God Proposal: Irath the Smoldering, God of Forgotten Embers

[kcfos]

Irath is meant to be a deception based god, focused on utility rather than stabbing. Irath gives you the power to choose your fights, as well as disorient your enemies when you do battle.

Stealth is the most promoted aptitude in the game, with an average aptitude of +1.5. Irath is meant for primarily ranged characters who aren't as proficient stabbers such as nagas, an outlet to utilize their stealth. While Dithmenos is meant for offensive stabbing, Irath is meant for evasive utility (Think Metal Gear Solid versus Thief)


Appreciates
- Feeding the flames: Sacrificing corpses.
Deprecates
- Burning out: Inactivity

Piety level (-): “Wisp”
No granted abilities.

Piety level (*): “Tendril”
You emit clouds of smoke around you. Frequency and duration increase with piety.
(With high piety and stealth you can easily sneak away from dangerous enemies, also makes it difficult for enemies to reach you when attacking from a distance. Be careful though, smoke affects your vision as well.)

Piety level (**): “Blackened”
Spells produce 50% less noise

Piety level (***): “Smothered”
Asphyxiate - Ifrath speaks through you. For the next 5 turns all of your speaking actions (T actions such as attack, retreat, etc) no longer create any sound, and instead have a chance to fear any nearby enemies. (Cost: 4MP, 200 Food, 1-2 Piety)
(Fear goes well with the idea of evasion, also neat little synergy with allies/summons. Might be OP with these numbers.)

Piety level (****): “Flamed”
Your smoke clouds absorb sound, enemies near them are less likely to wake each other.

Piety level (*****): “Blazed”
Set the World on Fire - Cover open tiles around you randomly with flames. If these are water tiles no fire is made, but a large cloud of steam is created.(Cost: 3MP, 300 Food, 4-5 Piety)
(Makes it harder for enemies to reach you. Allows you to manipulate enemy pathing to hit hard with area of effect spells.)

Piety level (******): “Irath's Vessel”


Mainly, I wanted to create something sneaky for mostly magic users that doesn't shoe-horn them into stabbing. Right now Stealth can be very useful as a way to spot enemies and avoid them until you're ready to fight. Irath is meant to build upon that strategy. Let me know what you think!

[CanOfWorms]

Dithmenos is a stealth god that synergizes well with ranged and magic users though?

[WingedEspeon]

This god will screw you over because the smoke will prevent you form attacking at max range.

[crate]

Dithmenos is a stealth god that synergizes well with ranged and magic users though?

if he ever loses his stupid, pointless, makes-the-god-design-worse-for-no-reason conduct, yes, he would fit into this niche perfectly
(as opposed to now where he mostly fills it unless you wanted to use fire, hahaha sucker)

[dowan]

If dith hates fire so much, where does he get all that smoke?

[Hurricos]

If dith hates fire so much, where does he get all that smoke?

Everyone that matters knows smoke is just flame's corpse.

[yesno]

If dith hates fire so much, where does he get all that smoke?

it should probably be renamed but i can't think of anything. 'umbral miasma' but that sounds kind of bad

[duvessa]

If dith hates fire so much, where does he get all that smoke?

dith vapes confirmed

[Shard1697]

Someone just played ds3.

Constantly emitting smoke seems like it would be both very annoying and very powerful. I would probably take this guy on buff melee characters just so that ranged enemies could never target me, until I got sick of having tiles obscured all the time.

[MrRokkomies]

Moving around volcanic lakes that generate smoke is really annoying. Auto explore breaks all the time on the popcorn mobs and you can not tab them either when they go in and out of sight every other turn.The smoke power would cause this to happen all the time...

[svendre]

Piety level (*****): “Blazed”
Set the World on Fire - Cover open tiles around you randomly with flames. If these are water tiles no fire is made, but a large cloud of steam is created.(Cost: 3MP, 300 Food, 4-5 Piety)
(Makes it harder for enemies to reach you. Allows you to manipulate enemy pathing to hit hard with area of effect spells.)

Piety level (*****): “Blazed”
The entire world is hot boxed - Cover open tiles around you randomly with toxic fumes. The toxic fumes cause the enemies to enter a pacified state, often not caring at all that you are there. Monsters are distracted by thoughts of double cheeseburgers and pop tarts. Water tiles enhance the effect as the fumes are breathed in more smoothly. Allows you to manipulate enemy sight, with high power summons visions of Pan disco balls floating in mid-air before their eyes.

^^ fixed

[Quazifuji]

Overall, it seems like you're going for a noise theme here, but I think there are two main problems:

1. Noise is a somewhat opaque and spoilery mechanic in Crawl. It's hard to do interesting things with it in ways that don't feel opaque and spoilery.
   
2. You don't really do any interesting things with noise besides make the player's effects quieter. Two of the three non-noise related effects - fear and fire clouds - seem completely unrelated to the rest of the god.
   

More specific thoughts on the individual abilities:

Passive Smoke: I agree with others on this. It's a weird mix of annoying and powerful, and the more powerful you make it, the more annoying it is. I'm not sure if there's any spot that gets the right balance where it's strong enough to be useful without either being overpowered or extremely annoying. And it overlaps with Dithmenos' bleed fog ability and Qazlal's passive clouds somewhat.

Half spell noise: useful but niche and boring.

Asphyxiate: Really, really clunky. You've got two things going on here. One is removing the noise from T commands, which I guess can be useful sometimes for summoners but I don't know how big a deal is and overall it's ridiculously niche. The other is making T commands fear enemies, which is just clunky. Basically, this ability does nothing when active, but gives me free scrolls of fear for the next 5 turns, and I guess those scrolls of fear also let me command allies during those 5 turns if I have any? Weird.

Smoke clouds absorbing sound: Like reduced spell noise, could be useful, but pretty boring.

Blazed: This both seems to have no synergy with the rest of the god, and seems like it's just a lamer version of Qazlal's disaster area. There is something kind of cool flavor-wise with a smoke-themed god whose ultimate ability brings out the full-blown fire, but gameplay-wise I'm just not feeling it.