Smith/fire god

[Viashino_wizard]

What happens if an ogre uses the ability to wear plate armor, but then inflicts penance? Does the plate armor suddenly fall off or burst?

Probably, that's what happens when someone mutates Horns/Antennae while wearing a helmet.

[HilariousDeathArtist]

I finished a MiFi^Igni with 3 runes and I really enjoy the lore for this god. I've got quite a few suggestions for tweaks and abilities, so feel free to use or ignore any of them.

There isn't much benefit to staying at high piety, so I think there is some room for improvement here. There could be a sliding equipment bonus based on your piety. Giving a bonus to AC, accuracy, and damage would help to make up for the lack of combat abilities, which helps to keep up with the other melee gods.

I'm completely making up numbers, but at max piety +7 AC, and +7, +7 slaying sounds nice. This could be only awarded if you are wearing specific items if you want to create a behavior/restriction such as metal armours, but I feel that it would be fine to be universal, since I didn't like discouraging creating dragon armours.

I'm not a fan of the god providing rC-, since it restricts your choice in equipment, which seems like an odd behavior for the equipment-based god. The fire resistance is nice, and fits the lore. I don't think it should be given as soon as you begin worshipping him, 4* or 5* piety seems like a reasonable choice.

Divine Bellows was really lackluster the one time I tried to use it, since it didn't even move the hydra away from me. I would rather see a Divine Flames ability, which would act like Conjure Flame. This could be the first ability, given at 1* or 2* piety, and costing 50-100g.

Firebrand weapon was actually nice for my character, since it encouraged using heavier weapons. Unfortunately I didn't earn this until near the end of Lair, so I think it should be given earlier, perhaps being merged with the Divine Flames ability proposed above (when you select your tile).

Using firebrand weapon on enemies was interesting but seemed awkward. It either completely shuts down an enemy or wasn't useful. I'm not sure that I would keep the ability to apply firebrand to enemies.

I didn't artefact my weapon until zot, primarily due to the lack of enchantment on my weapon. The few scrolls I found tended to fail, and I of course wanted to have as high an enchantment as possible. I do think that this is a great skill however, and should also be extended to "artefact body armour". The list of choices I was given were somewhat lackluster (and would have fit armours better), but that can be improved. Perhaps allowing weapons to be over-enchanted (up to +12,+12), and never decreasing the enchantment level would improve this. 500g seemed somewhat cheap by the time I decided to use it. This could be an altar ability if you want to limit it's use.

To improve upon the fact that you want to encourage users to enchant their weapons and armour as much as possible, I believe that this god should provide an ability to enchant your equipment. This would work like a scroll of enchant weapon 3 or enchant armour. This could be the second ability, given at 3* or 4* piety, and cost around 200-400g.

TL;DR

1* or 2*:Divine Flames: Works like conjure flame but can also firebrand your weapon. ~50g+SmallPiety
3* or 4*:Enchant Equipment: Works like enchant weapon 3 or enchant armour. ~250g+MeduimPiety
4* or 5*:Resist Fire
6*:Artefact Equipment: Works on weapon and body armour. ~1000g+LargePiety
[Piety Level +1]: bonus to AC and Slaying

[dpeg]

I fell so in love with some of my ideas that I had to flesh them out. Since I shouldn't hijack pubby's thread for this (my design scraps the links to metal, fire and the gold costs), I put it up on the wiki instead: equipment god.

[roctavian]

Artefacting weapons and giving them names is nice, but I think we need to address the phenomena of offensive names earlier than later. Do we leave things completely open? We're already getting "DONGS" and "WeedlordHitler" and other such names on player-made artefacts in the experimental branch. Item names are less visible than player names, and I personally feel that players should be able to name their things whatever they please, but I know that isn't everyone's opinion.

It would be bad to remove the option to freely name things after players get used to it; just want to make sure this is discussed.

[dpeg]

roctavian: In my proposal, the names are generated by the game. If you want to avoid abuse (I certainly do), that's the only option, in my opinion at least. No script can keep up with the kiddies, and I don't want to play "trick the script" with them.

[Hirsch I]

Dpeg: your idea is awesome! the trove-like requirements for the final artifact look very fun.
but naming them would be very fun, and the game already generates Dongs and stuff like that. I think it is worth it.

[duvessa]

Artefacting weapons and giving them names is nice, but I think we need to address the phenomena of offensive names earlier than later. Do we leave things completely open? We're already getting "DONGS" and "WeedlordHitler" and other such names on player-made artefacts in the experimental branch. Item names are less visible than player names, and I personally feel that players should be able to name their things whatever they please, but I know that isn't everyone's opinion.

It would be bad to remove the option to freely name things after players get used to it; just want to make sure this is discussed.

So...you want to remove the ability to inscribe items, then?

[DracheReborn]

Re names, I thought it was a nice touch to allow the player to name his artefact weapon.

If it's regarded as abusable, then maybe change it so that it always gives playername + random word? E.g. the great sword of dpeg's Fury, etc.

But as duvessa points out, you can already inscribe anything you want on your weapon, so...

[spudwalt]

YES to player-created artifacts named after the player. Seriously, that would be amazing.

[pubby]

I sent some patches to the devs yesterday. They haven't been committed yet, and I don't know when that will happen today, but these are the changes that are coming up:

  Code:

- Bellows is much stronger
- Remove passive rF+ and rC-
- 0*: enchant scrolls never fail
- 4*: fire fortress ability. Surrounds you and adjacent monsters with flame clouds. Can be used offensively or defensively.
- All gold costs removed. Artefactize now has a trove-like requirement


but at max piety +7 AC, and +7, +7 slaying sounds nice

The current metal armour AC bonus about +8 AC at max piety in plate. I am not doing slaying yet because there is no clear concept of what weapons are metal. I am not giving a bonus to all types of equipment because ash and chei already do that.

I think we need to address the phenomena of offensive names earlier than later

Later is better. It has no effect on gameplay or design.

[roctavian]

So...you want to remove the ability to inscribe items, then?

Note:

I personally feel that players should be able to name their things whatever they please

It's not a change I'm pushing for, it's just one that will eventually come up. As pubby said, design comes first -- but the issue of profanity/censorship is a divisive one in the crawl community. We can put this conversation on hold for now, let's not derail smithgod discussion further (my bad).

[DracheReborn]

With racial armour getting removed, I wonder if the mooted-about masterwork ego (corrosion resistant + spellcasting bonus) would fit in with smithgod.

Also, there's a potential clash with Beogh and smithgod both boosting all armour passively. (Well ok, Beogh also boosts non-metallic armour.)

[pubby]

I just won my first Igni game, a HOGl, on the experimental branch. Morgue here:
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/pubby/morgu ... 213516.txt

It's kind of silly to post feedback in my own thread, but here are my thoughts nonetheless:

Power-wise, I think think the god is pretty good. The buffed divine bellows saved this char a few times in the game, and I went on to abuse it in Zot:5 to waltz into the orb chamber. I got some positive feedback on the "fire fortress" ability, and used it in vaults:5 and snake:5 offensively.

Artefactize seems better without the gold cost, but I think it may need some more choices presented to you. dpeg's idea about having a guaranteed low-cost, low-enchantment choice would work, or I could just generate a few more random ones.

Here are god ability statistics:

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
 Abil: Firebrand Weapon  |       |       |       |     1 |     2 |     2 |     2 |     2 |     3 ||    12
       Divine Bellows    |       |       |       |       |     3 |     3 |     3 |     1 |     7 ||    17
       Fire Fortress     |       |       |       |       |     1 |     1 |     3 |     3 |     5 ||    13
       Artefactize Weapo |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1


These are much higher than games where there was a gold cost for abilities, but they not as high as I was hoping.

[bcadren]

I once had thoughts on doing an Hephaestus-based god. Some stuff from that if you'd like to apply any of it:

Molten: The blade is not solid; thus it completely ignores armor. 75% Irresistible + 75% Fire damage. [either temporary buff or brand]
Obsidian: Made of hardened imperfect Stone instead of metal. As such it can be manipulated by Earth Magic. [Similar to pain it's affected by your skill in a magic school. Unlike pain it's by percentage and not a set amount each hit (better on large weapons)] [brand]

My version was intended for battlemages liking you to train Fire/Earth and Armor skills; which is a little different; could reforge heavy armor to not impede spellcasting and put the reflection ego on plate mails and higher.

I also had an eruption ability planned on that one...but it was essentially...powerful magic attack that turned a lot of the area around into lava and summoned salamanders... Also had a prayer ability to temporarily turn all weapons on the ground into lava (supposedly a sacrifice where he melts them to make weapons and armors)...

The magma forme seems more interesting that my eruption and overall I like it. 'great minds think alike' and all that. Feel free to take or leave anything I said.

[and into]

Here are god ability statistics:

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
 Abil: Firebrand Weapon  |       |       |       |     1 |     2 |     2 |     2 |     2 |     3 ||    12
       Divine Bellows    |       |       |       |       |     3 |     3 |     3 |     1 |     7 ||    17
       Fire Fortress     |       |       |       |       |     1 |     1 |     3 |     3 |     5 ||    13
       Artefactize Weapo |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |     1 |       ||     1


These are much higher than games where there was a gold cost for abilities, but they not as high as I was hoping.

Yeah, those are pretty low values for those abilities, and they aren't used at all until level 10.

I have a dude^Igni Ipthes on CSZO at the moment, and from your stats and my experience thus far with my guy, I'd suggest making a "disarm/remove armor" ability that comes online early, has small piety cost, and which targets only enemies with items. This could come online at *, and would be a useful and thematic low-tier ability. It could scale up with piety gain from disarm --> disarm + remove armor --> remove all items from enemy (including wands and rods and the like). Items thus removed cannot be picked up by other enemies (you can flavor this as "Igni's mark makes these items burn to the touch of everyone except you"). Having a disarm ability work via firebrand weapon is awkward both in terms of opacity, description of the ability, and interface.

Divine Bellows and Fire Fortress would round out the tactical abilities, while firebrand weapon ensures that you have good quality weapons early on and through mid-game, and artefactize basically ensures engame quality on one or two weapons.

Quick question: How does the improvement from wearing metal items work exactly? (Just curious)

[DracheReborn]

Alas, pubby isn't around these days, so I understand. The Ignis branch in CSZO is pretty outdated and no one is maintaining it anymore.

I'd suggest making a "disarm/remove armor" ability that comes online early, has small piety cost, and which targets only enemies with items.

PleasingFungus on IRC had a pretty neat suggestion, to have enemy disarmed weapons act as your allied dancing weapons. Well actually he wanted that for Tukima's, but I thought it would have fit this god.

[and into]

On second thought, something like

* Disarm: Any non-branded weapon wielded by target enemy is dropped, and cannot be picked up by any enemy forever/for a long time. (This doesn't permanently firebrand the weapon.) Can only affect hostile targets. Works on melee or launchers.
*** Disarm: Any weapon (including branded/artefacts) wielded by target enemy is dropped, and cannot be picked up by any enemy forever/for a long time. (This doesn't permanently firebrand the weapon.) Can only affect hostile targets. Works on melee or launchers.
***** or ****** Disarm: Same as ***, except that any melee weapons disarmed in this way will have a chance to become a friendly dancing weapon for a very short period of time.

(Much less duration than Tukima's; the fact it isn't a guaranteed chance and it has short duration should be enough to make scumming simply not worth it (scumming via, e.g., getting an enemy to walk over and pick up a more powerful weapon before disarming them.))

Doesn't affect armor or wands, which would be weird anyway. Flavor it as "Igni Ipthes's mark causes the weapon to burn any who touch it, except you."

Fire brand affects only your own currently wielded weapon and comes online at **.

The rest of the abilities operate as currently.

[mrbobbyg]

I've been having a lot of fun with an OgHu who follows the smith. A fire branded GSC is a thing of beauty, and it makes me so happy to have an ogre in plate mail. Fun god for me so far, haven't used the abilities all that much; the passive is just wonderful enough. Not sure if it would be enough on a normal sized creature though.