle mage types.
Fire starter should be more reliable but finite, what about using arrows/stick to snake ammo to fuel the fire.
Summon dinosaur might need to summon beasts, same concept but with existing monster (although I would want a pet velociraptor).
does fossilise work like a ?fog but with calcifying dust? a beam like the Catoblepas' might work better.

This god seems a bit muddled in what it's trying to do or purpose to serve.
Why is this god giving you a melee weapon and stacks of ammo if it doesn't want you to use it?

Fe are evolved.

[duvessa]

I think by hides he meant hides, just guessing.

[pubby]

The 1st ability is useless with the current hide stats. I like the flavor though, maybe you could change the numbers. AC should be multiplied by 3 at least. If hides get stats good enough to wear them over say, a +2 dragon armor, so that people actually wear hides with this god at least sometimes, it creates an interesting situation where the character can change to a different hide at any time without wasting an EA scroll investment. The EA scrolls could go into other armor slots instead.

Yeah, the formula is hard to get right. I agree that a hide should be about as good as a +2 dragon armour. AC*3 seems reasonable.

what about using arrows/stick to snake ammo to fuel the fire.

I had this originally, but I figured that nobody wanted to go back to d:1-d:3 picking up every arrow or constantly wield them before each invocation.

does fossilise work like a ?fog but with calcifying dust?

Most likely, except that it wouldn't place a cloud on top of you. I think a beam would be too good, but maybe not.

Why is this god giving you a melee weapon and stacks of ammo if it doesn't want you to use it?

He certainly wants you to use them, but doesn't give piety for it. I thought the conflicting abilities would interesting.

[wheals]

How about replacing Fire Starter with something creating a cloud of fog instead; it could be called "Smoke Signal" instead and cost piety, since infinite fog is very powerful. Fossilize could instead cast "mass petrify" all around you with power equal to your piety, so that it has almost the chance of a cloud to work. Just copying a spell seems boring.

Also he should be named Plogg.

[Igxfl]

Note that there is no spell that creates a calcifying cloud. They're kind of interesting in that they don't depend on MR like Petrify does, but do require spending two turns in the dust.

[wheals]

Oops, I meant that Fire Starter was copying a spell, but if it was replaced by Smoke Signal then the god would have two cloud creation invocations.

[duvessa]

Note that there is no spell that creates a calcifying cloud. They're kind of interesting in that they don't depend on MR like Petrify does, but do require spending two turns in the dust.

No, they only require one turn inside the cloud.

[pubby]

How about replacing Fire Starter with something creating a cloud of fog instead

Well, fossilize has cloud of fog effect too. You can't see through calcifying dust.

I think fire starter could create a smoke cloud or two along with the fire.

[MrPlanck]

General idea sounds interesting. I'd give it a test run.

[Lasty]

The theme of this god feels pretty arbitrary to me: god of acting like a caveman stereotype, along with dinosaurs and everything.

Also, there's the question of which species "evolved" -- most of the hybrids seem more like the products of magic rather than evolution, and this god would require us to determine categorically which are which.

Overall, I don't like the focus on specific and arbitrary forms of "primitive" equipment (any cave human would be thrilled to come across chainmail or a crossbow, and would very quickly figure out how to make use of them). The god allegedly wants you to evolve from being a stupid monkey, but in fact you have to revert to a stupid monkey to worship the god (horse-monkey for centaurs? snake-monkey for naga?), and once you do, you mostly get rewards based on continuing to use stupid-monkey equipment.

The powers don't feel powerful or particularly interesting: conjure flame, ammo gifts for the launchers you are encouraged not to train, brothers in arms that aren't berserk. The only part of this proposal that I would like to see more of is the ability to create a petrifying dust cloud.

Also, there's the question of who this god is aimed at: he gives you piety for training non-weapon/launcher skills such as Fire, Conjurations, and Summoning, and that piety is cashed in for a fire conjuration and a summoning spell.

[DracheReborn]

Passive INT effect: You int is scaled based on your piety. With low piety, you receive a large int penalty. With high piety, you receive a large int boost. Here's a formula:

  Code:

int = (int * piety + 50) / 150

The formula doesn't look right. Did you mean new_int = int * (piety + 50) / 150 ? (Note parenthesis)

Seems to me that you'd mostly get DE conjurator types worshiping this god to get the Int boost. It's better than Chei's flat +15 boost once your Int is past a certain threshold (23 for this formula), and you don't even get slowed! All the other god abilities seem paltry in comparison.

Can't worship:
- Species that didn't evolve: Fe, Gr, Gh, Mu, and Vp.
- Demigods.

Note that this technically makes Rogg the most racist god after Beogh. The good gods actually disallow one less species (undead + demonspawn + demigod).

As others mentioned, there are a lot of conflicting aspects to this god, but the high failure rate of the Fire Starter ability struck me in particular. Your god is supposed to make you smart, yet you can't even start a fire properly? I think you are perhaps too taken with the caveman stereotype.