Proposal: Grethar, God of Wealth and Trade

[Laraso]

This is a quick idea I whipped up, after being inspired by a post by Arkhan in the "godless treasure trove" thread. I don't have all the finer-points worked out yet, but here's the general idea of it. Thoughts?
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"Go forth and spread wealth across the dungeon!" Grethar is the god of wealth and trade. Grethar wishes for wealth to be spread to everyone who has the potential to make purchases, in order to facilitate trade. Worshipers are encouraged to use their wealth to persuade their enemies and invest in shops.

Worshipers can gain piety by:

• (Low) Obtaining non-gifted gold.
• (Medium) Spreading wealth. This includes spending money in shops and using the Bribe/Contract abilities.
• (High) Picking gold when using scrolls of acquirement

Grethar dislikes it when worshipers break contracts (damaging monsters affected by Bribe or Contract)


OVERVIEW:
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*.....

• 5% discount off of store prices
  
• New ability: Bribe (Targeted)
  - (Gold) Use on any hostile, intelligent, sentient enemy to turn them neutral. Use on any neutral, intelligent, sentient enemy to turn them friendly (not allied!). Does not work on insects, animals, or undead (worms, yaks, ghouls, etc). This does not award any XP.
• New ability: Fund (Prayer)
  - (Low Piety, Gold) Use while standing over a closed shop to have Grethar send his minions to open it up for business and allows the player to choose what type of shop it will be. Use while standing over a closed bazaar portal to re-open it again. Costs 200 gold.

__________________________
**....

• 10% discount off of store prices
  
• Grethar begins sending gifts of gold, randomly ranging from 50 to 200 gold pieces.

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***...

• 15% discount off of store prices
  
• New ability: Invest (Targeted)
  - (Moderate Piety, Gold) Use on a shop to restock its inventory with new items.

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****..

• 20% discount off of store prices
  

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*****.

• 25% discount off of store prices
  
• New ability: Contract (Targeted)
  - (Gold) Use on an enemy to have them become permanently allied with you. Does not work on any enemy who is hostile and/or cannot react or think clearly (paralysis, petrification, sleep, confusion, etc.). Costs five times as much as Bribe, and has all the same restrictions. Does not work on uniques.

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• 30% discount off of store prices
  

Math Formulas:

Spoiler: show

FUND: This ability costs 200 gold.
BRIBE: The success rate of this ability is [1 + (Invocations/4) / H], where 'H' is the value of the monsters HD. The gold cost to use this ability is [(H * 20) + 30].
INVEST: The gold cost to use this ability is [(S / 3) / (Invocations / 3) + 200], where 'S' represents the total sum of the price of every item currently being sold by the shop.
CONTRACT: This ability costs five times as much gold as Bribe.

[Hirsch I]

a way to hire any intelligent monster? this looks awesome!
but the pacification steps too much on Ely's territory.

[reaver]

Not to rain on your parade, but the old Gold God idea on the wiki does many of the same things as this in a significantly more polished and interesting way. (Even all the way down to bribing monsters and opening shops. The similarity is actually kind of eerie.)

[Laraso]

but the pacification steps too much on Ely's territory.

I've thought about that. Ely's pacification only costs 1 MP and a small bit of food, which allows it to be used any time the player feels like using it. In addition, it allows you to pacify animals, and it also grants partial XP for the pacified monster. Grethar's bribing costs gold, which is a not-so-readily available resource, it doesn't work on animals and only works on sentient enemies, and it does not give any XP whatsoever. This makes bribing a much more tactical choice and sets it apart from pacification, IMO.

Perhaps instead of being permanently neutralized, it would only be temporary? i.e. after X amount of turns, the enemy returns to being neutral if they were friendly, and they return to being hostile if they were neutral.

Not to rain on your parade, but the old Gold God idea on the wiki does many of the same things as this in a significantly more polished and interesting way. (Even all the way down to bribing monsters and opening shops. The similarity is actually kind of eerie.)

I didn't know that such a god had already been proposed. Oh well, I didn't really invest much into this idea yet, so it's not a big deal. I want to ask though, was there a particular reason why the original proposal got rejected?

[reaver]

I didn't know that such a god had already been proposed. Oh well, I didn't really invest much into this idea yet, so it's not a big deal. I want to ask though, was there a particular reason why the original proposal got rejected?

The Gold God hasn't been rejected, it's just in a state of indefinite limbo. If somebody made a patch it would probably be accepted - it's just nobody has offered or tried to do that.

[rchandra]

One thing I like more in this proposal is the use of Invocations. There are many gods that do not use the skill and I feel that should be reduced, not increased.

[dpeg]

I made the gold god and from time to time I go around, begging for some code. What I specifically wanted to avoid for a god centered around gold is an active ability that targets individual monsters: this is very much like many spells, Zin's recite or the old (and really problematic Glamour). I also think that the flavour actually works better with an abstract system (for those who don't know the Gozag approach to bribing: you invest money in some branch, as an active power; depending on how much you put there, standard monsters of that branch, e.g. orcs in Orc, will be affected: neutral or even allied (if allied, you have to pay them from time to time, or they leave), and --this is important-- starting at the top: individual-bribing would make a plain orc much cheaper than an orc knight, but who wants a plain orc?) Invocations can be used either way.

I like the ability of doing something with closed shops, though.

[and into]

Yeah, on a more positive note, the idea of an investment ability that put a closed shop back into business would be a neat addition to the gold god. The ability should be costly though and limited to once per shop (so you get one extra bite at the apple, but only that).

[Laraso]

One thing I like more in this proposal is the use of Invocations. There are many gods that do not use the skill and I feel that should be reduced, not increased.

That's actually a big reason why I included it. I wouldn't say "many gods" don't use the skill, I'd say the "vast majority" don't use the skill. The ONLY time I'm ever reminded that Invocations is a thing that actually exists is whenever I'm playing with Mahkleb, who requires you to increase your Invocations in order to be able to summon friendly demons reliably.

Personally, I think every god needs to be looked at and reworked to meaningfully include Invocations in some form. Either do that, or remove Invocations, however I believe that when things aren't doing what they were intended to do, we should try to fix them first rather than flat-out removing them.

Yeah, on a more positive note, the idea of an investment ability that put a closed shop back into business would be a neat addition to the gold god. The ability should be costly though and limited to once per shop (so you get one extra bite at the apple, but only that).

I think you should be able to do it as many times as you want. A god centered around obtaining and spending gold should give players a reliable way of spending said gold. In the formula I used in my original post, there would be a base-price of 200 gold plus an additional cost of gold figured by the sum of every item being sold in the store. This would discourage players from repeatedly investing into a store until they get what they want, but would encourage players who have already bought things from the store to invest.

[dpeg]

Laraso: But you don't want the god to become a one-armed bandit where you plug in coins, hoping for a decent shop type with something useful in stock. For a market driven deity, would make sense to increase costs for repeated uses, no? Demand and supply.

[Laraso]

When he used the words "so you get one extra bite at the apple", I thought he had went on to talk about the normal investment ability that merely regenerates the randomized list of items being sold and only works on shops that are already open. The phrase "one extra bite" implies that the player had at least one "bite" to begin with.

I think closed shops should only be able to be reopened once, however I also think the player should be able to choose what type of shop it will be. Perhaps the gold cost for this could be variable, such as a low cost for a food store and a high cost for a store that sells valuable armor.

[dpeg]

Laraso: Ah, I see. My proposal has something similar: a Call Merchant ability, which gives you a list of three shopkeepers (names and shop type) with varying costs (depending on type, size of stock and whether it is ancient). The chosen one will move to a not-yet-visited level (this clamps down the number of uses) and set up shop there.

I think I refrained from restocking shops back then because it forces players to empty shops first, generally by buying stuff they don't want. But I think I've been too skeptical on that one.

[Hirsch I]

I think the best thing about this is the "Hire" ability: Converting non-orc monsters is a very interesting possibility, and this is probably a good way to implement it.

[damiac]

It sounds cool, but I see a problem with a god who both gifts gold, and uses it for his abilities. That's only a minor concern though.

I'd really like to see a 6* power of some kind. I have a proposal:

Sinister Contract
Targeted ability
Cost: Piety(large amount) + gold
A portal is created next to the player. Every turn, the player pays some amount of gold, and every X turns, a powerful neutral demon appears, and attacks the targeted creature. The amount of gold paid per turn goes up with each demon summoned. Once the target is dead, the demons and portal disappear.
If the player runs out of gold before the enemy is killed, the demons go hostile.
If the enemy teleports, or stays out of LoS for some amount of turns, the effect ends as if the target was killed.