God Proposal: Retvia the Versatile

[Floodkiller]

I read through a bunch of ideas flying around for not regenerating MP, and wanted to take a swing at coming up with something that would be an upside to it. I came up with the idea of this god as a result:

Retvia The Versatile
Retvia is an god who commands a long, forgotten source of wild magic. Those who worship Retvia gain the ability to control an expansive variety of spells, at the cost of being unable to control their magical reserves and constantly exposing themselves to magical contamination.

Retvia is a Spellcasting enabler god (similar to Yred with Necromancy), where the main idea is to be able to cast a wide variety of spells with the assistance of Invocations instead of training many spell schools. This ability comes at the cost of no longer being able to naturally regenerate or channel MP. This is an attempt to enable players to use a wide variety of spells without massive skill investment, but at the cost of disallowing 'caster' style gameplay through an extremely limited source of MP. Additionally, casting spells this way exposes followers to contamination, preventing sustained spell casting and using Retvia solely to enable things like Haste and Controlled Blink.

Retvia counts as a chaotic god.

Likes: Contributing energy to the source of wild magic (Killing)

Dislikes: Inactivity
(need better ideas for Likes and Dislikes if possible)

(No Stars):
-Passive: MP no longer regenerates naturally. Ambrosia and potions of magic still work.
REASON: Balances casting from Invocations (see ***)

-Passive: Magical channeling no longer works (including Sublimation of Blood on chunks and self).
REASON: Prevents easy MP regen sources. Additionally, disallows Sublimation of Blood on chunks to prevent degenerate play of leaving enemies for later to turn into MP.

-Passive: Protection from magic draining sources (anti-magic brand, eye of draining, etc.) at (Piety/2)% chance.
REASON: MP becomes incredibly hard to obtain, and thus whatever amount you have is protected from being drained, to prevent players from avoiding areas with MP draining attacks until they run out of MP just so they don't lose any.

-Active: Absorb Magic - Drain magic from wands, rods, and evocables to regenerate MP. Wands drain charges and give small/medium MP based on wand type, rods drain max charges and give medium/large MP based on rod's max charges, and evocables are destroyed to give full MP.
REASON: Gives a limited source of MP to be obtained; evocables are destroyed instead of rendered inert to prevent renewable MP.

*:
- Active: Wild Touch - Range 1 (melee), "Unleashes wild magic into an enemy within touching range". Follows same rules as Malmutate vs monsters (inflicts Wretched status: which causes -1 Speed, 10%*degree less damage, -(degree) AC; degree starts at 1 and can go up to 4); Undead and nonliving creatures are immune, ugly things and very ugly things change color. Have vulnerable monsters resist using MR vs Invocations. Costs low MP, low Piety, low-medium Food, low-medium Contam.
REASON: Intended to be a use for MP and Piety at low levels which should help starting worshippers with escaping bad fights/weakening stronger enemies to kill. Usefulness should wear off around mid to late game, where the turns are better spent attacking a monster/group of monsters than attempting to debuff one (or that one dangerous monster is likely immune).

**:
-Active: Potency - Status effect, buff. Gives the user the effects of a potion of brilliance. Duration scales with Invocations. Costs low-medium MP, low-medium Piety, medium Food, medium Contam.
REASON: Potency allows worshippers to improve spell rates and power at the cost of contam similar to quaffing a potion of haste (or slightly lower to allow stacking?). Useful both before and after Invoke Spell comes online, may fall off when skill levels become high enough to not require use.

***:
-Passive: Spells are cast using Invocations in place of the associated spell school. If a spell uses multiple schools, Invocations replaces the weakest school. If Invocations replaces a spell school that affects the outcome of the spell, uses Invocations in place of the spell school to judge the effects (ex. when casting Stoneskin, Invocations replaced Earth Magic; Stoneskin uses Invocations instead of Earth Magic for calculating AC bonus). Spellcasting skill still works normally. Generic enhancers (ex. INT, ring of wizardry, staff of power) still improve spells, while specific enhancers (ring of fire, staff of conjurations) will not work. Armor and shield penalties still apply. Costs normal spell costs, low Contam.
REASON: The main focus behind the god, enabling users to diversify their spells to a large degree with minimal spell school investment. It is a passive instead of an active to prevent having to open the abilities menu every time to cast spells, as well as to encourage Invocations training over spell school training. Contam costs should be minimal for almost all spells, but should add more contam than normal to induce Yellow contam if the user casts Haste/Invis/CBlink to prevent abusing the god as a glorified consumable.

****:
-Active: Counter Cast - Smite targeted, select any monster in LoS who can cast spells. Selects a random spell from the monster's spell list and allows the follower to cast the selected spell at any target they want. Counter Cast cannot select spells that will not benefit the follower (ex. Call Tide). Success rate of using Counter Cast dependent on Invocations vs monster's HD, uses Invocations for spellpower when something that checks MR is stolen. Costs medium MP, low-medium Piety, medium Food, low-medium Contam.
REASON: Somewhat useful in the early game to try and steal ranged attack spells and buffs, but more viable in the mid/late game as a source of casting stronger spells for a cheaper cost. Falls off in extended due to most spellcasters being immune to their own spells (hellions and Hellfire, etc). Getting Haste/Invis from an enemy can happen, but the Piety and Contam costs should discourage scumming an enemy for it (or possibly have Haste/Invis guarantee yellow Contam levels).

*****:
-Active: Magical Infusion - Refills MP to full. Costs very high Piety, gives very high Contam (based on Max MP, not MP given).
REASON: A last-resort MP refill option, which comes at the cost of massive amounts of contamination, to discourage anything other than emergency use. Theoretically insane players might use rMut/Necromut and run around exploding on things, I guess, but it would be extremely dangerous.


WRATH:

Contaminates the player (amount based on XP Level)
Drains wands in inventory of charges, drains rods in inventory of current charge level (meaning 9/9 rod charges goes to 0/9), makes evocables in inventory inert
Summons enemy spellcasters (mixed variety if possible, based on XP Level)
REASON: Contamination and charge draining are both key parts of worshipping Retvia, and thus is what Retvia inflicts when you abandon. Enemy spellcasters are summoned to 'demonstrate' the power of spell versatility to those who forgot their way. Draining MP was thought of, but not included due to already being a feature of Sif.

Feel free to offer any insight or criticism, as most of my experience with Crawl focuses around playing melee types and not using spells to the most potential they could be.

TO DO:
Flavor text
Specific Numbers for abilities
Balancing powers
Reorder powers?

EDIT LOG:
5/3 - Added Potency to **, moved Counter Cast to **** (after thinking about it, it probably won't get used until later in the game anyway), renamed ***** ability to Magical Infusion to prevent using same prefix as Wild Touch
4/29 - Changed ability descriptions, added ideas to **** ability (no concrete ideas for it yet)
4/27 - Changed *** ability (cast from Invocations) to have Invocations only cover the weaker school in multi-school spells. Added Wild Touch ability to *. Moved Counter Cast to **. Changed some descriptions (underlined parts are questions, as I'm not sure about them)
4/27 - Started thread

[Quazifuji]

I like the core concept, but I feel like the god needs more. In particular, the god feels really weak early. I don't like that the god gives a single, extremely situational active ability at the cost of your MP regen until you hit ***. If the entire god's design revolves around a passive, I feel like the passive should ideally kick in early and scale with something (maybe piety), not just trigger once at *** and that's it (compare to Chei or Ash).

[reaver]

Getting Haste/Invis from an enemy can happen, but the Piety and Contam costs should discourage scumming an enemy for it.

I don't think so:

Get an orc wizard with Haste.

Lure it to the opposite side of a staircase with scary enemies on the other side.

Counter Cast until you get a buff.

Kill scary enemies with buff.


That said, I really like the idea/mechanics, so if this gets a bit more content behind it I would like it. I do think your estimation of characters who would want to use this is off - I'm guessing light-armoured primary melee chars who take up this god and train Spellcasting + Invocations to cast spells.

(Just a note I do think that completely removing any benefit from training a spell skill other than Spellcasting is also bad design, I would tone it down to "Invocations counts as a spell school for all spells for the purposes of spell success" or something.)

[Floodkiller]

I like the core concept, but I feel like the god needs more. In particular, the god feels really weak early. I don't like that the god gives a single, extremely situational active ability at the cost of your MP regen until you hit ***. If the entire god's design revolves around a passive, I feel like the passive should ideally kick in early and scale with something (maybe piety), not just trigger once at *** and that's it (compare to Chei or Ash).

I was trying to keep the powers a bit on the light side, but I think you are right that I made it far too light. I'll try and brainstorm up something that can fit into the ** slot (and possibly the **** slot, since ****** is already covered by MP drain protection in a sense), and as for the *** power seeming too powerful...

(Just a note I do think that completely removing any benefit from training a spell skill other than Spellcasting is also bad design, I would tone it down to "Invocations counts as a spell school for all spells for the purposes of spell success" or something.)

Yeah, I think I went a bit too far with it, now that I read it again. I don't want to tread on Sif's spell success ground, though, so how about instead:

***: Spells are cast using Invocations in place of the associated spell school. If a spell uses multiple schools, Invocations replaces the weakest school. If Invocations replaces a spell school that affects the outcome of the spell, uses Invocations in place of the spell school to judge the effects (ex. when casting Stoneskin, Invocations replaced Earth Magic; Stoneskin uses Invocations instead of Earth Magic for calculating AC bonus)...generic enhancers still improve spells, while specific enhancers (ring of fire, staff of conjurations) will only be used if they were not replaced by Invocations.

Still a bit wordy, I think, but more in line with a better balanced ability.

That said, I really like the idea/mechanics, so if this gets a bit more content behind it I would like it. I do think your estimation of characters who would want to use this is off - I'm guessing light-armoured primary melee chars who take up this god and train Spellcasting + Invocations to cast spells.

I think I didn't phrase it correctly when I said 'caster/hybrid' (which shows quite a bit that I don't play them often); I meant more that the god enables spells for characters who just want to cast an attack spell or a buff every once in a while without the massive skill investment in the same sense that Yred enables Necromancy for characters who just want the undead army part of Necromancy.


EDIT: Updated main post with some more additions.

[Floodkiller]

Bumping with an update: I'm still trying to come up with something to fit the **** ability slot, but I'm drawing blanks. I threw up some of my ideas, but I don't really like any of them. I also edited the descriptions of the already-existing abilities. If anyone can come up with something, or you want to offer criticism on other parts of the god, feel free!

[Floodkiller]

Bumping with content: updated the ability list to add Potency (potion of brilliance in god power form) to **, and move Counter Cast to **** (since, after thinking about it, would not really see much use until nastier spells come out). Still looking for more feedback before I try to come up with more concrete numbers for the abilities.