Phireis, God of Decay

[and into]

"Your flesh is my weapon."

As the patron of disease and decay, Phireis seeks to spread plague throughout the world. Upon worship, Phireis will fortify your metabolism and body against hunger, toxins, and disease, in order to make you a more effective carrier for powerful infection. The vile pathogens that Phireis bestows will make one all the more fearsome in combat, but at the expense of your health. All corpses will generate rotten, beginning upon worship.

Phireis does not accept worship from Demigods, nor from Undead or Gargoyles. ("Your flesh is useless to me.")
Phireis is considered an evil god in the eyes of TSO and company.

Appreciates:
+ Creating corpses (which generate rotten).
+ Infecting the normally incorruptible (such as demons, angels, and other non-natural enemies) with disease.


As your piety increases, Phireis's infection grows stronger within you. The higher your piety, the greater the chance for you to suffer one rot damage each turn, up to a certain % of your max HP. This chance to rot will only be "rolled" on turns during which a meaningful action was made, however that may be defined—e.g., new area explored, experience gained, etc.

The strength of Phireis’s passive and active abilities depends on your rot, rather than your piety; the abilities Phireis provides involve spreading infection. Enemies have a % chance each turn to be exposed, getting larger as they are closer to you. When exposed, said enemy rolls its HD against infection; likelihood and strength of infection scales up with amount of rot. If enemy resists, it is immune to further infection (though some later abilities get around this). If not, it is infected. Every time infection spreads there is a chance that 1 rot damage will be restored, as toxins and concentrated germ-ridden matter jumps from you to them. The chance will be inversely proportional to the strength of the enemy compared to you. Comparatively weak stuff will be crippled by your infection, without using up your valuable rot.

Infected enemies suffer damage and random status effects (poison, slow, confusion, blindness, or paralysis) that scale up with strength of infection. An infected enemy will be forever marked as infected and will be immune to further infections (again, some activated abilities can get around this).

  Code:

Upon Joining:

------ "Petri Dish of Phireis"
+ Immunity to poison, miasma, sickness, and flaying ("Your flesh is too precious to waste, mortal")
+ Immunity to rot from sources other than Phireis's divine infection.
+ Your metabolism is fortified and requires less food. 
+ All corpses generate rotten.

* “Infectee”
+ Up to 5% of your max HP may rot from your infection.
+ Infectious. Passive. Natural enemies directly adjacent to you have a chance each turn to be exposed. Upon exposure, enemies are subject to roll against infection, with higher HD enemies being more resistant. The strength of this passive ability scales up based on how much rot you have. Upon infecting enemies in this manner, there is a chance that 1 point of rot will be restored as your malignant toxins and pathogens spread to them; that chance depends on the difference in power between infected enemy and you. Comparatively weak enemies will die without using up your rot.

** “Pathogenitor”
+ Up to 7% of your max HP may rot.
+ Necrotic Touch. Activated ability. Small piety cost. Touch attack. Restores up to 5 HP of rot, and hits target with an intensified infection. Strength of infection scales up based on amount of rot restored. This intensified infection can ignore immunity once (i.e., can reroll against an enemy that resisted, or reinfect an enemy that was already infected.) 

*** “Carrier”
+ Up to 9% of your max HP may rot.
+ Epidemic. Passive. Your infectious aura extends to enemies within three tiles of you, but is weaker the further away an enemy is.
+ Festering Incubation. Activated ability. Moderate piety cost. Restores up to 7 HP of rot. Strength depends on amount of rot restored. All enemies within your infectious aura that are already infected polymorph into plague incubators which, for 2d3 turns, do nothing except emit their own putrescence, amplifying the infection in that area. You are rooted to spot (can't move, but can take other normal actions) for the same number of turns. After the time elapses, any plague incubators degrade into a miasmatic cloud.

**** “Patient Zero”
+ Up to 11% of your max HP may rot.
+ Foul Emission. Activated ability. Moderate piety cost. Restores up to 10 HP of rot. Activates breath cooldown. Emits a stream of miasma, akin to death drake breath. Power dependent upon amount of rot restored.

***** “Plague-Bearer”
+ Up to 13% of your max HP may rot.
+ Overwhelming foulness. Your infectious aura extends to 5 squares and can overcome resistances of non-undead enemies. (Can now infect non-natural enemies such as demons, angels, golems, etc.) Again, the further away an enemy, the lower the chance it will be infected.

****** “Pale Horseman”
+ Up to 15% of your max HP may rot.
+ Pestilence. Activated ability. High piety cost. Unloads your full infection, restoring all rot. Greatly magnifies your infectious aura for a period of time, extending infection to full LOS and setting infection to maximum power. The length of the pestilence scales up based on the amount of rot restored upon use. Unlike normal infection, pestilence allows re-infections that “stack” on the same enemy multiple times. During pestilence, any corpses immediately explode with miasma.

EDIT: Made some changes based on feedback from folks.

[dck]

Corrupting the incorruptible may need special casing so that you don't gain piety by standing a while next to plants but I have to say this looks pretty neat and I'd like to at least try it a lot.
One thing sounds annoying though, 5ing to "recover" rot. But that said I think an accelerated pace of rotting would fit the god and work pretty well. Also if the infection lasts forever then enemies should just not be able to get infected again at all, if not then a more modest timer might be good.

[psyshvl]

This is a pretty cool god concept, though I think the piety thresholds may need to be more extreme, maybe 20, 25, or even 30% at max piety. Some ideas for god abilities:

Infected monsters spread there disease to other monsters.
Some ability to remove disease from an enemy and inflict damage (Bonus points if they explode into rotted chunks and miasma if this kills them) or debuffs them.
Taking damage makes you generate miasma or makes it more likely for you to spray poisonous/disease-inflicting blood everywhere.

[sgrunt]

Needs a different name - Nemelex already has the 'N' deck stacked.

I'll delve through this in more detail, but an immediate question: What's the intent of the "rotten corpses" idea, particularly given that there's been some talk of doing away with chunk eating in most cases?

[dck]

@psyshvl: Doing miasma stuff when damaged overlaps with the Ds rotting mutation set. Miasma is also very powerful which is why I like that it isn't used everywhere and that the abilities that do let you create miasma require a decent amount of rot.
Letting it make you rot to 30% or even 20% is too much and in fact quite annoying to play, as that simply rushes the player to continue moving (thus going against other parts of crawl that demand rest) and spamming the abilities when you don't really need them to alleviate some extra rot. 15% sounds like a reasonable temporary price to pay and doesn't reduce your actual hit point pool in a drastic way that you have to actively work around.

[TeshiAlair]

Needs a different name - Nemelex already has the 'N' deck stacked.

I'll delve through this in more detail, but an immediate question: What's the intent of the "rotten corpses" idea, particularly given that there's been some talk of doing away with chunk eating in most cases?

I will cry the day chunks are removed, so I heartily support this god :p

Additionally, the theme is really cool. I see him almost as an anti-fedhas.

What if instead of straight up miasma, corpses turned into a wide variety of clouds that mirror the effects of infection.

[and into]

Some ability to remove disease from an enemy and inflict damage (Bonus points if they explode into rotted chunks and miasma if this kills them) or debuffs them.

That's sort of what pestilence would be, in practice. It doesn't remove disease, but any corpse-generating stuff that dies will explode with miasma. Rotten chunks flying everywhere could be good flavor for that, too, why not.

@ dck: I think you got what I was going for here. Good point about plants and infection. Also I meant to say in OP that the chance for getting your rot back should only be rolled during "meaningful" turns, however that's defined (exploring a new area, getting experience, etc.) It makes sense that Neph wants you to actively find new stuff to infect, rather than autotraveling to stuff you've dropped or loitering in areas you've already cleared. Hopefully that takes care of the 5ing problem. Also, it occurs to me that perhaps you should have a much lower, but non-zero chance to infect stuff like demons initially, and at ***** piety or whatever they simply lose that additional resistance to infection.

@ sgrunt: Well if chunk eating for satiation does end up being removed for most species, the decay thing could just be flavor—your presence causes wilting, decay, decomposition. Or we could just lose that part of it entirely. But the idea was thematic and removes something that I find irritating, namely the constant butchering for food purposes. Good point about N and Nemelex, forgot about that. How about something shorter and simpler: Oma.

[dck]

Well realistically you're never going to infect anything that matters and is immune (but not undead) at low piety so it wouldn't change things a whole lot I guess.
Oma is neat and all but Oka was here first. Phireis sounds cool.
So that's seven posts in and name discussions are already ongoing, good.

[WalkerBoh]

Oma is German for "grandma", that seems so wrong for the God of Rot. But also hilarious. And dck, the name is obviously the most important consideration!!

Really like the idea overall, this seems quite well thought out. Agree that rotting should be linked to exploration, that's the least scummy way. Does piety still decay over time?

[Wahaha]

The god gives the ability to apply random debuffs on enemies and miasma. At the cost of 15% hp and having to do some kind of rot micromanagement. He needs to get an ability that's interesting AND useful because right now he's weak and boring.

[and into]

Well I was thinking oma as a suffix, as in "lymphoma." Jesus complete brainfart about Okawaru though that's embarrassing.

Dropping the "Ne" and going with Phireis does sound cool, thanks dck.

Piety decay over time probably still makes sense.

[and into]

Strange to call the god weak when no numbers have actually been discussed. Passively causing status *and* damage (read OP) automatically to enemies close to you, subject to HD check, could be gamebreakingly powerful or it could be too weak, depending on the numbers. Miasma is also, uh, pretty damn strong which is why (as dck pointed out) I was careful in how much player could access it through this god.

As for boring... Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

[dck]

Uh Wahaha apostates effects on things that are in melee range alone the moment you join is pretty strong I think, it doesn't even take one star to start doing things that matter so (I'm assuming sane numbers for triggering chances of disease here) it puts it ahead of a decent number of gods already.
There is no rot micro either, you eventually have fragile 1.5 and restore it when you use abilities, abilities which straightforward and strong, how is he weak?

I don't think he would be significantly boring although the cough ability does sound a bit lackluster. Just spitballing here but what if you could enter some rooting state during which you can act but not move and which lasts say 2d3 turns. During it your infection becomes more virulent and if a monster is adjacent to you for say 1d3 turns while you're rooted it becomes rooted itself.
May be a bit of a mess though, it's just that an active ability that does the same as your passive but better sounds weird.

@and into: I'm assuming afflictions are permanent but if they aren't they probably should last a long while.

[and into]

I don't think he would be significantly boring although the cough ability does sound a bit lackluster. Just spitballing here but what if you could enter some rooting state during which you can act but not move and which lasts say 2d3 turns. During it your infection becomes more virulent and if a monster is adjacent to you for say 1d3 turns while you're rooted it becomes rooted itself.
May be a bit of a mess though, it's just that an active ability that does the same as your passive but better sounds weird.

Yeah that could be neat; could flavor it as "plague incubation" or something along those lines. Give up (or greatly restrict) movement to increase virulence, chance for monsters next to you to also become incubators that can't move and spread more plague. That sounds good to me.

[dck]

(also clearly make the 6* title Pale -player race- and keep Horseman for Ce only :P)

[crate]

pale pale draconian, make this a thing

[Sar]

Palest Draconian

[Wahaha]

Sorry, I often assume some things are obvious and don't explain.

You're right, he could be strong if the infection works often. I assumed it wouldn't work that often because of the HD check. If the intention is for the ability to work consistently then I'm not sure if an HD check is a good idea. If it doesn't work consistently then it's not very good at all.
Breathing miasma is certainly extremely strong, but a similar, admittedly weaker but similar, effect can be achieved with curare which requires practically no investment to use, and a level 2 spell. This miasma ability stands out in situations where the player needs to slow an enemy in as few turns as possible, and doesn't have time to set up curare or corpse rot (the ability happens instantly without any set up unlike the other two). This kind of situation is rare. Miasma breath IS good, but personally I wouldn't give it much value when choosing whether to pick this god or not.

He essentially has 2 abilities, because 3 of the abilities are "infection", "stronger infection" and "strongerer infection". With 2 abilities, the infection one would have to be really good, or at least decent early, to make him match other gods, and the hp rot.

Boring because he has only 2 abilities and neither of them affects the character's playstyle in a significant way as far as I can tell. This is something that I would expect a god, and especially a new god, to do. I also don't get the point of the rot restoration thing. Rot is a strategic cost, that is restored by tactical abilities, that cost another strategic resource to use. What is going on here? Why do tactical abilities restore a strategic resource? It's worth noting that if the player's ability usage is evenly spread out throughout the game, the player will always be at -15% hp or at -0% hp on average.

apostates effects on things

Yes this god did made me think of Zin and his recite applying random statuses and damage, immunity to poison, inability to eat a lot of corpses, and assistance with food.

and into, don't take the negativity in a wrong way, I'm being critical to help improve the proposal.

[and into]

Thanks—that was helpful. Until you specified a bit more what was boring or weak in your view, though, there wasn't much for me to chew on.

Having an infectious aura will change your considerations when it comes to how you position yourself in fighting situations. There aren't many (if any?) effects in game that operate in the way being "infectious," as described, would. I think that could strike a good balance between "your usual tactics will still work, but in some cases slight alterations or different considerations might be in order," which is a good goal for passive divine abilities. And I think some version of dck's "incubation" idea for an ability, as an addition or replacement, would introduce some interesting tactical considerations.

Basically the idea with rot for this god is that you have a resource that all your divine abilities depend on that is tactically much more limited than piety. Piety costs are still a thing because otherwise you'd want to use all your rot abilities in *every* fight which would be boring. Slightly lower HP is part of the trade off; I didn't want the rot % to get too high because it shouldn't be something you obsess over, but at high piety the god does make you more frail on average, although the exact amount of max HP you lose out on will vary. Because rot spending is directly linked with using (hopefully) good abilities, it shouldn't be any more micro-managey than MP, and could introduce interesting decisions in much the same way that MP costs can. (Especially since here you will mostly be working with a smaller resource, as 15% of your HP at X level will generally be lower than the MP pool that a casting-focused character of X level would have.)

EDIT: What dck said about altering battlefield with miasma clouds that you are immune to, via miasma breath as well as (to lesser extent) pestilence, is also very much on point.

[dck]

@Wahaha: Well and into hasn't given numbers, I've been assuming the infection would commonly spread with say 30% chance to enemies of HD ~4 at zero piety which sounds reasonable to me and also sounds useful. I've also been assuming this sort of chance of infection vs HD is more or less maintained throughout the game as enemy HD increases and so does your piety, being ahead of the curve for a decent while in the early game when gods' help is the most valuable.

Breathing miasma is a lot stronger than curare or cRot because unlike those things if you worship the god you have it for sure. Even when compared to those things it comes out ahead since it takes much less time to use and has a much stronger AoE effect. To me this is comparable to fedhas' bombs or makhleb's major destruction and I would personally use it a lot more than to just slow enemies. Foul pestilence does impact damage and then making them stay in the miasma (to which you are immune) lets you alter the battlefield in an interesting way.

Rot restoration makes a lot of sense to me also, it makes you voluntarily stay in a weaker state so that you can then unload serious offensive potential should you need it and when you use them you need to explore and kill dudes for a while to bring them back to their full strength -as a compensation you get your HP back in the meantime while those abilities recharge properly. I don't know where the "always be at -15% hp or at -0% hp" part comes from.

[spudwalt]

Hey, a plague god proposal! I'd started brainstorming my own ideas for a plague god, but never got to the point where I was confident enough to make a thread.

My original idea had revolved around making yourself Sick, nixing your regeneration in exchange for a collection of buffs and the ability to debilitate your foes. Your rotting idea sounds a *lot* better. Miasma breath also sounds really fun.

Would you get Saprovore as part of the god's benefits, or are you stuck eating permafood (which isn't as bad as it sounds, I realize, having just finished a game where I was eating mostly permafood for a fair portion of the late game)? I noticed he slows down your metabolism, so that should help.

Complete immunity to poison is actually pretty powerful, especially in places like Snake or Spider. I think resistance would probably work fine, though people are welcome to disagree with me.

Would there be room for a Evaporate-style ability that would make use of the extraneous potions of poison/paralysis/confusion/etc. lying around? Now that they've removed Fulsome Distillation/Evaporate (which was scummy as heck, I'll admit), those potions are only there for the "LOL you drank a crappy potion" factor, and I've kinda wished there was some other use for them ever since.

+1 for "Pale Horseman" being reserved for centaurs.

For what it's worth, the name I came up with for my idea was Uhlarug the Plaguebringer. Phireis sounds fine, though.

  Code:

A festering altar of <plague god>
This altar is composed of a strange, almost fleshy material and is covered in a multitude of sores, pustules, and pockmarks. Rivulets of pus, ichor, and other less-identifiable fluids ceaselessly trickle across its surface.

[dck]

Complete immunity to poison isn't that strong in those places but it's strong in the early game when that ko with a blowgun didn't kill you the moment you walked into LoS with one needle.
Playing with constant sickness is basically being a deep dwarf that also loses stats randomly and that does not sound very fun. Neither does carrying 15 extra potions.

[spudwalt]

Playing with constant sickness is basically being a deep dwarf that also loses stats randomly and that does not sound very fun.

Yep, that's why I said the rotting idea was better.

My original idea on the Evaporate-style ability didn't involve an equivalent Fulsome Distillation, but the ability to corrupt other potions. So, instead of carrying around a pile of potions that you made from corpses, you'd use any harmful potions you happened to find plus any spare potions you chose to convert. Granted, I don't think this god necessarily *needs* an Evaporate-style ability; it was just something I'd come up with earlier that I thought made thematic sense with the god.

[Quazifuji]

I agree with Wahaha that the abilities do seem a bit redundant. Thematically, it works great, and mechanically, it feels right to have varying power levels of attacks for different Rot costs, but it's also true that his abilities end up being "passive infection, active infection, miasma, miasma and infection". And there's overlap in the effects of infection and miasma, too. Basically, every single major ability he has is just "status effects everywhere" (well, cough is status effects on one enemy).

Granted, I'm not sure how to replace the abilities. A low-cost ability at low piety seems necessary, although cough seems kind of boring. Miasma breath is a fun concept, and having his ultimate ability be "Miasma and Disease everywhere" is fitting. But finding a way to work in more variety instead of just have four different ways of causing status effects and damage would be nice.

[Siegurt]

Well, I'd like to see a defensive ability of some sort. I feel like the god is all about "Kill stuff faster and better" but there's no panic buttons, and no increased survivability or "get me out of trouble" type ability.

Although I guess being able to consistently slow a lot of stuff is a bump to survivability.

[Lasty]

I like the god idea overall, but I do think it needs some tuning. I agree with Wahaha that the abilities are a bit monochromatic, though I expect them to be plenty powerful. Against the vast majority of monsters (melee-only, not faster than you) the infection rate might as well be 100%, since you can just kite them until they become infected; since you can reinfect, if the initial infection doesn't roll a good disable, you can kite them until they get reinfected and receive a better disable.

[dpeg]

Very interesting proposal! I have seen decay god designs, this one looks really neat. Sorry I took so long for reply... much going on in Crawl country these days.

Good: maxhp loss in a very organic fashion, and at the same time using it as a currency and a timer.

How is piety gained? I understand that for the various effects rot is used, but piety seemed to cap rot.

Losing rot when infecting monsters could be double-edged. It's a passive ability that can be negative -- not good. Cough does not have this problem, as it's an active ability.

When you say "restore some [all] rot", does the character gain the rotted HP back in one go?

Minor flavour quibble: the theme is a bit too clinical at some points (for my taste). For example, "enhanced pathogens" sounds very modern -- and is followed by the biblical "Pestilence". No big deal, of course.

This is certainly flavourful, and power is not a problem (easy to make this god extremely strong). I am a little worried that the concept is very one-sided: it's all about offense. I realise that this is completely intentional, I just wonder how much fun this might be for me. It's no principal objection to the god.

Some random ideas after reading this:
* What if the sickness could spread from one affected monster to an adjacent, non-affected one? [already suggested, I now see]
* Monsters which are "too sick" in some sense could turn to zombies right away.
* Lowly and sentient monsters (such as plain orcs in Orc) might flee from your sickening presence. (Probably not worth it; if done, give full xp.)

sgrunt: a god changing diet from normal (whatever that means now or later) to ghoul-style, say, would be okay.

[sgrunt]

a god changing diet from normal (whatever that means now or later) to ghoul-style, say, would be okay.

That's part of why I'm asking that question - the resistances this god grants, as written, do not allow people to eat the chunks the generate, and I've wondered if it would grant ghoul-type chunk eating in that fashion (perhaps gradually?).

[and into]

Well you could go a few different ways, all of them... er, flavorful.

1.) Sudden or slow-onset ghouldom.

2.) No food from corpses but your metabolism is fortified so you get some degree of a spriggan-like relationship to food, albeit without vegetarian restrictions (unless you are a spriggan and worship Phireis, obviously).

3.) Corpses rot to nothing very quickly and nourish you automatically, as if you had eaten them, up to "full" status. This would be pretty cool as you literally feed off the decay caused by the symbiotically linked parasites/pathogens/decay that you infect stuff with.

Note that depending on how fast decay sets in, worshiping this god could restrict necromantic use of chunks (sub of blood and simulcrum) but I think that's fine as a very minor conduct/imposition created by the god. Certainly, except during Pestilence, rotting shouldn't happen so quickly that it would prevent butchering for hides, casting animate dead/twisted res/animate skele, etc.

dpeg: Glad you like it. I'm going to slightly amend OP to avoid the "passive ability possibly being annoying" issue by fleshing out (ha) how the rot/infection stuff works. I'll also give a shot at incorporating a version of dck's idea that would be somewhat more defensively oriented—I think that could really round out the god.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

EDIT: Okay, made cough into necrotic touch, which is somewhat more meaningful now due to changes in how infection will work. Those changes also avoid kiting issues. Added a "Festering Incubation" ability that should be gross and awesome; you give up mobility to turn nearby infected enemies into immobile plague incubators—credit and thanks due to dck for the idea behind that ability. Finally, reworded some stuff to make the theme more consistent by removing some of the more clinical language, as per dpeg's suggestion.

EDIT: Added to devwiki: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:propose:decay_god