God proposal: Ibdin, God of Forgetfulness

[and into]

In ignorance lies strength

Inspired by Shtopit's Boniface, God of Ignorance

Strength of all active abilities scale up with piety. The god of forgetfulness does not want you training invocations...

Piety gain:
+ Through willful ignorance. (Sacrifice of experience)
+ Piety does not decay. "Ibdin does not punish you for forgetfulness — even forgetfulness of Ibdin."

Upon joining: “Absentminded <species> of Ibdin”
+ Penalty (% reduction) on all experience gained. This affects character and skill experience.

* “Scatterbrain of Ibdin”
+ Aura of Forgetfulness. Active, small piety cost, small additional sacrifice of current character XP. For a period of time, every adjacent enemy has a chance to be afflicted with confusion each term. Checks HD, not MR. An enemy confused via this ability gains temporary clarity for a while once the confusion wears off.

** “Airhead of Ibdin”
+ “What I don’t know cannot hurt me.” Passive, reduce LOS by 1.

*** “Dunce of Ibdin”
+ Collective Amnesia. Active. Moderate piety cost, moderate additional sacrifice of current character XP. All enemies in LOS are (guaranteed) afflicted with “amnesiac” status, rendering them temporarily unable to do anything except move and perform basic attacks. Enemies with higher HD recover more quickly from this debuff. An enemy that has been afflicted with this once retains the "amnesiac" tag and is permanently immune to subsequent applications.

**** “Fool of Ibdin”
Passive LOS reduction increased to 2.

***** “Idiot of Ibdin”
+ Ignorance is Bliss. Active, high piety cost, high additional sacrifice of current character XP. Temporarily sets LOS to 2 squares around player (i.e., doesn’t stack with Darkness, Nightstalker, etc.)

****** “Ignoramus of Ibdin” (No new abilities).


Rationale

Ru already offers sacrifices of skill levels and aptitudes, but they are only a few among many sacrifice options, and operate quite differently from what is proposed here: a sacrifice of character + skill experience in order to gain piety that will be actively burned through the use of abilities. I think in practice this will play and feel quite different from Ru's sacrifices.

As for the abilities, reducing LOS is a very interesting feature that is currently available through one rather (it seems to me) underused spell and a demonspawn mutation. We've lost the lantern of shadows (rightfully so), but I think this opens up design space for LOS reduction via a god. The other abilities offer powerful MR-bypassing debuffs that fit the theme of the god.

A permanent cost for active abilities is largely unexplored terrain and can allow for very strong effects, while nonetheless discouraging players from spamming the abilities. {EDIT: Just to clarify, the permanent XP cost from the active abilities will only affect your current character level. Your max character level is unaffected, unlike Ru's sacrifice.}

[Queen Cassie]

I really like this, and I like the alterations that take away confusing the player, as I didn't quite like those about your initial suggestion. This could be a really useful stabber god, or just plain useful in general for smart play. Obviously caters to more skilled players but I quite like it. Good too that you don't actually lose experience levels. Given how much free XP is in extended, and how much more you'd want to use these abilities in extended, I'd say it's very well balanced. Not easy to use, but when used properly it could very well be the difference between victory and defeat.

[bcadren]

Notes:

• LoS reduction is powerful for two specific characters types; pure melee dude that doesn't want to get ranged enemies to pick at him from a distance and stabber. The former already has a LOT of available gods that match up to that type.
• Permanent LoS reduction can also be bad in some situations (takes longer to explore a floor, can't engage Dispater without being inside the range of his Iron Shot, etc.)
• LoS reduction and Full LoS effects seem mismatched; as the amount of enemies you can see at once is vastly reduced so the amount of things affected by the invocation is also reduced to the point of the Invocation being pointless.
• For a pure meleedude the last ability would probably be cheap enough to SPAM in Mega-Zigs and may be broken even compared to Makhleb's healing.

I do think the god would be unique; but not that powerful. I wouldn't play it myself, generally.

[and into]

Thanks for the notes, though I don't quite share your concerns.

Passive LoS reduction is not strictly beneficial to all characters in all situations, but it really is good for any character that adapts to it. This seems ok for a passive god ability. The god fits very nicely for direct (rather than indirect) "stabber" support, but I don't think the appeal will be limited to that. Being in iron shot range of some spell casters (like Dispater) would normally be a worry of passive LoS reduction, except that this god also provides an extremely powerful anti-magic ability. I believe "collective amnesia" would be worth using against just one or two enemies with very strong abilities, so the reduced LoS shouldn't be such a big deal in terms of limiting its usefulness. The XP cost of final ability should prevent constant use in the long term, but if rapid short-term use still ends up being a problem, it would be easy enough to tack on long-timered exhaustion to the cost. Puremelee is highly non-optimal for ziggs anyway, if this god makes it viable as an alternative to Makhleb, then more power to Ibdin, I'd say.