God proposal - random spell set

[sanka]

Since I got some positive feedbacks, I post my god proposal here as well.

She is supposed to be a god with random tactical abilities, which replace normal spellcasting. So she supposed to be a god for non-casters mostly.

DRAWBACKS:

NO TRADITIONAL SPELLCASTING: Upon joining you forget all spells. You cannot memorize spells from books.

ABILITIES:
1. While exploring or killing monsters you receive random spells right into your memory, starting from level range 1-3 upon joining (you get one immediately upon joining) to 1-9 at max piety.
The game announce when you get a gift, but it does not ask anything - it is immediately (without turn delay to memorize) available for casting as a normal spell.
You have (Invo skill+1) spell slots. Every spell takes one slot. When you receive a new spell, it randomly selects a slot, and if that slot is not empty, its content is replaced - you forgot the spell that was there.
2. When you cast a spell, you immediately forgot it. Spells are a one time resource your god gifts you.
3. Spells are god abilities, not traditional spells. Spells use your invocation skill instead of spellcasting, spell school skills, and you use invo/2+10 instead of IQ in spell success and spell power formulas. Armour, shield, wizardry and enhancers do not affect your spells success and power. Invocation is also used to determine your spell slots. You still get miscast effects the same way with normal spells.
PIETY
Piety by exploration. Piety gain is rather slow, 3 stars expected in Lair, 6 stars expected in first rune branch.
Piety has one main effect: determine the maximal level of spell you can receive, which is (piety stars + 1). So you begin with 3, and go up to 9. When you reach a new star, you always get a spell of maximal level you can cast immediately.
GIFT TIMER
Gift timer is reduced both upon exploration and killing monsters. You have a (secret) random number rolled upon every gift, the timer for the next gift. It is decreased upon exploration and when you kill a monster, and when it reaches 0 you get the next gift. Gifts supposed to be common.

EDIT1: changed the spell gift system to make "gaming" it impossible (or at least harder).
EDIT2: clarfication (and small alteration) of the piety system

[Siegurt]

I am not sure i get the point of this god i mean it might be interesting to play, but unless i misread it somehow, it seems like "very limited/gimped spellcasting" in exchange for.... only having to train invocations, and not having to pick up spellbooks or amnesia scrolls?

Maybe i missed something here, but what advantage does this god give over no god, to the extent of making it competitive with other gods?

[infinitevox]

I am not sure i get the point of this god i mean it might be interesting to play, but unless i misread it somehow, it seems like "very limited/gimped spellcasting" in exchange for.... only having to train invocations, and not having to pick up spellbooks or amnesia scrolls?

Maybe i missed something here, but what advantage does this god give over no god, to the extent of making it competitive with other gods?

Access to a multitude of different high level spells without having to train every school of magic to get them?
You get spell diversity by sacrificing specialization, but still get to use stuff like Tornado or Glaciate.

I could see this god being popular for 3 rune games, where you typically don't have the exp to invest to get Firestrom/Shatter/etc up and running.

[Siegurt]

I am not sure i get the point of this god i mean it might be interesting to play, but unless i misread it somehow, it seems like "very limited/gimped spellcasting" in exchange for.... only having to train invocations, and not having to pick up spellbooks or amnesia scrolls?

Maybe i missed something here, but what advantage does this god give over no god, to the extent of making it competitive with other gods?

Access to a multitude of different high level spells without having to train every school of magic to get them?
You get spell diversity by sacrificing specialization, but still get to use stuff like Tornado or Glaciate.

I could see this god being popular for 3 rune games, where you typically don't have the exp to invest to get Firestrom/Shatter/etc up and running.

I am not sure that one firestorm or glaciate every 2 or 3 dungeon levels quite makes up for the sacrifice.

[Speleothing]

I am not sure i get the point of this god i mean it might be interesting to play, but unless i misread it somehow, it seems like "very limited/gimped spellcasting" in exchange for.... only having to train invocations, and not having to pick up spellbooks or amnesia scrolls?

Maybe i missed something here, but what advantage does this god give over no god, to the extent of making it competitive with other gods?

It'd be pretty good for Trolls.

[Siegurt]

I am not sure i get the point of this god i mean it might be interesting to play, but unless i misread it somehow, it seems like "very limited/gimped spellcasting" in exchange for.... only having to train invocations, and not having to pick up spellbooks or amnesia scrolls?

Maybe i missed something here, but what advantage does this god give over no god, to the extent of making it competitive with other gods?

It'd be pretty good for Trolls.

While true, i dont think "the troll magic god" is a niche that needs filling.

[xbon]

personally I think it's a great idea, and would work on many of the lesser magic backgrounds allowing them to still be able to use a spell in a pinch.

[sanka]

Sar: the main design goal for me was to have an interesting game play, balance is secondary. To elaborate:

1. I do not like current nemelex, and one of the many problems is that I do not like that she uses a completely arbitrary stack of abilities, which makes it really spoilery. Also I do not like that you do not know in advance the ability you use, as I think this removes a lot from the interesting aspect of having random abilities. Using spells has the big advantage that it does not introduce a completely new game mechanic just for the sake of one god. Of course it has the drawback that it replaces traditional spellcasting (at least I think it work better this way rather than allow traditional spellcasting as well, which I think would be confusing).

2. I specifically do not want to design a god that is stronger (or even competitive) with Fedhas, Yred etc. If I were to add a new god, I would place it somewhere in the middle. It certainly would not be in the worst three as proposed , and personally I think it would be stronger than, for example, Vehumet.

3. If the god turns out to be too weak to be enjoyable, it seems to be rather easy to make it stronger. Here are a couple of ideas:
- change the Invocation -> IQ formula to IQ = 10 + Invo (in spellcasting/power formulas). Or something even bigger. (In other words: you can control the success rate and power of the spells.)
- remove miscast effects
- spells only removed when *successfully* casted, so not upon miscasting them
- as somebody proposed: add some active abilities. For example an active ability at one * that in exchange of piety fills up your spell slots with gifts immediately would drastically strengthen the god, and (if the piety cost is large) could make an interesting decision: it is powerful to use, but it delays the stronger spells.
- and of course increase piety gain / spell gift frequency

About the gods power: it is funny that dpeg thought that the original proposal may need some weakening. I myself think that it would be a rather week god, but it's not a big problem for me: I do not want power creep, and it's easy to make arbitrarily strong later. What is important is to have fun!

[Siegurt]

Sar: the main design goal for me was to have an interesting game play, balance is secondary. To elaborate:

1. I do not like current nemelex, and one of the many problems is that I do not like that she uses a completely arbitrary stack of abilities, which makes it really spoilery. Also I do not like that you do not know in advance the ability you use, as I think this removes a lot from the interesting aspect of having random abilities. Using spells has the big advantage that it does not introduce a completely new game mechanic just for the sake of one god. Of course it has the drawback that it replaces traditional spellcasting (at least I think it work better this way rather than allow traditional spellcasting as well, which I think would be confusing).

2. I specifically do not want to design a god that is stronger (or even competitive) with Fedhas, Yred etc. If I were to add a new god, I would place it somewhere in the middle. It certainly would not be in the worst three as proposed , and personally I think it would be stronger than, for example, Vehumet.

3. If the god turns out to be too weak to be enjoyable, it seems to be rather easy to make it stronger. Here are a couple of ideas:
- change the Invocation -> IQ formula to IQ = 10 + Invo (in spellcasting/power formulas). Or something even bigger. (In other words: you can control the success rate and power of the spells.)
- remove miscast effects
- spells only removed when *successfully* casted, so not upon miscasting them
- as somebody proposed: add some active abilities. For example an active ability at one * that in exchange of piety fills up your spell slots with gifts immediately would drastically strengthen the god, and (if the piety cost is large) could make an interesting decision: it is powerful to use, but it delays the stronger spells.
- and of course increase piety gain / spell gift frequencyű

About the gods power: it is funny that dpeg thought that the original proposal may need some weakening. I myself think that it would be a rather week god, but it's not a big problem for me: I do not want power creep, and it's easy to make arbitrarily strong later. What is important is to have fun!

Well what if instead of your pool of spells filling up gradually:
* the pool of spell choices was equal to piety stars +1
* your pool was always full of spells,
* had a spell get replaced with a different one on casting
* the spell level of the new spell was invocation based (something like invo/3 - random(0-4) )
* casting cost a small amount of piety (in addition to the normal mana costs)

[sanka]

While I understand that you give a small piety cost in order to discourage casting "bad" spells immedieately to replace them with better ones, I think it would not work well in practice.

That is because the piety cost need to be low enough to allow you to actually cast the spells preferably a lot. This means that it would not be a big cost to cast some spells (that you do not want) immediately and improve your spell pool. This creates a tedious but probably optimal strategy to constantly fiddle with your spells out of combat. It would be even worse in late game, when piety usually is plenty.

Of course to completely eliminate this from the original proposal would mean to design a system where casting a spell does not have any effect on gaining new ones. Maybe gift frequency should not depend on the empty spell slots but instead replace the oldest spell when there are no more place for it. I do not know whether it would lead to a better gameplay or not.

[dpeg]

I am not sure I get the point of this god

You did not get the point of this god.

Maybe I missed something here, but what advantage does this god give over no god, to the extent of making it competitive with other gods?

I feel like a broken record, but I don't know if I ever explained this to you (certainly no apologies if I did): it is pointless to discuss the power level of a proposal like this. I'll try to get the point across in two rhetorical questions: Can it be useful to cast spells? Without investing in the (expensive) skills?

I don't know why the following exercise in continuity is missed so often: assume that the god gives 10 spells for each piety *, and they replenish really fast after use, and power/success is boosted manifold. Now you have a steady source of random, but strong spells. If you agree that this could be overpowered, then you should agree that numbers can be dialed down towards something more balanced.

The real issue is if such gameplay could be fun (to some). I think it could: the audience should be similar to Nemelex users. Like I said in the previous thread, I consider sanka's proposal as a nifty way to keep the spirit of Nemelex Xobeh without the heavy dead weight that god has right now. As I also said, I think it'd be good to provide some form of mitigating the randomness.

(I just realised that sanka said similar things. +1)

[Rast]

Maybe gift frequency should not depend on the empty spell slots but instead replace the oldest spell when there are no more place for it.[/u] I do not know whether it would lead to a better gameplay or not.

Still encourages players to burn their weaker spells to make sure the stronger ones never fall off

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Not wanting to put word's into people's mouths, but I felt that Siegurt had a point, although perhaps not made well:

The proposal as posted is too weak.

Now, you might argue that's not useful feedback, but then what is?

[dpeg]

4H2A: Yes. "God's too weak as written" is useful feedback. But that's not quite what Siegurt said.

[sanka]

Maybe gift frequency should not depend on the empty spell slots but instead replace the oldest spell when there are no more place for it.[/u] I do not know whether it would lead to a better gameplay or not.

Still encourages players to burn their weaker spells to make sure the stronger ones never fall off

Sitting on spells for too long is discouraged tough, since you will forget them.

But you are right - to really completely eliminate this aspect it is also needed that whether a new spell replaces an existing one or not does not depend on your other spells. So even if you have only one spell in your memory, it can still be replaced (instead of just receiving the new spell). It is easy to do if every spell just takes one slot, regardless of level. I still do not know whether it would be better though, but it would be much less gameable, to the point that maybe the "forget spell" ability or the eventual loosing of spells you do not use is not needed anymore.

NEW SYSTEM:
1. You have Invo+1 spell slots. Every spell takes one slot. When you receive a gift, it randomly takes a slot. If that slot is occupied by an other spell, it got replaced: you forget the old one. The "forget spell" ability is removed, and spells do not fade from memory after some time, and spell gifts does not depend on your empty slots.

[Siegurt]

4H2A: Yes. "God's too weak as written" is useful feedback. But that's not quite what Siegurt said.

Well, I thought that might be implied by my suggestion to increase its power level without changing its fundamentals, maybe not though.

So somewhere between "can cast exactly one randomly generated spell at great expense" and "can cast an infinite number of randomly generated spells from an arbitrarily large set at no cost at all" probably lies a well balanced and decently powerful good.

As originally written the good didn't appear powerful enough to me to even make up for the drawbacks given (even over not having a good at all) which is imho the first step, it needs to have a net positive benefit, and further it needs to have a positive benefit that is roughly comprable to other gods, generally.

There also needs to be a core idea which is interesting, which i think this has.

When i said i didn't get it, i meant i didn't see why someone would take this god as written, not that the core idea wasn't worth exploring.

There are also some details i would like to see fleshed out: 1. Is power level, making it worth the associated sacrifice and on par with other gods, 2. Is appeal, what, if any, appeal does this have for book starts? What happens to existing spell skills? Can you still train them? What do they do?

[Lasty]

I do think that the written proposal is too weak, but as has been said, that's not all that important. I think that for this god to be at its best design and power level, you should have the option to 1) burn several spells in a big fight, and 2) use the god's powers in several fights on a single dungeon level. It is important that the god feel distinct (and not just more powerful than) normal spellcasting or Makhleb's powers, so the timing of the uses would need to be considered and tested carefully. This is something that can be handled in the balancing/testing phase of the design. I think it's good to offer some trade-offs with the god through active powers: offer a refill-spells-for-piety power, as sanka described, or perhaps a short-term power boost effect, or something else. Having piety affect the quality of the offered spells means that any piety-using actives necessarily have some interesting trade-offs, as long as they're worth using at all.

[casserol]

And maybe have an ability that lets the player uses a spell from a book as if it was a scroll, burning the spell from the book or the whole book ? That would give some amount of reliability. Or an ability where the player had some amount of control on his spell slots, picking them from books, destroying the spells or the whole book.

Or sacrificing items to weight gifts toward some categories of spells, like Nemelew does (did?) for decks ?


edit : cast spells from books like scrolls, with a [(spell level*10)/3 + (invo/3)]/100 chance of destroying the book in the process.

[pumpyscump]

Every 3 turns you get a new handful of random spells. You can cast any spell from that list, but it ciears the whole list when you do. You can cast one speii every 3 turns, but no more than that. You can "wait scum" for the perfect spell to show up, but then you have to improvise after that.

[pumpyscump]

Or
Ability: "Godcast a spell"
- can only be done when enemy in sight
- selects a random spell on the spot for this turn
- even if it's an untargeted spell, you can cancel the casting if you don't like this turn's spell
- have to attack/shoot/swing at an empty square if you cancelled the cast

[adozu]

the problem with "spell refreshes and randomises all the time whitout enemy interaction" would be that a certain subset of players are inevitably going to tell us how optimal play invovles being a vampire/mummy/whatever whitout a food clock and continously reset-scum until you have deflect missiles/delayed fireball/whatever other buff seems worth it.

so i think enemy interaction is necessary to refresh your spells (or as said, a refresh-for-piety skill meaning you could get whatever buff you want to but its up to you to decide if the cost makes it worth it)

[Shard1697]

Spells could always refresh+randomize on a fairly short XP clock.

[dpeg]

There are other ways, but it'd be possible to restrict to spells that interact with monsters (conjurations, hexes, summons).

[sanka]

I address some concerns in a series of posts:

1. Gaming the system - tedious behavirours arising from fiddling with the random abilites

The original proposal set piety gain on exploration and xp, and spell gifts on piety gain exactly to remove the possibility of "waiting and organizing". A modified proposal

NEW SYSTEM:
1. You have Invo+1 spell slots. Every spell takes one slot. When you receive a gift, it randomly takes a slot. If that slot is occupied by an other spell, it got replaced: you forget the old one. The "forget spell" ability is removed, and spells do not fade from memory after some time, and spell gifts does not depend on your empty slots.

removes most possibility of "gaming" the system - leaving the manipulation to active abilities (at the cost of being a little bit strange and less obvious). There are absolutely no benefit in casting spells just to receive new ones in this version.

[sanka]

2. Interaction with traditional spellcasting.

I tought that if we allow traditional spellcasting it would be
- a little bit confusing, more details needed in the interface
- it sounds harder to implement
- removes (or makes harder) the possibility on modifying some spells when casted as a random spell (see ideas later)
- it does not sound so useful to train for two kinds of spellcasting at the same time, so I am not sure if we loose too much - though better players may disagree with me on this one.

So I propose to disallow traditional spellcasting.

1. To open the god for book backgrounds, skill points spent in spellcasting skills could be transferred to invocations upon joining, and you may receive some initial piety based on the skillpoints transferred. I think further training of spellcasting skills should be disallowed - the god channels skillpoints into invocation.
2. Some spells may not be great when simply gifted randomly. The list I can think of: 1. battlesphere 2. spellforged servitor 3. confusing touch 4. spider ofrm/ice form/blade hands/dragon form. Either they could be removed from the random spell list, or slightly modified when gifted by the god. Modifications I can think on:
- you can cast magic dart while you have battlesphere active
- spellforged servitor gains random spells that she can have, regardless of whether you can cast them currently or not
- when under a form spell or confusing touch is active, your UC skill is temporarily boosted to MAX(UC, Invo).

[sanka]

3. Power level

While I thought that I have answered this one, I would rather ask Sar and others who think it is too weak:

Does it still too weak with the proposed buffs? Do you think that increasing spell frequency and power is enough to make it powerful and interesting at the same time, or you wait for some other idea to make it more appealing?

I myself imagined the availability of spells about like this: Lets call the number of stars showing your piety the "piety level".

1. Spells of equal level than your piety level could be casted in (almost) every fight, multiple times (not the same spell, but you have multiple spells of this level in almost every fight), even on popcorn monsters, they replenish fast. This means level 6 spells at max piety, level 1 spells at one star. Of course you still cannot spam them because you do not have too many of them at once.
2. You may gain spells of higher level, up to [piety level]+3, but the probability drops sharply, the [piety level]+3 spells are rare, on average you receive less than one per dungeon level.
3. Occasionaly you may receive spells of lower level, but they are more rare. Of course I expect fun moments, like: "<God name> gifts you a new spell: magic dart! Fire storm fades out of your memory to make room for the new gift!".

[Joshace]

3. Power level

While I thought that I have answered this one, I would rather ask Sar and others who think it is too weak:

Does it still too weak with the proposed buffs? Do you think that increasing spell frequency and power is enough to make it powerful and interesting at the same time, or you wait for some other idea to make it more appealing?

I myself imagined the availability of spells about like this: Lets call the number of stars showing your piety the "piety level".

1. Spells of equal level than your piety level could be casted in (almost) every fight, multiple times (not the same spell, but you have multiple spells of this level in almost every fight), even on popcorn monsters, they replenish fast. This means level 6 spells at max piety, level 1 spells at one star. Of course you still cannot spam them because you do not have too many of them at once.
2. You may gain spells of higher level, up to [piety level]+3, but the probability drops sharply, the [piety level]+3 spells are rare, on average you receive less than one per dungeon level.
3. Occasionaly you may receive spells of lower level, but they are more rare. Of course I expect fun moments, like: "<God name> gifts you a new spell: magic dart! Fire storm fades out of your memory to make room for the new gift!".

I see what you mean. Sounds pretty interesting to play but I also get why some people will find these aspects risky sacrifices. Don't you think?

[Siegurt]

2. Interaction with traditional spellcasting.

I tought that if we allow traditional spellcasting it would be
- a little bit confusing, more details needed in the interface
- it sounds harder to implement
- removes (or makes harder) the possibility on modifying some spells when casted as a random spell (see ideas later)
- it does not sound so useful to train for two kinds of spellcasting at the same time, so I am not sure if we loose too much - though better players may disagree with me on this one.

So I propose to disallow traditional spellcasting.

1. To open the god for book backgrounds, skill points spent in spellcasting skills could be transferred to invocations upon joining, and you may receive some initial piety based on the skillpoints transferred. I think further training of spellcasting skills should be disallowed - the god channels skillpoints into invocation.
2. Some spells may not be great when simply gifted randomly. The list I can think of: 1. battlesphere 2. spellforged servitor 3. confusing touch 4. spider ofrm/ice form/blade hands/dragon form. Either they could be removed from the random spell list, or slightly modified when gifted by the god. Modifications I can think on:
- you can cast magic dart while you have battlesphere active
- spellforged servitor gains random spells that she can have, regardless of whether you can cast them currently or not
- when under a form spell or confusing touch is active, your UC skill is temporarily boosted to MAX(UC, Invo).

I think they one of the things that makes the concept ingesting is giving up traditional spell casting, so i agree with keeping that.

I am slightly concerned that a full 1:1 conversion from spell skills to invocation might be too powerful, but i think that some kind of thing along those lines would work (maybe just give invocation the cross training benefit from spell skills, but don't actually change skill levels. That simplifies what happens when you abandon this god) And yes further training of spell skills should be disallowed.

I think one of the things that is also soaking is the notion that you could have weird,or useless, or just plain inappropriate spells available, i think for me the thing that is interesting is looking at a set of random spells and figuring out "what can i cobble together with this set" if there are to many useless ones making it too hard to use, you can always increase the number to select from. All of the spells you mentioned would be fine, really. Yes they would be less useful than if you were set up specifically for them, but you are using the most relevant spells and combinations for your current situation, there should be some duds.

Personally, i would prefer it if you are going to have them be spells that they not change function, i would rather use the spells exactly as they are, and someone who knows how a spell works won't have to expect it to work differently

Another thing to think about is mana, you are limiting the number of spells available to cast in a battle already, should they also be mp limited, or do the two functions overlap, if they impose different constraints, then how are they different?

[sanka]

I think you are right about that changing spells just based on this god seems to be spoilery (even if the game notices you of the changes) - one of the appeal of the god is that you can try out every spell in crawl in one game! It is better if they behave as originally.

The spells themselves are supposed to be a strategic resource - if you empty your whole mana bar than you may get low on spells quickly. (I imagine you could cast 2-3 spells average in every battle to be on par with gifts.) On the other hand when your slots are full they may cost way more than your mana bar, so mana still limits tactical usage.

[dpeg]

sanka: The new spell system is much better than the previous one. Agreed that spells should not change functionally. If for some reason, a spell really does not work the this god, then it is much better to exclude than to alter it (it could be necessary with longterm spells like Defer Missiles, but that's the fault of those spells, not of the god). About MP, I think it should work as now.

Why do you want to tie piety gain to exploration *and* experience? All other gods use just one.

[ydeve]

If you forget a spell once you cast it, D/Rmsl and delayedFireball don't work because the buff goes away once you forget the spell.

[dpeg]

ydeve: if you do it like this, then they make no sense in the gift set either.

[sanka]

The piety mechanism was designed mainly for power, but I think I have not described it well.

I think the following would be better:
1. Piety gain by exploration. Piety gain is slow (reaching 3 starts in lair, and 6 starts in the first rune branch, approximately).
2. Spell gifts are given the following way: whenever you receive a gift, the game rolls a random number for the next gift's "timeout". This is decreased by killing monsters and exploring. When it reaches zero, a new gift is added, and the timer is reset again to a random number.

The reason for the latter is to both replenish gifts when after a battle you wander into new territory and to replenish them when fighting a long battle on the same level - this is what I referred as "power level", I think both exploration and killing monsters should reduce the gift's timer to make the god appealing, otherwise it's too easy to be without any spells in some situations. The real piety gain can be much simpler, and I would use exploration for that only.

[Quazifuji]

At first I was hesitant, but after giving it some thought I really like the idea of this god.

Personally, the idea I like most is having to react to a constantly shifting set of spells. To me, the ideal implementation of this god would be one in which you constantly keep in mind the current arsenal of spells you have when approaching your next encounter. Exploring a level knowing you've got a firestorm ready should behave differently from exploring knowing you've got a controlled blink, which should be different from having a couple bolt spells, etc. I like the idea of the spells expiring, encouraging you to use them regularly and not horde powerful spells for when you really need it.

Another potential concern: If getting new spells is tied to piety (not time, to avoid scumming for spells as a mummy or vampire), but each spell is only held for a certain amount of time, that means things like going to stashed or previous branches could cause one's spells to expire, which could be annoying. If spells don't expire with time, and only expire with piety or experience, then there's still some scummy behavior possible. You couldn't rest until you got your ideal spells before every fight, but there are still cases where you could try to manipulate your spell poor. Let's say you just cleared Vaults 4, for example, but you don't think your current spell pool would be very helpful for dealing with the Vaults 5 ambush. Optimal strategy would probably be to go to another branch and get some experience, then as soon as you've got a good spell set for Vaults 5, return. That doesn't seem like behavior we want to promote.

[casserol]

"promote" I don't know, but branches and floors order is very dependent on your current skills and inventory, that's part of the game, no ? I really like how it breaks the linearity of the game. Once you're past the lair and mines it's up to you to judge (or misjudge) the risk/reward balance of available branches, depending on your kit.

[sanka]

I do not think that branches and floor order depends on your skills/inventory too much. In most of my games it has 0 effect on the order. Crawl is actually almost linear (before extended), just it is hidden a little bit.

Also even if it were true, it does not seem really relevant here.

[genericpseudonym]

I don't really like the idea of having extremely slow piety gain that's only used for determining spell level. I'd suggest using a combination of piety and invo skill to determine potential spell gifts, and then actually giving the player abilities to spend piety on.

I'm not sure exactly what abilities would be fun/interesting with this god. Pay a little piety to keep one particular spell for two casts instead of one?
How about an ability that gives your next random spell a huge spellpower boost but has to be used before you know what the spell is?

[dpeg]

Would standard enhancers (staves, archmage, rings) work with this god? As far as I understand, they would. Same for wizardry and the spellcasting mutations. (I think it's best if the god spells are just like ordinary spells as much as possible.)

About abilities: I don't think it is nifty to spend piety and then specify a spell school, for example. But what if you could ask for "me" vs "one target" vs "many targets"? There's still a huge range of possibilities in each of these classes, but it could reduce pure randomness in a useful manner.

[sanka]

In the original proposal I claimed that standard enhancers and wizardry would not work with god (and the spells are not hindered by armour or shields).

The reason for the former is that since you can receive spells from many schools, there would be an incentive to carry lot of different staves (rings) and switch to them before casting. I would find it really awkward and annoying. (Of course it does not apply to general enchancers and wizardry, but it would be confusing and strange if they would work.)

The reason for the latter is power level - make the god a little bit stronger. (Strange that nobody who claimed that the god is too weak reflected on it.) No, it would not be overpowered.

The flavour that connects the two is that they are divine abilites, not spells anymore, or something.

[sanka]

About active abilities:
If I were to implement such a god, I would code it first without any active abilities and try out how it plays. It may be that "mitigating" the randomness is not needed - I would rather keep the god simple, as constantly changing random spell set + a bunch of activated abilities sounds a little bit complicated.

Of course it is possible that the god does not play well or we can come up with abilities that makes her more fun. But for me its hard to tell before I can get a feeling how it works. First I would tweak the frequency/distribution of the gifts and the power of the spells, and only when I am satisfied would I try to design some active abilities.

Even if I would add active abilites, I most likely would at one at 1 star, which should be powerful but cost a lot of piety. This creates interesting deceison to use it (and then your spells will be lower level - piety drops and gaining it is slow) or not. Like the one I have mentioned: fill up all spellslots randomly at the cost of half drop of a star piety.

[dpeg]

sanka: sorry for missing the OP part about enhancers. I agree that the first round of this god should skip abilities.

[sanka]

I also considered that the effect of the god can be communicated clearly: "Your spell success and power depends solely on your invocation skill." - it is simple.

[dpeg]

sanka: Yes, that is true. I am a little worried this might be too one-dimensional but that's something that only really be seen in testing.