Lair Larrikin
Posts: 28
Joined: Wednesday, 30th November 2016, 11:35
New God Proposal: Invidia, goddess of taboos and envy
Flavour
In ages long past, Invidia was the goddess of magical artefacts, producing countless sundry magical baubles to help mortals achieve magical powers well beyond their modest means. Yet over the countless millennia, her spirit has soured, her patience with mortals has thinned, and she has grown increasingly jealous of the sight of lowly, undeserving mortals misusing some of her gifts. And so, she has focused her godly envy on the task of purging the land of all these magical tools, so that those unworthy of power are barred from it.
Followers are expected to scorn the use of and disenchant all taboo items, in exchange for which they receive magic dust which can be used to harm and curse enemies, as well as allow followers to gain access to forbidden lore.
Invidia likes it when you disenchant taboo items.
Invidia strongly dislikes abandonment.
Once you start worshiping her, she places a "taboo" on some magical items, which means that they cannot be used without incurring her wrath. This taboo is placed randomly on 50% rounded up of all of these categories of items:
- -scrolls & potions, separating them by "colour" and then rolling for which ones are taboo. This means that, for example, 2 out of the 4 of the cyan consumables (experience, cure mutation, beneficial mutation, and acquirement) will be taboo. The same principle is applied to the 16 light grey consumables, the 7 yellow ones, the 6 purple ones, and the 1 red one. Note: identify and remove curse scrolls are always taboo and don’t count towards the total number of taboo light grey items. Potions of blood are never taboo, as they are not magical.
-wands, also separating them by color. Here we have 12 light grey and 3 yellow items. This means that 2 of the 3 rare wands will be taboo.
-rods, of which there are simply 6.
In addition to these, the entire suite of miscellaneous evocable items is always taboo (e.g. fan of gales, box of monsters)
Note: the assignment of taboos based on item "colour" does not take into consideration the specific racial restrictions of the character who worships her. This means that for a formicid and a human, for example, have the same probability of having "scroll of teleportation" become taboo.
In exchange, she offers:
- "Abstinent"
- • Upon conversion: Instantly identifies all items in your inventory and disenchants all taboo items in inventory, producing magic dust.
• Disenchant item (passive): Passively converts to magic dust all visible, identified items on the ground or in the player's inventory that are taboo.
• All items are immediately identified and de-cursed on pickup. Note: artefacts with *Curse will still trigger and will not be de-cursed automatically, but Invidia protects you from mummy item cursing.
* "Suspicious"
- • Lash Out: Make a smite-targeted attack of irresistible damage to a single target in sight. This attack scales with Invocation skill and Piety. Costs hunger and a dose of magic dust.
** "Green-eyed"
*** "Envious"
- • Forbidden Lore: Use an effect from the list of taboo scrolls and potions. This costs five doses of magic dust and produces significant draining proportional to experience level and reduced by Invocations. Note: cannot be used to mimic potions of experience or scrolls of acquirement.
**** "Covetous"
***** "Grudging"
- • Evil Eye: Polymorph a monster into a lower-HD monster of the same type. Functions like Wand of Polymorph, except the result is almost guaranteed to be of lower, and at worst equal HD. Does not work on named (unique) monsters, where it causes draining instead. Costs significant hunger and two doses of magic dust.
****** "Invidious"
- • Gifts: Starting at this level, Invidia begins to bestow gifts of random quantities of magic dust.
New item: Magic Dust
Is a stackable, quaffable consumable. When quaffed, it has a chance of producing the effects of any of the taboo scrolls or potions, as well as giving you severe contamination of 3 to 7 points. (2% chance of cyan effect, 8% chance of red, 30% chance of purple, 20% chance of yellow and 50% chance of light grey – of course, never ID or remove curse)
Abandonment:
When you abandon her, all your magic dust will be rendered inert, and you will experience her divine retribution:
- • 75%: Invidia smites you for potentially significant damage.
• 25%: Invidia polymorphs you into a monster of HD 1-5 less than yours of the same type.
• In addition, for the rest of the game, using taboo items will increase your penance counter, even after it has gone to 0.
Design Discussion: Invidia takes away a significant portion of your character’s flexibility when it comes to consumables, while doing away completely with identification and almost completely with curses. In exchange, she offers reliable offensive and controlling capabilities that shine with high investment in Invocations, and use a new “consumable god powers” mechanic. These powers cannot be used too often, and each time they are used, it represents a strategic choice.
The taboos themselves change how you play the game significantly and randomly each game, which forces players to adapt their playstyle to using her differently each time.
The Forbidden Lore power allows characters to circumvent the taboo restriction, but at a severe cost not only in magic dust, but also in terms of severe draining, the quantity of which should make it prohibitively expensive to use in all but the direst circumstances, at basically all levels. The exception would be in the extended or late game, at 27 Invocations and level 27, where it might be more viable to use semi-regularly.
Magic dust itself offers an interesting alternative for the blind (q)uaff or blind (r)ead roulette game of the early levels for adventurers, but which continues throughout the whole game. This means that nothing of value is lost from the loss of the identification game, and I would even say it’s more fun than ID ever is. It’s weighted towards producing a positive outcome, but of course no matter how good getting a scroll of acquirement from it is, it might not be the saving grace you were looking for then and there.
Assuming something a total of around 400 wands/scrolls/potions for a normal 3 rune game, this means that Invidia’s smite can be used 200 times in total throughout a game, if none of her other abilities are used. This means it should be reserved for particularly dangerous foes, and should be relatively strong, although I am not sure on the exact formula.