God: Hasheem

[Klown]

Hasheem the Wise: Once a conjurer who took part in a competition ran by Vehumet. The voluntary contestants had to march through a massive desert, loaded with plenty of tough enemies. Of the 22 who tried, Hasheem was the only one who survived the trek. Vehumet granted him Godhood as a reward. Now, Hasheem grants worshippers the powers of the desert along with the main drawback. Thirst.

Various Effects

- If you learn a spell from a book, Hasheem tells you to choose wisely and burns the book once the spell is learned.

- Altar only appears in the Temple.

- Instead of invocations, Hasheem’s God given abilities have fail percentages based on the Spellcasting skill.

- Player cannot use ranged weapons(throwing-slings-bows-crossbows-evocables)

Appreciates

- Exploring with a spell under 5% fail rate. More piety gained for more spells falling under this requisite.

Deprecates

- Forgetting a spell
- Casting a spell with a failure rate above 15%
- Abandoning him

Given Abilities

Thirst - At half the rate of your hunger, your character gains a thirst due to the desert aura of Hasheem. Quenched, Parched, Thirsty, and Dehydrated. While they don’t kill you, each status has an effect. The player hits quenched by standing in water instantly in one turn.
Quenched: 2% chance of doing double damage when casting damage-causing spells.
Parched: -2 accuracy
Thirsty: -4 accuracy
Dehydrated: -6 accuracy, blurry vision 1.

* - Wild Magic 3
** - Replenish - 4 MP, 2 Piety - Take a drink of water.
*** - Build Dune - 6 MP, 4 Piety - Instantly raise a sand wall on one unoccupied tile. Nothing can go through it until it’s 50 HP is struck down to 0.
**** - Mirage of Vulnerability - 7 MP, 4 Piety - Spawns a mirage vision of yourself temporarily that follows along, cannot be controlled, and casts vulnerability each time a monster enters LOS. Does not affect the player.
***** - Sandstorm - 10 MP, 5 Piety - Hits everything with a sandstorm, destroying walls and damaging everything in sight, including you, each turn. Lasts 5 turns.
****** - Once a game upon reaching ****** Hasheem gifts you a randart hat, appearing as the wizard hat.

Punishments

Level 5 magical contamination.
Abandonment: You forget a random spell.

[tedric]

Klown, I like the idea of a desert-themed god but this proposal seems a little discombobulated.

Hasheem the Wise: Once a conjurer who took part in a competition ran by Vehumet. The voluntary contestants had to march through a massive desert, loaded with plenty of tough enemies. Of the 22 who tried, Hasheem was the only one who survived the trek. Vehumet granted him Godhood as a reward. Now, Hasheem grants worshippers the powers of the desert along with the main drawback. Thirst.

This doesn't seem consistent from a flavor perspective. A god of the desert, a mage who ascended to godhood: sure. Gods running competitions, gods granting godhood to mortals: not so much.

- If you learn a spell from a book, Hasheem tells you to choose wisely and burns the book once the spell is learned.

- Instead of invocations, Hasheem’s God given abilities have fail percentages based on the Spellcasting skill.

So this is a spellcasting god who severely limits the spells you have access to, without granting any in return? Why?

- Altar only appears in the Temple.

- Player cannot use ranged weapons(throwing-slings-bows-crossbows-evocables)

Why?

Thirst - At half the rate of your hunger, your character gains a thirst due to the desert aura of Hasheem. Quenched, Parched, Thirsty, and Dehydrated. While they don’t kill you, each status has an effect. The player hits quenched by standing in water instantly in one turn.
Quenched: 2% chance of doing double damage when casting damage-causing spells.
Parched: -2 accuracy
Thirsty: -4 accuracy
Dehydrated: -6 accuracy, blurry vision 1.

** - Replenish - 4 MP, 2 Piety - Take a drink of water.

You have introduced a brand new mechanic whose only purpose seems to be tedium. Why?

*** - Build Dune - 6 MP, 4 Piety - Instantly raise a sand wall on one unoccupied tile. Nothing can go through it until it’s 50 HP is struck down to 0.
**** - Mirage of Vulnerability - 7 MP, 4 Piety - Spawns a mirage vision of yourself temporarily that follows along, cannot be controlled, and casts vulnerability each time a monster enters LOS. Does not affect the player.
***** - Sandstorm - 10 MP, 5 Piety - Hits everything with a sandstorm, destroying walls and damaging everything in sight, including you, each turn. Lasts 5 turns.

These could be decent desert-themed abilities.

[tasonir]

There's a lot of good ideas here mixed with some questionable ones.

Biggest concern: thirst mechanic. At first I thought it would be something to do with potions, but it's actually just standing in water for bonuses? Being away from water lowers your accuracy and can eventually give you a terrible mutation. But then you just give a drinking god ability? So basically you are just giving piety somewhat slower, making the player keep activating drinking, and slowing their piety gain.

I can see what you're going for here - as the player gets more spells memorized, they start to get drowned in rapid piety gains, and can stay quenched for the bonus. Early on you may not have enough spells memorized to get enough piety, and are punished. But this isn't a good system with the difficulty curve of crawl. Punishing you on the start is Chei's speciality, anyways. Also it will be largely circumvented when the player finds an early sewer entrance, and very dangerous other games.

A much simpler form would be to grant accuracy bonuses, or even the double damage chance if you prefer, after activating a "take a drink" ability. You could optionally give this effect after drinking a potion as well. Crazier option: Activated ability that turns any potion into a potion of water, drinking the potion of water gives the effect (this may be too easy because there's a lot of bad potions - require the potions be non-confuse/poison/decay/etc?).

Also troubling: rank 3 wild magic right off the bat. I understand it's to make the piety gain mechanic more difficult and require you to really, really train those spells, but rank 3 is too much too soon. Maybe rank 1 on *, rank 2 on ***, and rank 3 on *****. Another issue is whether giving rank 3 wild magic is too strong to give at any time (or too frustrating to overcome the anti-wiz?).

Minor: Sand dune's HP should probably scale off something - 50 is huge early on but it'll die in one decent spell later on. Could be (spellcasting * 3 + 5) or so.

So remove/replace the thirst mechanics, adjust wild magic, and you'd have a pretty interesting god. God of insanely high spellpower, and hexing things with high MR? Could work.

I'd like to see some interaction between sand dunes and sandstorm - some way to wall yourself in and protect you from the damage? Or sandstorm is targetted on an area and does damage based on how many sand dunes are within that area (this might require too many turns to set up)? How about being able to place a sand dune on yourself, which will take all damage before you do, but while in the dune you cannot perform any attack other than invoking sandstorm? It would also be useful for waiting for a teleport, or letting minions fight things while you're safe, etc.