The Tavern

It seems out of place to me that Trog's abilities are uneffected by invocations. Trog is already an insanely powerful god, so giving him a nerf by requiring invocations to make use of his summons and his regeneration invos effectively would both increase consistency with other gods(and assisting in clarity for newer players) while simultaneously making him a bit more on par with the rest of the pantheon(albeit still in the top 3 depending on the extent of the change).

A number of other gods have this problem as well: Ru, Trog, Pak, Gozag, Ashenzari, and vehumet are all mostly unaffected by invo. However, If there exists a skill specifically for god abilities, it should actually be a skill specifically for god abilities. In addition to Trogs change, I would like to see Ash's skill boost increased through invo and I'd like to see Vehumets mana-on-kill ability scale with invo(neither needs to be a nerf, it could be as is at 0 invo and just increase from there).

After that, we are left with Ru, a god that essentially gives you innate abilities for your sacrifices. Pak, a god that prefers the use of magical devices over invo. And Gozag, the god that doesn't care about your piety or invocations, he just wants money. All three of those make sense as to why they wouldn't gain any effect from invo, and are acceptable imo as long as the others have been changed.

Wow disagree, look what they did to Oka. I think its perfectly fine as it is to have no invo gods, some invo gods and heavy invo gods. Making every god's power scale with invo only brings more problems than whatever your goal is.

dynast wrote:Wow disagree, look what they did to Oka. I think its perfectly fine as it is to have no invo gods, some invo gods and heavy invo gods. Making every god's power scale with invo only brings more problems than whatever your goal is.

A very fair point, thank you for your different take on the issue!

Could you be a little more specific?

Well I can't speak for dynast, but one problem I see is that it would make Invo a requirement for practically every character. There's no other skill that's required for basically every character, and that's a good thing: a skill everyone has to train is just an experience tax.

It also makes the decision of which god to take *less* interesting: right now, that decision may well be affected by how much a player wants to/can invest in Invo (which, in turn, is affected by aptitudes and character build). There's no reason to flatten that out of existence.

ion_frigate wrote:There's no other skill that's required for basically every character,

Evo Fighting Dodging? Not saying I disagree w/ your point overall, but in theory it can be ok to have skills that benefit every character, so long as the question of when/how much to train them is not always obvious

ion_frigate wrote:There's no other skill that's required for basically every character

Counterexample: Fighting.
Unless you don't think hp is important, I guess..

I train fighting and evocations every game and dodging most games.

Tiktacy wrote:It seems out of place to me that Trog's abilities are uneffected by invocations.

To me, Trog is the god I'd recommend to new crawl players: "you can start with him, you don't have to worry about a large section of the game and still win, you learn how important tactical summons are". Given this mantle of 'the tutorial god', I see it as his right to have the powerful perk of "lets you use god abilities without any skill investment". That's one less thing for a newbie to worry about - just learning threat assessment and tactics (as well as the interface) is already a steep curve for new players. If you feel he's too powerful, there's other numbers that can be adjusted - taking issue with a feature of Trog merely for the sake of arbitrary consistency is wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean by arbitrary consistency, Trog is the only god that has "god spells" that aren't based on invocations aside from Ru and Pak(sort of). Trogs exception is whats arbitrary.

Aside from that though I agree with the rest of your statement.

I think it works as it is now because Invocations is an XP dump. Often my choice of god when I don't want to do with the 'sensible' god boils down to, "Do I have enough XP to train Invocations too?"

Tiktacy wrote:Trogs exception is whats arbitrary.

Arbitrary means "it just happened by chance" and implies "it's not as good as if thought went into it". I'm interpreting Trog's exception as an intended, deliberate feature.

dynast wrote:Wow disagree, look what they did to Oka. I think its perfectly fine as it is to have no invo gods, some invo gods and heavy invo gods. Making every god's power scale with invo only brings more problems than whatever your goal is.

What did they do to Oka? I never level Invocations over 6.8 necessary to bring Finesse down to 10% when worshipping Okawaru; his abilities cost so little piety you will ever start dropping down only if you literally spam Finesse against all yellow threat monsters. The last change to Oka that shortened the ability durations also halved their cost, which is a buff in general - you can use the buffs twice if you need the old duration but most of the time you'll be able to handle the situation with just one use, meaning less piety wasted. (And MP cost is only ever an issue against ghost moths.)

I actually agree that it's weird that Trog doesn't use Invocations; it just doesn't make a lot of sense nor is there much justification for that theme-wise. I'm fine with Gozag or Ru not using Invocations because there's a different cost attached to their abilities. That's not the case with Trog.

Leszczynek wrote:What did they do to Oka?

regarding invocations skill? basically nothing

Trog does not use Invocations because Inv skill gives MP, and Trog wouldn't want that.

duvessa wrote:
Leszczynek wrote:What did they do to Oka?
regarding invocations skill? basically nothing

Well heroism with 0 invo is very short in my opinion - often shorter than a single combat length - making more worthwhile to train the skill before getting finesse, which was a thing pretty much useless before.
But yes overall isn't a big change

dpeg wrote:Trog does not use Invocations because Inv skill gives MP, and Trog wouldn't want that.

Why then doesn't he ban evo?
(I'm considering your affirmation as serious and not a joke)

Evo doesn't use MP!

Leszczynek wrote:it's weird that Trog doesn't use Invocations ... is there much justification for that

sniped by dpeg (yes it is serious and yes a bad reason) (and god abilities should not use MP of course)

Psieye wrote:Given this mantle of 'the tutorial god' ... one less thing for a newbie to worry about

wow I disagree because Trog abilities are more complex than other god powers, since their power and success rate depend on piety level. Other gods give you a can of whoopass and gradually keep refilling it, but the quality of whoopass is tied to your invo. Trog ties the whoopass's quality to the total amount of whoopass in the can, leading to bizarre optimization problems. If Trog used invo, I think Trog would be newbie-friendlier (there's auto-train, after all) among other good things.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:bizarre optimization problems

which a newbie will be blind to as they'll get good mileage without worrying about perfect optimal piety management. Standard newbie psychology is to not use Emergency Buttons (consumables, 'costly' god powers), so they'll have no problem (assuming they don't die) amassing enough piety to get decent usage.

Sar wrote:Evo doesn't use MP!

Invo doesn't always use MP either, Mahklebs invocations don't use MP and some of Zins don't either.

Wait, training Evocations increases your MP, right? I completely forgot about it!

Anyway, IMO Trog should prohibit scrolls and manuals. Give Trog followers an ability to rip away cursed items and it will be playable enough!

Sar wrote:Wait, training Evocations increases your MP, right? I completely forgot about it!

Anyway, IMO Trog should prohibit scrolls and manuals. Give Trog followers an ability to rip away cursed items and it will be playable enough!

Go the PosChengband route: Berserkers are permanently berserk, for terrifying melee prowess but total inability to read or evoke anything.
Although PCB allows drinking potions while berserk at least...

The Tavern

Make More Gods Use Invocations

Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations

Re: Make More Gods Use Invocations