Vehumet reform


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Post Monday, 5th September 2016, 20:36

Vehumet reform

Vehumet has no active abilities. No action you take under Vehumet costs piety (except abandonment). Vehumet's gift system was changed to be somewhat more interactive, but these changes were a strict nerf to the god, which was combined with or followed by other nerfs (no summoning support, no summon spell gifts, and no MP cost reduction of destructive spells).

The interactive spell gifting also tends to be annoying in that your current skill decisions have to be made in anticipation of what and when Vehumet will gift you a new spell, which also creates situations where knowing exactly how Vehumet works "under the hood" gives an advantage—you can play differently in order to increase your chances of getting that last spell slot and memorizing iron shot before it gets replaced. While distinct from Kiku and Sif's spell gifts, this system creates these sorts of problems. It also seems to be out of step with Vehumet's theme—Vehumet should want you to be training skills that increase your destructive power, rather than dumping some extra into spellcasting for more flexibility.

In short: Vehumet is a weak god, but worse than that, Vehumet is boring. There just isn't a lot going on—most of the time you gain more piety and don't unlock anything new—and there are very few actual decisions introduced by worshiping Vehumet. And the spell gifting system is flawed.


Here are some suggestions for reforms that will, I think, keep Vehumet distinct from Sif and Kiku, while boosting power somewhat and removing the annoyance of Veh's spell gifting system.


ABILITIES

At two stars of piety, you may choose a favored spell from among the “destructive” magics that Vehumet improves. The first time you choose a favored spell, it costs no piety. You may later alter your choice of spell at a substantial piety cost. Your favored spell may be cast normally via 'Zz'ap, or you may divinely cast it through the 'a'bilities menu. If you do the latter, the spell is cast with boosted spell power (equal to one additional enhancer effect) and at no MP cost. Doing so costs piety scaling up with the MP cost of the spell.

At five stars of piety, you may choose a second favored "destructive" spell. The first time you choose this additional favored spell, it has no piety cost. You may subsequently change your choice, but at a substantial piety cost.

With these changes, this is what piety progression under Vehumet would look like:

* MP on kills (as currently)
** One “favored” destructive spell
*** Success boost to destructive magic (as currently)
**** Range increase to most destructive spells (as currently)
***** Two “favored” destructive spells


SPELL GIFTS

Up to three of Vehumet’s gifted spells will “stack” with each other. Memorizing a spell will remove it from the stack, as currently. If all three slots are full, new gifts will come in at the top of the stack, displacing the spell that has been on the stack the longest. Vehumet’s three final gifts are given in a set of three and do not displace anything on the stack (as currently).

EDIT: Over time the spells remaining on the stack will be removed from last to first, leaving only Veh's final gifts, which will not be removed unless you abandon him (as currently).

Under this system, Vehumet could conceivably cycle through more total spells, in which case you could probably move to an entirely random selection process, which would also bypass the potentially spoilery in-game actions you can take in order to stack gift probability one way or the other.

I think this will keep what is unique about Vehumet's spell gifting, while removing the annoyance and the potential advantages of spoilers.

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Post Monday, 5th September 2016, 20:50

Re: Vehumet reform

Vehumet is not weak and to me, not boring either. Veh does seem boring from outside, perhaps, but I find that despite the simplistic mechanics Vehumet is quite a lot of fun to play (in moderation). I just kind of like the system of getting spells one by one and wondering "what will I get next, where will Veh's gifts take me as far as specialization is concerned?" Thus, I do not in principle see a strong need for reform. The problem of having to rush to memorize Veh's gifts is a minor one that I agree could be solved, though overall it doesn't bother me that much. The simpler solution that I've thought of, and which I prefer, is this: Vehumet's spells are available to cast as soon as they are gifted, but they need to be memorized or else you will lose them when the next gift comes. (This might potentially have the problem that new players might be confused and unless it is properly stressed that memorizing the spells is still important, they might think that Vehumet's gifts are transient and they can't count on them for long.)

I'm not a fan of your proposal of "favored" spells, mostly because it just intrudes on new Sif's design space. The favored spells are way too similar to Sif's divine casting ability, after all, with the idea of "be able to cast even when your mana runs out, but at a steep cost".

I'd welcome this god if Vehumet didn't exist yet, but as it is, I don't really see a pressing need to reform Vehumet in this way and I think the favored spells should be reworked in a way so that they are markedly different from what Sif offers.
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Post Monday, 5th September 2016, 22:14

Re: Vehumet reform

I'm glad you enjoy Vehumet, though I don't quite know what you mean by "from the outside" — it isn't like I haven't played numerous characters that worshiped Vehumet.

Aside from our individual perceptions, it is a fact that Vehumet has been nerfed quite drastically over the years without receiving any compensatory buffs. Something to consider.

I'm truly not sure how the favored spells mechanism steps on Sif's toes, at all. They are completely different abilities with different costs, considerations, etc. How do you see them being too similar?

I've sometimes seen it argued that "simple" gods like Vehumet are good for new players, but in its current state I'd almost consider Vehumet closer to a "newbie trap," especially given the very "newb-unfriendly" spell gifting system. My proposal would introduce one new active ability, but the ability centers around empowering a spell that you already have access to, and thus shouldn't introduce a much greater cognitive load, even if it does introduce a few more decisions (when to use it, which spell(s) to choose). I think a Vehumet reformed in accordance to my suggestions would still be simple, but with some more interesting decisions and a less rigid spell gifting system.

(Note that in the system I proposed you could still have spells cycle through the stack quite quickly, which would keep the pressure up on the decision but would give players a much better sense of how long they have to memorize the spell, without needing to look up spoilers.)


EDIT: If others end up feeling that the "no MP cost" is too close to Sif, then an alternative would be for your selected favored spells, when cast through 'a'bilities menu, to cost the usual amount of MP, but to be cast with additional enhancer effect and at base time cost of 0.5 auts (at cost of piety scaling with spell level, etc.)

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Post Monday, 5th September 2016, 22:47

Re: Vehumet reform

How would the piety spell interact with miscasts/failures?

On the one hand, if you reduce/eliminate the chance of failure or negative aspects of failure, you can give extremely early access to high level spells, even by Veh's standards. Plus, that would change Vehu to be less focused on spellcasting. On the other hand, high piety cost god abilities can already outclass 9th level spells and don't risk blowing you up if you try to use them as a panic button, and tend to require less skill investment.

Also: another thing I've thought about with Vehu a lot is that he doesn't actually enhance the damage output of destructive spells (beyond the range); the favored spell active ability is more in line with that, but it's weird to me that other gods are better at increasing the damage of conjurations than Vehu.
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Post Monday, 5th September 2016, 23:56

Re: Vehumet reform

I'm big into the idea of Veh reform, but I am not huge into buffing failure(or power) of individual spells in your spell list for reasons similar to why I disliked the idea of lowering(or eliminating) MP cost for individual spells in your spell list under Sif-I don't want the player(me) to be more incentivized to use one specific spell over all others.

I would be interested in sort of shifting over and reflavoring Dith's spell mimicry to Veh. As it is, Dith gives you multiple very useful things even without the mimic, and then on top of that the shadow mimic increases the damage output of your spellcasting(on average) quite noticeably, which is something that I think fits the flavor of a god of destructive magic much better and also would be a great boost to Veh's usefulness(which I also care about, since I almost never go Veh).

What I want is something like:
At **.... Veh starts aiding your destructive magic by sometimes mimicking the spell you just cast, but with a random element(similar to Dith's, but instead of non-elemental, randomly flavored). Probably with reduced damage. So when you cast a spell like magic dart, Veh might mimic by shooting flame at the same target for similar damage, or poison, or ice, etc. If you cast bolt of flame, Dith might mimic with a weaker bolt of cold, or draining, or whatever.
Give it a message like "Vehumet's power flows through you!" when it happens.
At ****.. or *****. you could have an activated ability called "Magical Overcharge", costing a hefty amount of piety and giving you a buff which increases the number of times you roll for mimicking spells in the same way based on invo. So with decent invo and the buff active, maybe Veh'd mimic you 2-4 times after you cast on average. Should possibly aim them at random visible enemies past the first mimic, so you don't massively overkill one single enemy with each cast.

Dith can keep mimicry of melee and thrown objects.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 00:12

Re: Vehumet reform

and into wrote:Vehumet has no active abilities. No action you take under Vehumet costs piety (except abandonment).
I don't see what's wrong with either of these.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 00:28

Re: Vehumet reform

and into: Thanked for the well written proposal.

Things get a bit muddy because you are trying to achieve several things (as you explicitly said). Making Vehumet stronger could be achieved within the current design. If one things that the design is alright, but the power is lacking, then one should do that.

I am partial to the spell gifting (simply and vainly because I had my hand in it), and I think that it is more interesting than book gifts. You have a good point with the meta-game issue, although it's pretty hard to assess how difficult it is easy for a new player to understand Vehumet. Because your version of it keeps the relevant parts, I like it. It's more forgiving, which may be just alright.

I'm less sure about the favoured spells: this allows you to cast one or two spells, paying with piety rather than MP. So this is like a divine version of Delayed Fireball. However, I am afraid that it'll be pretty obvious when to use the ability, and when not to do so.

If I had to give Vehumet an active power, then I'd start with something simple, like a Conjuration enhancer (like the staff), as a piety-costly ability with short duration (something like ten turns). I should also say that Vehumet being one of the "light" gods was intentional. There are enough gods with lots of active powers, and -- like Ashenzari -- the idea was to make you think a bit around your god (spells instead of curses), but otherwise to have a straightforward game.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 00:28

Re: Vehumet reform

and into wrote:I'm glad you enjoy Vehumet, though I don't quite know what you mean by "from the outside"


To put it another way - Vehumet is cooler than s/he looks (based on the description and all that). I was trying to make the point that "even if Veh sounds boring when described, they somehow still end up as fun to play".

and into wrote:Aside from our individual perceptions, it is a fact that Vehumet has been nerfed quite drastically over the years without receiving any compensatory buffs. Something to consider.


I don't think it's really much of a consideration. Much like sunk costs can be generally ignored, Vehumet's past does not have much relevance as to how they fit into the current pantheon either.

and into wrote:I think a Vehumet reformed in accordance to my suggestions would still be simple, but with some more interesting decisions and a less rigid spell gifting system.

(Note that in the system I proposed you could still have spells cycle through the stack quite quickly, which would keep the pressure up on the decision but would give players a much better sense of how long they have to memorize the spell, without needing to look up spoilers.)

EDIT: If others end up feeling that the "no MP cost" is too close to Sif, then an alternative would be for your selected favored spells, when cast through 'a'bilities menu, to cost the usual amount of MP, but to be cast with additional enhancer effect and at base time cost of 0.5 auts (at cost of piety scaling with spell level, etc.)


Alright, so this could potentially work - though wouldn't the enhancer effect be pretty much non-existent for spells already at max power? Or is there some way to boost spell damage even further beyond that of max power?
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 01:28

Re: Vehumet reform

Kiku makes an instructive point of comparison. Kiku can turn any character, regardless of int, starting book or lack of it, aptitudes, etc. into a decent necromancy caster. Part of this, it has to be mentioned, is the general mechanical superiority of necromancy -- little or no spellpower dependence for the better spells, few multischool spells, duration effects amenable to recasting on failure. But with Kiku you get a consistent, focused spell set that is useful to the vast majority of early game characters and the tools to use it.

With Vehumet, if you get a focused spell set, you're just incredibly lucky. It just flat out doesn't work if you didn't start with a conjurations heavy book. It only helps casting "destructive magic" enough to... cast the spells in your starting book and maybe one or two midlevel spell gifts. If you really want to use the gifts, you end up skilling extra schools (i.e. wasting experience). At the end of the day, Vehumet is the god of level 9 direct damage spells. Not a good place to be.

For the divine cast idea, it could work if it makes casting independent of the caster, i.e. works in armor, doesn't entice you to put all stat points into int, etc. The best way to improve Vehumet would be to make it work with characters that don't start with a book and don't wear robes. To that end, first, give a bonus that reduces your ER's effect on spellcasting, second, alter the formulas for fail rates and spellpower to have a piety component in addition to the existing factors. Characters that are reasonably effective casting midlevel direct damage spells in plate and 15 int is your target here.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 02:29

Re: Vehumet reform

A god with only passive "abilities" is somewhat distinctive, and maybe shouldn't be messed with. I don't find Veh boring, but I also don't find demigods boring.

For me at least Vehumet is currently the "less hassle blasting god" since you don't need to retreat and rest quite as much. If that's a good theme for a god, some other buffs that would continue that theme could include Veh cancelling all sound associated with offensive spells, or Veh speeding your mp generation when enemies are in sight. The fast-casting favored spells proposal is also consistent with this theme and I personally like it.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 03:32

Re: Vehumet reform

dpeg wrote:If I had to give Vehumet an active power, then I'd start with something simple, like a Conjuration enhancer (like the staff), as a piety-costly ability with short duration (something like ten turns).


This is just my own experience, but I don't think spell power enhancers make a great active ability. They're very opaque, giving the player a fairly uninformed decision to make: do I try to kill this monster with my normal spells, or do I trade a known amount of piety for an unknown increase in damage? Might works a lot better because it's pretty much a straight +1d10 to melee damage.

A better option, and one that I think has been proposed before, might be to have Vehumet (further) reduce the MP cost of spells in exchange for piety.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 06:09

Re: Vehumet reform

Veh is boring because games where you start to use FireStorm from L:6 all the way till you escape with the orb are boring.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 08:09

Re: Vehumet reform

goodcoolguy wrote:To that end, first, give a bonus that reduces your ER's effect on spellcasting, second, alter the formulas for fail rates and spellpower to have a piety component in addition to the existing factors. Characters that are reasonably effective casting midlevel direct damage spells in plate and 15 int is your target here.


I'm not sure whether this should go into Veh or a new god, but I've been thinking about a god where spellpower depends solely (or mostly) on piety. You'd still want to train spell skills for casting success, so wizardry would actually matter with this god.

In terms of game mechanics, the issue as goodcoolguy points out is that blaster characters are too niche. There is limited flexibility in building conjurations-heavy characters (there is a reason the DEFE^Veh build is so popular among newbies). So a god that would make conjurations viable for more characters is untapped space, I think.

In terms of flavour, it could be somewhat similar to the old D&D distinction between Wizard and Sorceror. Wizards learn magic from spellbooks (classic crawl casters) while Sorcerors have innate magic abilities that they can tap directly (piety based casting).

As to OP's post, I find the favoured spell mechanic rather cumbersome. 2 different ways of casting seems kind of bad. In the end what this achieves are enhancer effect and MP-saving - arguably it would be simpler and more effective for Veh to provide both for ALL destructive magic and not just the favoured ones.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 10:06

Re: Vehumet reform

Have Veh remove all spellcasting penalties from wearing armor. Ta-da! Interesting god status achieved.

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 10:55

Re: Vehumet reform

ion_frigate wrote:
dpeg wrote:If I had to give Vehumet an active power, then I'd start with something simple, like a Conjuration enhancer (like the staff), as a piety-costly ability with short duration (something like ten turns).


This is just my own experience, but I don't think spell power enhancers make a great active ability. They're very opaque, giving the player a fairly uninformed decision to make: do I try to kill this monster with my normal spells, or do I trade a known amount of piety for an unknown increase in damage?
Fair enough. The enhancer was just a random idea: my main point is that I think it's better to provide some universal benefit rather than allow (only) two spells to be cast through piety.

A better option, and one that I think has been proposed before, might be to have Vehumet (further) reduce the MP cost of spells in exchange for piety.
There is a way to do this with yet another passive power: under Vehumet, you can keep casting at 0 MP, paying with piety. This way, you wouldn't have to use any abilities, you could just keep firing.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 10:58

Re: Vehumet reform

Sounds like a good idea for something to replace Sif's divine energy with.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 11:58

Re: Vehumet reform

lethediver wrote:Have Veh remove all spellcasting penalties from wearing armor. Ta-da! Interesting god status achieved.


You know this won't be overpowered because this version of Vehumet would still be weaker than Nemelex.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 14:38

Re: Vehumet reform

I see mention of blasting in armor and power based on piety. Isn't that already covered with Mahkleb?

I like Veh's current abilites but I do feel like his spells could be more useful. When I go Veh, it's not until his level 5 spells that I take any of them because usually redundant to starting book unless I am a Venom Mage.

Extra range and mana on kills though are nice to me.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 14:44

Re: Vehumet reform

Arguably it's covered by Nemelex, but the charm of conjurations, presumably, is in getting a definite choice of what effect you're using. Outside of that, conjurations offer such a poor value proposition I don't know why people use them outside of that feel when you gotta be the wizard in Gauntlet because the other guys that shoot bullets aren't using magic.
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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 15:02

Re: Vehumet reform

fearitself wrote:I see mention of blasting in armor and power based on piety. Isn't that already covered with Mahkleb?


For the based on piety part, technically no. Makhleb and current Nemelex are based on Invo, not piety. And oldNem was based on Evo.

But if you mean, can you get conjurations-like effects from gods already? Then the answer is yes. And also from wands/rods, ranged, etc

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Post Tuesday, 6th September 2016, 17:39

Re: Vehumet reform

Why doesn't veh just give a spellpower boost to favored spells? Something that lets the player reach the spellpower cap in tandem with one or two other boosts and a high skill rank

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Post Thursday, 8th September 2016, 01:09

Re: Vehumet reform

goodcoolguy wrote:Kiku makes an instructive point of comparison. Kiku can turn any character, regardless of int, starting book or lack of it, aptitudes, etc. into a decent necromancy caster. Part of this, it has to be mentioned, is the general mechanical superiority of necromancy -- little or no spellpower dependence for the better spells, few multischool spells, duration effects amenable to recasting on failure. But with Kiku you get a consistent, focused spell set that is useful to the vast majority of early game characters and the tools to use it.

With Vehumet, if you get a focused spell set, you're just incredibly lucky. It just flat out doesn't work if you didn't start with a conjurations heavy book. It only helps casting "destructive magic" enough to... cast the spells in your starting book and maybe one or two midlevel spell gifts. If you really want to use the gifts, you end up skilling extra schools (i.e. wasting experience). At the end of the day, Vehumet is the god of level 9 direct damage spells. Not a good place to be.

For the divine cast idea, it could work if it makes casting independent of the caster, i.e. works in armor, doesn't entice you to put all stat points into int, etc. The best way to improve Vehumet would be to make it work with characters that don't start with a book and don't wear robes. To that end, first, give a bonus that reduces your ER's effect on spellcasting, second, alter the formulas for fail rates and spellpower to have a piety component in addition to the existing factors. Characters that are reasonably effective casting midlevel direct damage spells in plate and 15 int is your target here.


There are already plenty of gods that have summoning stuff with them, so I'm not suggesting that we go back, but yeah it kind of sucks that Vehumet lost summoning support. The comparison to Kiku underscores the fact that "god of better conjurations" ends up being even more niche than conjurations school itself already is (some but not all "blasters" take Veh, basically zero non-"blasters" should take Veh).

Vehumet used to support and gift spells from the summoning school, which (like necromancy) has much better cost/benefit ratio for a wider range of characters. Veh already boosts success but doesn't do anything for spellpower, which was pretty great for summon spells but for conjurations, it just puts you a bit ahead of the curve (except for level 9 spells, as you point out — plus chain lightning).

Sif already tends to be a niche "caster" god, whereas Kiku is good for helping a wide range of characters branch into magic. So Vehumet ends up being in a rather awkward place, as you point out — the god of "roughly half of the level 8 and 9 spells."

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Post Friday, 9th September 2016, 02:04

Re: Vehumet reform

Vehu is a great god for Wanderers who have high int and no starting (relevant) spells.

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Post Friday, 9th September 2016, 05:24

Re: Vehumet reform

IMHO favored spells will make Veh more boring, not less. It will be optimal to choose the spell(s) you spam most, and spam it even more.

I support the idea of having more than one spell available for memorizing.
It would not be a huge buff to even have all gifts permanently available (because Veh does not give you extra spell slots or amnesia anyway).

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Post Friday, 9th September 2016, 21:19

Re: Vehumet reform

I'll just throw this out there, but I'm assuming that invokable brilliance is a "Do Not Do"?
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Post Saturday, 10th September 2016, 11:50

Re: Vehumet reform

MainiacJoe wrote:I'll just throw this out there, but I'm assuming that invokable brilliance is a "Do Not Do"?


Don't think it is. This is the "won't do" list for reference: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ng:wont_do Fun fact: at least 1 item on the won't do list has actually been implemented (gyre and gimble), LOL.

It is true that god powers that merely duplicate existing effects are frowned upon. OTOH, there's the concept of "magic berserk" that pops up now and then which usually includes invokable brilliance. This might be something that fits a Veh revamp, sure.

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Post Saturday, 10th September 2016, 15:14

Re: Vehumet reform

The thing that jumps out at me on that won't do list is the claim that "monster corrosion is mostly insignificant". I've been thinking acid was one of the most valuable wands because I *thought* it seemed like the monsters were much more vulnerable while corroded.

To get back to Vehumet, I think the main issue with him is that some of us want a low-maintenance slacker god. Used to be Sif because of the built-in staff of energy, but now the Vehumet ring of wizardry takes the day. Vehumet is a good god for wizards and perhaps a better god for musclebound characters that could barely cast a spell without help. What we don't want is some namby-pamby goody-two-shoes lecturing us about don't wield this and don't cast that and by the way I'm not going to help you anyway because you're too hungry. You pull that and you'd have all demigods, if their slow skill progression didn't suck so.

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Post Saturday, 10th September 2016, 19:10

Re: Vehumet reform

Move the Dith shadow mimic to Veh, move the DS Nightstalker mut to Dith.

Voila, suddenly Veh actually does something interesting, and the cool LOS reduction effect is available to people who want to play with it without mutation RNG.

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Post Wednesday, 14th September 2016, 12:40

Re: Vehumet reform

dpeg wrote:I am partial to the spell gifting

You have a good point with the meta-game issue

I focus on just this to arrive at a counter-proposal:

You do not memorise Vehumet's spell gift. From the current spell gift framework, whatever Vehumet is 'offering' you is castable as if it was a single-school Conjurations spell (even things like Airstrike which don't originally use Conjurations). When Vehumet changes the 'offer', you can no longer cast the previous offering and you cannot memorise it as is - if you find the same spell in a book, it's got the ordinary spell school requirements.

Apply whatever buffs (e.g. ignore armour penalties, passive power boost, ignore spell hunger, etc) are required to make the core 'you only need to train Conjurations' viable for a variety of characters.

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Post Wednesday, 14th September 2016, 15:47

Re: Vehumet reform

Yeah, thinking about this more, it is difficult to make Vehumet actually useful for a wide range of characters, unless you fundamentally took the god in a direction away from "god of conjurations." On the positive side, tweaking the spell gifting seems to have support, and there's plenty of room there to buff it a bit while creating a more forgiving (and less annoying) system.

Psieye wrote:
dpeg wrote:I am partial to the spell gifting

You have a good point with the meta-game issue

I focus on just this to arrive at a counter-proposal:

You do not memorise Vehumet's spell gift. From the current spell gift framework, whatever Vehumet is 'offering' you is castable as if it was a single-school Conjurations spell (even things like Airstrike which don't originally use Conjurations). When Vehumet changes the 'offer', you can no longer cast the previous offering and you cannot memorise it as is - if you find the same spell in a book, it's got the ordinary spell school requirements.

Apply whatever buffs (e.g. ignore armour penalties, passive power boost, ignore spell hunger, etc) are required to make the core 'you only need to train Conjurations' viable for a variety of characters.


This is what I mean about it actually being difficult to make Vehumet useful for a wide range of characters.

These changes would make Veh worse for "blasters," and yet it would still be the case that no one except "blasters" would worship him. (Everyone else gets, "I can train a bunch of conjurations in order to cast exactly one randomly changing conjuration, while wearing plate armor"—that's pretty awful tbh.)
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Halls Hopper

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Post Friday, 23rd September 2016, 20:52

Re: Vehumet reform

Mechanics aside (honestly idgaf), this god definitely needs some more flavour. Currently it feels less like a divinity, and more like a slot machine for offensive magic spells. The in-game description is unbelievably bland -- even the name, "Vehumet", vaguely sounds like an old Hebrew custom related to tax refunds.

Spider Stomper

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Post Sunday, 25th September 2016, 23:27

Re: Vehumet reform

dpeg wrote:There is a way to do this with yet another passive power: under Vehumet, you can keep casting at 0 MP, paying with piety. This way, you wouldn't have to use any abilities, you could just keep firing.

+1

Tomb Titivator

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Post Monday, 26th September 2016, 08:32

Re: Vehumet reform

DIngbat wrote:Mechanics aside (honestly idgaf), this god definitely needs some more flavour. Currently it feels less like a divinity, and more like a slot machine for offensive magic spells. The in-game description is unbelievably bland -- even the name, "Vehumet", vaguely sounds like an old Hebrew custom related to tax refunds.


Hmm, I like Veh's current flavour. "Let it end in hellfire" - very postmodern nihilist. Good, evil, doesn't matter just end it all already.

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Monday, 26th September 2016, 17:16

Re: Vehumet reform

Here's an idea: Toggle ability, magical focus. Lets you cast spells with Veh's bonuses and decrease mp cost, and possibly some other buffs, but you cannot move. Untoggling it gives you -Cast or slow for a while. Amplify Veh's boosts as well.

The idea being, Veh lets you cast a few spells very well, particularly by non primary spellcasters, but requires a different tactical style to make best use of it.
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