God Proposal: Taxis, God of Mind (aka No Wielding God)

[ayayaya]

NOTE: This proposal has been reworked. See my post below for the updated version.

Tired of holding things in your hands? Miss the Singularity spell? Ever wanted to use a triple sword and a giant spiked club at the same time? Look no further!

Taxis, God of Mind
Taxis is a god of mental powers, especially telekinesis. Despising the primitive use of hands to wield weapons, Taxis prefers applying mind over matter and can exert telekinetic forces across large distances. Foes of the followers of Taxis face being pushed, pulled, and lifted before being blasted to their demise by telekinetic weaponry and singularities.

Likes:
You or your allies killing the living or undead.
You or your allies killing demons or holy monsters.

Dislikes:
Wielding anything. (RIP breadswinging)
Piety decays over time.

Abilities:
0*: Telekinetic Weapon - Using the force of your mind, animate the first 1 + N/2 non equipped weapons in your inventory as friendly spectral weapons, where N is equal to the piety star level. Each weapon must be of a different school. Damage of each weapon depends on the skill level of the appropriate school. Health, speed, and damage scales with piety. No piety cost. Small MP cost.
1*: Repel - Pushes targeted enemy 2 tiles away from you. Enemy must be in LOS. Success chance/power scales with piety. Low piety cost.
2*: Attract - Pulls targeted enemy 2 tiles towards you. Enemy must be in LOS. Success chance/power scales with piety. Low piety cost.
3*: Nothing
4*: Mass Lift - All enemies are lifted into the air for 4-5 turns. During this time, no enemy can move but they can still attack and cast spells. Success chance/duration scales with piety. Moderate piety cost.
5*: Nothing
6*: Singularity - Works like the removed Singularity spell. Summons a singularity at the targeted tile. The singularity pulls in enemies in a 3-5 radius and deals massive physical damage. The singularity can be destroyed and is affected by Repel and Attract. Success chance/power/damage scales with piety. Moderate piety cost.

Why Taxis?:
Taxis offers two new ideas to crawl: no wielding anything and training of multiple weapon schools to take advantage of Telekinetic Weapon. Every player knows the disappointing feeling of finding an amazing randart weapon you can't use. Telekinetic Weapon remedies this and further forces the player to choose what four schools of weapons they want to train. Players have to take into account cross-training, what weapons they've seen, aptitudes, and what skills they have already trained, which is a tough but interesting decision.

Taxis synergizes well with many combinations, including races with strong weapon aptitudes like Minotaurs and Tengus and squishy casters or hunters who need to keep enemies away from them.

Finally, Taxis drastically changes play style. Having no wielded weapon means players have to be very careful about not allowing enemies to get on top of you. This requires skillful use of Taxis' abilities.

Comments
Would Taxis be an interesting addition to crawl? Are there any abilities that are too strong or are open to abuse? (Telekinetic weapon will definitely require some change since it encourages players to backtrack to get more weapons.) If so, what could be done to remedy them?

[milski]

A god with item destruction, tedious ally management, and a main ability that directly contradicts the main conceit of the god seems pretty bad to me.

[ayayaya]

A god with item destruction, tedious ally management, and a main ability that directly contradicts the main conceit of the god seems pretty bad to me.

Removed item destruction.

The ally management is certainly not tedious. The highest number of spectral weapons you will have up at any time is 4. Compare that to Yred or Beogh worshippers who have swathes of permanent allies. The system of which weapons are selected could be changed but, as it is, isn't very tedious since it requires at most one or two swaps.

Dancing weapons changed to spectral weapons.

[kuniqs]

I think you have to hit something in melee for the spectral weapon to work...
I'd prefer a god who's spectral weapons are a passive summon, kinda like demonspawn's guardian. Having no mp and no means to restore mp on demand (dislikes wielding staff of channeling?) is a serious problem for this god that IMO makes him very weak.

FR: some means to restore mp?

[WalkerBoh]

I like the uniqueness of the concept, and it seems workable. Not sure I'm entirely on board with having damage based on weapon skill level though. It seems to me that it would work better if damage was based on the weapon's base type and enchants, speed scaled with weapon skill (exactly the same as it would for a wielded weapon otherwise), and then weapon hp could scale with piety. Maybe it sounds a bit complicated, but I think in practice it'd make intuitive sense to the player.

The abilities seem a little lackluster, too. In particular, they seem to completely ignore the spectral weapon aspect of the god, and don't synergize particularly well with it. It might be better to focus the god on being "anti-wielding" and less on "telekinesis". I'm also not sure of the reasons that Singularity was removed, but it would be good to understand those before adding it as a god power (i.e., was this ability removed because it didn't work specifically as a spell, or because it didn't work as an ability in general?).

But as I said, very unique and workable concept. Of course, unless you have the ability/desire to code it up, it's very unlikely to get anywhere beyond that. I'd definitely give it a test run if it became a real experimental god though.

[ololoev]

Oo-oo-oo-ooooo
Uouououoooo!
Zelenoglazoye taxis.
sorry for flaming, but god name is taxis lol!

[Sar]

I actually read it as "taxes" first.

[lethediver]

Hmm, I'm not really feeling this. The abilities are too similar to what translocations already does. Singu as a piety ability is interesting, but... still.

However, I was thinking about it, and this ability set would make for a splendid unique enemy. A high lvl boss with a train of spectral weapons, who pushes/pulls you at will, and can cast Singu, would be pretty fearsome as well as thematic.

[Tiktacy]

I don't mean to be discouraging, but this god doesn't seem the least bit interesting. I might be a minority on this though, so feel free to bash me on how wrong I am.

To make a god successful, it (sort of) needs to add an interesting mechanic into the game, it can't just be abilities that haven't been used before and then slap on generic god conduct(kill to get piety and thats all she wrote). The inability to wield items sounds interesting in theory and I can see why you may have chosen this as your conduct for the god, but then there is unarmed combat, which sort of eliminates the "lack of weapon" concept for conduct. You could in theory disallow the use of unarmed as well, but this doesn't really offer anything interesting, it just means you no longer have a decent choice for dealing with popcorn and have to stair dance to recover mana a lot more often.

I certainly do like some of your abilities listed, air list is pretty neat, and singularity is fine as a god ability as long as it has some way to distinguish itself, and the tukima's dance party attack seems really cool. But the conduct comes off as uninteresting and the balance seems sort of off. I think if you revised it with a more interesting god conduct, then your suggestion might work better. Additionally, having better progression in power of the abilities would be a lot better, attract and destract don't seem interesting at all imo as well(that might just be me though).

[ion_frigate]

You could in theory disallow the use of unarmed as well, but this doesn't really offer anything interesting, it just means you no longer have a decent choice for dealing with popcorn and have to stair dance to recover mana a lot more often.

It could offer something interesting. Having *no* melee option would mean that popcorn could suddenly become deadly if you let yourself get cornered. This would require a rethinking of the spectral/dancing weapon ability, of course - the defenselessness shouldn't be something you can just 5 away.

For the record, I don't see anything wrong with "generic god conducts." Piety gain should be something that happens naturally in the game (exploration, killing, learning skills, etc - all very "generic"), because having to think about how you gain each and every point of piety is god-awful (pardon the horrible unintentional pun). Seriously, play versions of DCSS before 0.3 or 0.4, where you had to constantly be praying in order to gain piety - piety gain should be as simple and streamlined as possible.

[Tiktacy]

You could in theory disallow the use of unarmed as well, but this doesn't really offer anything interesting, it just means you no longer have a decent choice for dealing with popcorn and have to stair dance to recover mana a lot more often.

It could offer something interesting. Having *no* melee option would mean that popcorn could suddenly become deadly if you let yourself get cornered. This would require a rethinking of the spectral/dancing weapon ability, of course - the defenselessness shouldn't be something you can just 5 away.

For the record, I don't see anything wrong with "generic god conducts." Piety gain should be something that happens naturally in the game (exploration, killing, learning skills, etc - all very "generic"), because having to think about how you gain each and every point of piety is god-awful (pardon the horrible unintentional pun). Seriously, play versions of DCSS before 0.3 or 0.4, where you had to constantly be praying in order to gain piety - piety gain should be as simple and streamlined as possible.

I have played version where you prayed over corpses, it was part of why I quit playing. I don't really like kill based piety gain either, which is part of why Ash and Ru are my 2 favorite gods. Maybe thats too subjective though.

[nago]

God of forced UC
The thing I like is singularity as God power which could work.
I don't like to have old tukima as power, it was a broken spell and damned annoying to use. Plus it has no real link with others characteristics of God

[ayayaya]

Changed the conduct to "no melee" instead of "no wielding" to prohibit UC.
Massively revised the god theme and concept.
Designing a theme around the conduct is quiet hard, so the flavour might be off.

Aroh, God of Kings
Aroh likes giving undeserving adventurers the powers of kings. Worshippers have royal guards and can issue royal decrees, which subject enemies to forced prostration, seizure of items, and even torture. Since kings never engage in hand to hand combat, Aroh prohibits melee attacks. Aroh isn't acting out of benevolence; rather, he enjoys watching worshippers succumb to their own hubris.

Conduct:
No melee.

Piety:
Upon joining Aroh, your piety is set to 6*.
Your piety increases rapidly over time.
Your piety decreases greatly when you are hit with a melee attack. Two melee hits is about 1* lost.
Think of piety as being the amount of "authority" you have.
Another way to look at this piety system is piety is a tiny mana pool.

Abilities:
0*: Conscription - Summons 1+(piety stars)/2 friendly royal guards. They wield whichever non equipped weapons you have in your inventory. Damage of the guards depends on the enchantment of the weapon and Invocations. Health and AC scales with Invocations. Using this ability when you have guards already present destroys the old guards. The maximum number of guards you may have at any time is 1+(piety stars)/2. Thus, if your piety falls to 0 when you have 2 guards, 1 guard will be destroyed. Guards share some damage with you. No piety cost.
1*: Nothing
2*: Prostration - All enemies kneel to the ground for 2-4 turns. During this time, no enemy can move but they can still attack and cast spells. Success chance/duration scales with Invocations. 2* cost.
3*: Nothing
4*: Uncivil Forfeiture - All enemies' equipment is apported to your tile. 3* cost.
5*: Nothing
6*: Capital Punishment - Works like the removed Singularity spell. Summons a spiked pillar at the targeted tile. The pillar drags in enemies in a 3-5 radius and deals massive physical damage to enemies who impale themselves on the spikes. The pillar can be destroyed. HP, radius, and damage scales with piety. 4* cost.

Notes:
There is a trade off between using your 2*, 4*, 6* abilities and your guards, since using those abilities decreases the number of guards you have.

The reason why guards use your weapons is because I still want to make weapons relevant. I am open to removing this mechanic, though.

Is the theme cohesive? What abilities need to be reworked? Are there any exploits that need to be addressed? What do you think of the piety system?

[milski]

I mean you can just use a bow now, so there's that. It still seems like a really tedious conduct for a key ability of "you get to hit with melee weapons, just indirectly."

[1010011010]

I don't like the idea that melee becomes off limits because it would become rather annoying, the game interface doesn't jell well. This is kind of true already for blaster casters but even they eventually get to smack the fodder. A better idea would be to give the player a Regal Sceptre upon joining (or joining upon wielding) and excommunication when unwielded. Then attacking is allowed but has a different effect, it can also be e(v)oked to do something else which is only one key stroke.

Having full peity that gets spent and recovers quickly is novel but has two issues. The first being that it's very much like MP, you could get a similar effect to what you have now by making high MP cost abilities. The second is that gaining piety has a sense of progression to it, ideally a god will have a conduct and reward you quicker for following it more stringently and using abilities use peity. The normal piety system is more long term then the MP like one in this proposal and there's a place for it there.