Ipoiis, the Dark Lord in Exile (god proposal)

[and into]

(Posted this earlier in a different thread, but I've fleshed it out more so I'm posting in a new one. Inspired by bcadren's "king of hell" god proposal: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12206)

Ipoiis, Dark Lord in Exile

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Said to be older than the Abyss itself, Ipoiis lorded over a unified Hell eons ago, having consolidated the disparate demonic hordes through tireless struggle. The alliances proved to be short-lived, however. Betrayed and forced into exile by subordinates who found their new King too cruel, Ipoiis now seeks influence quietly, marshaling subterranean cadres of loyal followers in preparation for a new campaign of vengeance and domination.

Devotees to Ipoiis must prove their loyalty by giving up their very being and identity, becoming corrupted by demonic influence the longer they serve the Dark Lord. In return, Ipoiis grants access to ancient forces that promise great power—but at a steeper price than mere faithfulness. Ipoiis welcomes converts, and will help shield his fledgling avatars from the wrath of other gods. But be warned: Ipoiis punishes deserters with a fury that puts even the most vindictive gods to shame.

Ipoiis is a non-Temple god whose altars can only generate in the Depths and—very rarely—in special vaults earlier in the dungeon. If you leave a god to worship Ipoiis, the intensity of the wrath effects you suffer will tend to be lessened and will happen less frequently (this prolongs the overall duration of the wrath, but also makes it far less intense and less dangerous).

Ipoiis accepts worship from all species except demigods.

Edit: Piety on all kills, slightly higher bonus piety for demons and holy.

Powers

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Price to worship: You lose a character level.

Upon joining: You are corrupted by demonic influence. You cannot use weapons of holy wrath, nor weapons/ammo of silver. You suffer vulnerability to holy damage and silver as if demonic and chaotic.

Based on total (not current) piety gained under Ipoiis, you become increasingly demonic:

Tier 1: “You exhibit impish features.” rN+, immunity to drain status, immunity to flaying
Tier 2: “You have a demonic aspect.” rN++, resistance to torment, immunity to drain status/flaying
Tier 3: “You project a devilish appearance.” rN+++, resistance to hellfire/torment, immunity to drain status/flaying

The more demonic you are, the more powerful your divine abilities—but the steeper the price.

All abilities have 100% success. The abilities Ipoiis provides do not use Invocations; to utilize the Demon King's gifts, you will need to offer more than just your prayers.

** Dark Pact (active). Piety cost. Make a demonic pact under the sign of malice. Slowly drains your HP and MP while active. Upon expiration, leaves you exhausted. Can be ended prematurely. For a period of time, any enemies in LOS that suffer damage may be punished with hellish effects. Cannot be used while exhausted. Cannot be used while either Souleater or Prodigal Protection is active. Rate of HP/MP drain and strength/likelihood of punishment against your enemies scale up based on the level of your demonic corruption.

*** Souleater (active): Piety cost. Make a demonic pact under the sign of ill-gotten gains. Damaging enemies is rewarded with HP and MP. Gives drain status upon the expiration of the effect, scaling up in proportion to the amount of HP/MP gained via this effect (this source of drain bypasses all forms of drain immunity). Cannot be used while Dark Pact or Prodigal Protection is active. HP and MP rewarded, and thus skill drain suffered, scale up with the level of your demonic corruption.

**** Prodigal Protection (active): Piety cost. Make a demonic pact under the sign of profligacy. For a period of time you get damage reduction (similar to DD), but you lose gold for the damage prevented in this manner. Cannot be used while Dark Pact or Souleater is active. The amount of the potential damage reduction, and thus gold cost, scale up with the level of your demonic corruption.

****** Chthonic Ritual (active): High piety cost. Make a demonic pact under the sign of death. A large amount of HP and MP is restored. You lose a large amount of experience toward character level and a smaller amount toward skill levels. Cannot be used again until you retain the character level you had upon last use of this ability. Amount of HP/MP restored and experience cost scale up with the level of your demonic corruption.

Wrath

Penance set to 60. May be overwhelming. 10% chance to create loud noises throughout the level, then tag you with irresistible Mark. Otherwise, Hell effect. Any time wrath triggers there is a chance to spawn hostile demons (on top of anything else). Ipoiis may empower hostile demons in your LOS with haste and/or might.

[TeshiAlair]

Prodigal Protection seems really good late game.

I like that Dark Pact inadvertently encourages using axes.

Strikes me as a good god but not necessarily a fun one. Even though they are active abilities, they are very passive-feeling.

[Bart]

I like this proposal. Few comments:
- I would happily see some early game boost. There are no passive benefits helpful in the beginning nor piety-free abilities. Even TSO should be more useful at three stars than this guy. Even if this god is designed for extended gameplay, it could be also more viable in 3-runner.
- Irresistible drain from Souleater sounds harsh and would very highly discourage me from using the skill. Red drain is not something easy to get rid of (although rN+++ helps). I'd rather have stat drain or rot - something that can be balanced after the fight.
- Proposed wrath is indeed overwhelming. I'd like something survivable, because it's sad to be unable to switch to luckily found holy claymore. Do we really need love-me-forever god? It's not as with TSO, who gives you holy brand you'd like to scum for and then leave him. Mightied hell sentinels are really not fun, I think.
- How is piety gained? Again, for kills?

[and into]

Bart: The drain would be mild unless you were spamming souleater. Even in larger and more prolonged battles, I'm thinking you get about -1 to your skills on average. Note that you would be immune to drain from every other source in the game, so you would only have to be careful about overuse of this ability. It is basically "+ vampiric brand on top of whatever weapon you already got" that works on all targets and also grants MP, which is a very strong defensive effect.

Perhaps dark pact should be moved to * piety, but I think it is okay if this god doesn't really do much until **. Part of the god's shtick is that he's a non-temple to whom you can convert more easily than any other god, save "good god" --> "non-evil." But you have to prove your loyalty a bit before you start getting abilities (so no active abilities until **), and leaving him is really hard. Maybe I went overboard on the wrath, but I do want Ipo to have wrath that is at least as harsh as Trog's.

Added a thing about piety: on kills, with chance of slightly larger piety gain upon killing holy or demonic enemies. (Ipoiis is using mortals to wage war not only against angels, but against most demons as well.)

General rationale: Despite the demonic flavor, mostly a defense-oriented god, with some particularly appealing passives for post-endgame play. Kind of like an evil version of Zin in terms of strategic considerations, however the "powerful but risky" abilities differentiate Ipo tactically.

[Ghoul King]

I like it overall, though I'm uncertain how the 'total piety' aspect would work in practice, and I'm not sure I'm partial to gold-for-damage-shaving. (How much damage shaving? If it's able to get very high at max demon-ness, then that can be a lifesaver against big nasties, but if it gets higher but not all that high it might end up just protecting you from random goobers that couldn't really kill you in the first place, which would just be wasteful) I particularly like Dark Pact, just for the fact that its activation condition supports not just melee or direct damage spells or the like but also necromantic hordes, Confusion infliction, luring enemies onto traps, etc.

Also, is Torment resistance 'chance of dodging the bullet' or '40/30/20% instead of 50%' type of resistance? (Or both?)

What happens if you somehow find an altar before you've gained a level?

Does Dark Pact expire if you're out of MP?

It would be nice to have at least one general-use effect. The innate resistances/immunities from going demon, though extremely valuable when they do crop up, are irrelevant to large swaths of perfectly threatening enemies (eg Dragons), and Dark Pact is the only Invocation that doesn't have some kind of permanent and/or substantial cost, which restricts the other options to more panic-button type usage. Or put another way, a Vehumite spellcaster is consistently aware of the MP rewards, boosted spell range, etc in most every fight they get into, you're always aware of worshiping Cheibriados, etc, whereas Ipoiis is currently a god where, excepting maybe spamming Dark Pact, you spend a lot of time playing as if you have no god.

How long are the pacts meant to last? Until de-activated? A fixed amount of time? An amount of time scaled to a skill? (Presumably not Invocations) As long as the player likes, manually de-activated?