God proposal: Ignapikali, the Tunneller

[and into]

God of stone and traversing stone, Ignapikali favors the adventurer willing to plunge headlong into the unknown. Though admiring courage, Ignapikali does not appreciate recklessness for its own sake, and rewards followers with powers that help whenever they get in over their heads.

Depreciates:
Forgetfulness. Piety decays over time.

Appreciates:
Exploring new frontiers. Piety gain for descending stairs to generate a new level. Slightly higher piety gain for entering a portal. Bonus piety for descending through a hatch. Even larger piety bonus for descending via shaft.

(Note: Piety gain calibrated such that "normal," full or almost-full exploration of each floor before going to the next would result in slow net piety gain. If you want to build up piety reasonably fast, you have to dive to the next level before fully exploring. Descending via hatches or shafts will build up piety very quickly.)

Success and (where appropriate) power of all activated abilities depend on invocations skill.


Upon joining

You can train invocations skill.

------ Stonesense: All shafts and escape hatches are visible and pre-mapped.
*----- Iron Constitution. Passive. Igna boosts your regeneration of HP and MP based on piety level.
**---- Spirit of Stone. Active. Temporarily grants even larger regeneration HP/MP bonus, plus a bonus to AC, but roots the player in place. While active player is immobilized but also immune to hostile effects that alter positioning. Can be ended early, but the effect still takes a couple of turns to wear off following cancellation. Small piety cost.
***--- Raise Wall. Active. Choose a direction. Temporarily creates a rock wall on target unoccupied, featureless space adjacent to player. Moderate piety cost.
****-- Wallportation. Active. Blinks to target tile in LOS that is adjacent to a wall. Large piety cost.
*****- Emergency Exit. Active. Creates a temporary upward escape hatch on the tile occupied by player. Cannot be used on tiles that already have a dungeon feature (e.g., stairs, portal, etc.) Very large piety cost.

No new abilities at six stars of piety.


Rationale

God that encourages moving through the dungeon faster, without discouraging use of autoexplore (at least, no more than any gods with piety that decays), and speeds up regeneration so there is less 5ing / resting. You also get an inexpensive way to counter enemy attacks that screw up your positioning (thrasher, trample, hostile blink, hostile teleport, etc.)

Great for speedrunners, I'd imagine, but solid (ha) for many characters, and particularly nice for people who don't like some of the features listed above.

EDIT: Removed a poorly thought out passive that allowed walking on water/lava

[dynast]

Reminds me of Wulndraste.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14463&p=199904&hilit=wuld#p199904

[and into]

Reminds me of Wulndraste.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14463&p=199904&hilit=wuld#p199904

Oh man, I had forgotten about Wulndy! Though on reflection, it seems likely that some of Lasty's ideas for W must have been kicking around, just underneath my preconsciousness, when I was thinking about a god that encouraged diving. When I was thinking about that, I considered some other ideas for piety gain, but rejected any that discouraged autoexplore or backtracking, and this was what I came up with.

Perhaps encouragement to dive more quickly could work for a god, where harsh penalties for backtracking did not.

[Arrhythmia]

Instead of adding weird circumlocutions to "lava and deep water don't mater", why don't you just give the player perma-flight and theme it as "earth is sacred and cannot be touched with your feet"?

[dynast]

Or ignore it because all it does is incentivate players to exploit fighting against nom flying/swimming enemies.

[and into]

Good point; letting player walk on water/lava makes water/lava matter more, not less! Editing OP to do away with that.

[dpeg]

Interesting concept!

As a tactical power to deal with problematic situations, I like Wallportation much better than Raise Wall. The latter will do nothing (in the open) or everything (in a tunnel).

What about guaranteeing that shafts used under the god always go to the next level?

A possible power: shaft monster. Weaker than what other gods offer against single monsters, but it helps right now.

I like the piety system, but perhaps using ordinary downstairs (>) should actually be discouraged (say, piety loss and, that's important, prompt), to prevent players from hurting themselves. The god can always guarantee one hatch/shaft per level.

[and into]

As a tactical power to deal with problematic situations, I like Wallportation much better than Raise Wall. The latter will do nothing (in the open) or everything (in a tunnel).

Yes, I agree Wallportation (name could use some work) is more interesting than Raise Wall.

What about guaranteeing that shafts used under the god always go to the next level?

Could be done, though the idea with getting extra bonus piety from shafts (even compared to hatches) was that shafts can drop you more than one level.

A possible power: shaft monster. Weaker than what other gods offer against single monsters, but it helps right now.

Some offensively oriented use of shafts would fit in nicely with the god, but I feel that shaft monster would need something else going on, or else it is a bit too similar to slimify or banishment or even Zin's imprisonment (being weaker than those abilities is not the problem—the problem is the similarity: single-target "I don't want to deal with this monster right now").

An ability that creates short-lived shaft traps (that only affect enemies) would be different, but I'm not sure how to implement that in a way that would be fun/interesting.

I like the piety system, but perhaps using ordinary downstairs (>) should actually be discouraged (say, piety loss and, that's important, prompt), to prevent players from hurting themselves. The god can always guarantee one hatch/shaft per level.

Yeah, within the general concept there is a lot of room to tweak the exact piety gain mechanism in order to make the conduct more or less exacting. The defining feature of the god as I had envisioned it is a combination of, "You are encouraged to descend via means other than stairs" and "You are encouraged to spend fewer turns on a level before you generate a new level." The god's conduct could be pushed toward the former or the latter, or could retain some mixture of the two.

[dpeg]

Some offensively oriented use of shafts would fit in nicely with the god, but I feel that shaft monster would need something else going on, or else it is a bit too similar to slimify or banishment or even Zin's imprisonment (being weaker than those abilities is not the problem—the problem is the similarity: single-target "I don't want to deal with this monster right now").

Do you know how sometimes you can use a teleporation trap to get rid of a monster? The god could have a power that creates temporary, god-coloured, visible-only-to-you shafts in LOS. Your task then is to guide monsters over them, which is a bit different to Imprison etc.?

Some other wacky ideas:

Given the god's title, what about some inverted Passwall, call it Tunnel Effect: applied to an adjacent monster, sends it next to a wall, dealing damage. (So no effect if the monster already is next to a wall, which could be interesting.) If you feel like it: if no wall is in LOS, monster dies right away: "Nothing to cling to, the ancient lich withers away."

Stone Force: you can use up a wall tile that's next to you *and* a monster, dealing damage. Sort of an anti-killhole effect.

[Quazifuji]

Haven't player-made traps been rejected before, with the reasoning being that they would encourage tedious or awkward luring behavior? You could reduce that by making the trap disappear if it leaves your sight, but I still feel like overall it would often get used in situations where luring enemies over the trap would be trivial (e.g. hallways), and trying to lure enemies over it in other situations might end up feeling more like an awkward dance hoping the AI does what you want rather than an interesting challenge.

Of course, this is just speculation, and I'd love to be wrong and have it turn out to be an interesting mechanic.

[dpeg]

Quazifuji: as always, it depends. Yes, we don't want player to create blade traps and lure monsters to those. (In fact, we didn't like blade traps at all.) If you refer to the shafts I mentioned, I said "temporary" on purpose. If you mean what I wrote under Stone Force, then yes, that has luring potential. But (a) walls nearby are better in general, and (b) without walls, I suggested Tunnel Effect.

This is just brainstorming. We shouldn't put up mental barriers while doing that, can reject ideas just fine afterwards.

[dowan]

In this case they are one time, temporary teleport traps. The problems brought up against player traps don't really seem to apply here. Why would the player make these traps somewhere, and lure enemies to them, rather than just making the traps near the enemies themselves?

Not that player created teleport traps seem particularly fitting for this god anyway, of course.

[infinitevox]

This god seems specifically designed with speedrunners in mind...

Not that player created teleport traps seem particularly fitting for this god anyway, of course.

So instead of teleport, the traps cause Petrify on the enemy? Fits the earth theme too :p

[typhen]

Some offensively oriented use of shafts would fit in nicely with the god, but I feel that shaft monster would need something else going on, or else it is a bit too similar to slimify or banishment or even Zin's imprisonment (being weaker than those abilities is not the problem—the problem is the similarity: single-target "I don't want to deal with this monster right now").

possible alternative: bolt of passwall. anyone hit by this bolt will be pushed back 27 spaces away from you in a straight line, going through walls if they are encountered.

less reliable than Banish (it won't be effective on an Executioner in open space) and it's effect is not so permanent, but in the right circumstances (in Elf or Orc) it could be better.

crazy alternative: Cone of Passwall

Good point; letting player walk on water/lava makes water/lava matter more, not less!

make it reciprocal. all monsters and items gain permaflight the moment you see them. good luck with that electric eel -- you no longer need to skulk around the edges of its LOS. and hydras no longer have a swim speed advantage.

(or an alternate flavour: all liquids become semi-solid so you can walk on them. I don't know what that will do to sea creatures though.)

[jwoodward48ss]

Issue: encasing tough monsters in stone. What would happen if you are near the map edge?

[and into]

Issue: encasing tough monsters in stone. What would happen if you are near the map edge?

As proposed the wall raised by the ability would be temporary, but I think dpeg is correct that this wouldn't be a very interesting ability. You already want to fight in corridors.

A more interesting (and still thematic) ability would remove diggable walls from around the player as part of the ability cost.

[jwoodward48ss]

Nonono, bolt of passwall.

[lethediver]

Potions of experience and wands of digging/disintegration as god gifts too, for ultimate speed running.

[Queen Cassie]

Maybe call Wallportation Wallflower? Sticking to a wall, etc.

As for the piety system: if it punishes going downstairs, that should only be for the first time you go to a level. Any time thereafter shouldn't punish, if only because that would make going to Orc/Elf/back to Lair/Branches etc more tedious.

[jwoodward48ss]

It doesn't. It punishes spending time doing anything but exploring, but not heavily.

[vergil]

Hooray! A perfect god for abyss shaft introduction!