Sif Muna Rework Idea

[infinitevox]

This half-thought out idea is courtesy of several suggestions and changes I've been seeing around the tavern lately.
This idea could be terrible, but I figured I'd put it out there in the event that something usable could be pulled from it.


New Sif Muna
- Channel Energy
- Magic Skill Piety Conduct
- Book gifting

+ All spell schools are replaced by Invocations upon worship (Spell-casting itself is untouched)
+ Worshipers cannot learn spells from books
+ Spells now cost piety, not MP to cast
+ Sif allows you to learn spells depending on piety level (Higher Piety = Access to higher level spells)
+ Piety gain is now based off of exploration and killdudes (Seeking knowledge and mastering the use of magic)


What this gets us:
Sif would offer guaranteed access to all spells in the game (or possibly all spells but xxx, depending on flavor or some unforseen reason)
Sif would basically let you retool your entire spellkit based on the branch you want to do next... IF you have enough piety to do so.
Sif becomes the true god of spell-casting flexibility, as you don't need to train specific schools, and can swap out spells with enough time & piety
Worshippers have to be a little more intelligent about how they cast their spells. Once their piety drops too much, they no longer have access to learn more higher level spells, and are now forced to be creative with the spells that they do have access to. Wanna learn CBlink? Stop Firestorming every piece of popcorn in the dungeon


How this would work:
UI-wise, this wouldn't be a nightmare, just some work.

Press "a" to open Abilities menu
g - Learn New Spell

a - Air Magic (Shows all Air spells, toggle the letter to go to the Memorization window)
b - Conjurations
c - Charms
d - Earth Magic
etc ....

[and into]

That's a very radical change. No book background will ever worship this Sif, as they would lose access to their spells until gaining piety. Book backgrounds would actually be punished for kneeling to Sif. At the same time, this god would be really overpowered for spell-less backgrounds. Functionally, you are talking about a god that gives dozens and dozens of abilities, which would lead to a host of problems.

[Baldu3]

As I've played more games with new SifMuna I'm ending up really liking it, it's just the first power that I dislike a lot, I wish it got replaced with +magicpoints, like a ring of magical power that scales with piety.

[gammafunk]

+MP wouldn't be a great replacement for Divine Energy, since the latter is meant to be a useful tactical effect regardless of piety, much as how Sif's old Channel Energy was. Even if you made +MP begin with something like +4MP at 1* and scale from there to make it significant, it'd still be less useful and less interesting than Divine Energy.

One tweak that might be possible for Divine Energy would be to have it set a status that only prevented the Divine Energy passive instead setting -Cast and preventing spellcasting. Then you could use Divine Energy and cast spells as soon as you regained some MP through some other means (e.g. Channel Magic, !magic, |energy, or cboe). Fast MP restoration options are already limited, and impact of disallowing spells after using Divine Energy when you don't have MP to cast them anyhow is not often significant. Probably a more important aspect of that change would be that the toggle would no longer be necessary. I don't think the current Divine Energy UI is terribly complex, but it's nice to simplify UI if the gameplay tradeoffs involved are reasonable.

[duvessa]

Divine energy is functionally equivalent to a max MP bonus already. It's just very obfuscated.

[Baldu3]

I can't agree at all that currently divine energy is somewhat equivalent to +MP since it disables casting for ~5 turns when used. Channel magic gives ~5mp per turn, so I find it better to never ever use use divine energy once i get channel magic and 10 invocations. I guess having -cast only while in negative mp would make divine energy alright though.

My other suggestion would be to make sif 1* power be miscast protection and 2* be wizardry, while replacing vehumet destruction wizardry with destruction enhancer.

In any case, as long as channel magic remains like it is in trunk i'm quite happy with sif muna, this new god power makes sif muna worth using for me now, i'm just quibbling over smaller things.

ps: more quibbling, let's remove the mp cost from sif muna amnesia (but keep the piety cost), that's just silly since it's never used during combat

[and into]

Okay, different idea:

Sif Muna is mostly kept the same, except:

Divine Energy --> Invoke Spell: [name of spell]

You may "equip" a single spell you have memorized to this ability slot. You can still cast this spell normally, but you can also cast it by selecting Invoke Spell in the abilities menu. If you do the latter, the spell substitutes piety for MP cost. Ability success = spell success if you were normally casting the spell.

"Equipping" a spell for this ability takes several turns, like changing armor. The first time you choose a spell to equip, it is free, but changing your invokable spell takes a decent chunk of piety.

[duvessa]

ps: more quibbling, let's remove the mp cost from sif muna amnesia (but keep the piety cost), that's just silly since it's never used during combat

hey now, we can't go around buffing deep dwarves of sif muna with guardian spirit

[HardboiledGargoyle]

There are ways Divine Energy differs from a bonus to max MP. Like, it lets you cast one iron shot but not two stone arrows. And it also works if you get drained by Ghost Moths. While I can't fully judge the merits of that distinction, I really think you're choosing poor interface solutions. Like, you could change the castability condition from "will you have non-negative MP after casting this spell" to "do you have non-negative MP" when following Sif with *+ piety, or something like that, and let MP go into the negatives, but you seem to be hunting for statuses and anti-statuses or tactical buttons, when a novelty passive could do the same thing, not just approximately, but exactly.

[goodcoolguy]

My take on new sif is that the character feels weaker in that you end up withdrawing from fights where before you would channel and power through. Sif wasn't really an amazing god before, so this seems problematic. The mp recovery is weak compared to, say, a potion of magic in my experience, so then why aren't you going Gozag, getting better mp recovery when you need it, much better book availability, and a god that does something for you right away without training invocations? I don't think you can justify the opportunity cost of not going Gozag vs. Sif even in terms of early or late altar placement.

My suggestions for reform are the following: Make Sif use spellcasting skill instead of invocations for invocations power and make the channel ability instant, not ambrosia-like regeneration, so that you're getting something at least as good as what you'd get from other, currently better, gods.