Buff Sif Muna and Vehumet

[PowerOfKaishin]

Let's talk about Sif first. As many of you know, Sif Muna recently got a few changes that all around and overall can be seen as a buff. I detailed my experiences playing her as a SpEn in the following topic and another topic linked in said following topic. Here's a quote:

After playing Sif with SpEn I had a lot of fun tossing wayward exp in random spell schools (and training spellcasting to 21). When the amount of books Sif gives you is combined with the amount of extra exp SpEn gets to put into random shit alongside a wiz bonus of their own, they're able to use a very diverse set of magical spells. Personally, I think this is (or should be) the main draw of picking Sif Muna as a god, but currently in order to have such a diverse skillset you need amazing aptitudes in all or most relevant schools. Basically, you need to be a DE or Sp. If you're a race like Hu or Op, your aptitudes aren't good enough to have the experience necessary to cast spells from many different schools, since you have a lot of other stuff you need to worry about as well.

Source: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=20944

Having great apts and lots of leftover exp let me cast many different spells, but it was the wizardry that my character had that allowed him to cast lots of different higher level stuff. Sif can grant intrinsic +wiz to allow all characters this advantage. Other ideas include a flat Ashenzari-styled bonus to spellcasting (which he himself does not give) or a simple increase to the actual aptitude to produce a similar effect. I propose +wiz and a flat bonus to Spellcasting skill. Regardless, with any of these I believe miscast protection should no longer be a Sif ability.

Sif should also periodically gift the player various magical staves, with a timer different than the spellbook timer. Any enhancer staff is valid, including unrandarts, and Sif may gift you randart staves as well, if that is possible via the game's code.

Next we have Veh. Giving Sif +wiz crosses her with Veh's design space, therefore he would need to be changed as well. And I know just what he should get. Currently, the spellpower cap is very difficult to reach, requiring nearly maxed out skills, an enhancer staff, and one or two ranks of a certain mutation (or another certain mutation, if playing a Ds). Vehumet should give an intrinsic bonus to spellpower as though the player was wearing Archmagi, but only for Veh-approved spells, obviously. This would scale with piety, reaching two ranks of Archmagi at max piety.

Veh is supposed to be a very straightforward blow-shit-up god, at least in my opinion. Certainly, that's why people choose to worship him, so simply having him grant a bonus to spellpower is a great way to keep in line with that. This will serve to make him more distinct than he is now. Currently, Veh only grants the ability to cast conjurations a few skill levels earlier than normal. With this, he offers an amazing, virtually unreproducable advantage to an early or even midgame character. To a late game character, his bonus comes in the form of slotlessness instead, and should still be very appreciated.

In addition, with miscast protection being removed from Sif, there is no reason why Veh couldn't have it instead.

tl;dr:
Sif Muna changes:
+ Wizardry (1 point at *, 2 at ***, 3 at *****)
+ Bonus to Spellcasting skill (1 point at *, 10 points at max piety, max skill level 27)
+ Gifts enhancer staves, including randarts and rarely unrandarts (uses a separate timer from book gifts)
- No more Miscast Protection

Veh changes:
+ Archmagi for Vehumet-approved spells (scales with piety, effectively two ranks at max piety)
+ Miscast Protection for Vehumet-approved spells
- No more reduction to spell failure

[goodcoolguy]

You need to win more games of crawl if you think it makes sense for a god to give you triple wizardry and +10 spellcasting.

[dowan]

What would be the problem? Most spells depend on spellpower to some degree, so super wizardry doesn't make your spells actually worth casting. 10 more spellcasting is less of a bonus than ash gives for spellpower, considering it's only worth 2.5 of any given magic skill, when ash gives 4.

Crazy stuff like that is exactly what gods are supposed to do. This makes the gods closer to being something a person trying to win might actually pick under some circumstances.

[KoboldLord]

Now that the horrible, horrible channeling issue is fixed, my main wish for Sif Muna is to remove most or all of the book gifts. You can avoid a bunch of them by liberally using her mp-regen ability now, but sometimes you just don't need it and then you have to deal with the clutter and associated inventory management.

I don't see any particular reason Sif Muna and Vehumet have to be as strong as Trog or Fedhas.

[goodcoolguy]

Oh, ****** is supposed to be the effect of 1 wizardry ring, not 3 wizardry rings. Okay, this is more reasonable than I thought. Apologies.

I agree that a buff along these lines would make sense for Sif.

[PowerOfKaishin]

Oh, ****** is supposed to be the effect of 1 wizardry ring, not 3 wizardry rings. Okay, this is more reasonable than I thought. Apologies.

I agree that a buff along these lines would make sense for Sif.

Yesh. Would you mind editing your original post to say that? I don't want to give people the wrong idea.

Though, I will point out that it says ***** and not ******. Sif's piety doesn't go that high for some reason...

[Tressol]

I would mourn the loss of Sif's miscast protection, personally, if it's being replaced by one Wizardry rank. Miscast blocking is unique to Sif and often negates the need for Wizardry anyway, unless you mean to spam high level conjurations or something, in which case why not follow Veh?

I definitely agree that a spellpower bonus for Veh would make more sense than Wizardry, both mechanically and thematically.