The Tavern

We already have a warrior zealot (Berserker), so it would be nice to have a mage counterpart.

I propose adding a Vehumet zealot:

Annihilators[1] are offensive mages who worship Vehumet, who enhances their command of the hermetic arts and offers them knowledge of increasingly powerful destructive spells.

Start:

Magic Dart memorized
* Vehumet piety
Vehumet immediately offers you the first spell gift
Equipment: Robe, bread ration (no book)
Stats: +7 Intelligence and +5 Dexterity
Skills:
- Dodging: 2
- Stealth: 2
- Spellcasting: 2
- Conjurations: 4

I think it would make an interesting background, because instead of a fixed book you get random spell offers to which you have to adapt.
Not investing in the skills needed for offered spells would be riskier than normal, as you don't have your guaranteed book spells to fall back on if the next offer proves to be useless.

[1]Bikeshedding: name

Annihilator (An)
Sorcerer (So/Src)
Knight of Destruction (KD)
Warlock (Wa/WL)

Edit:

Removed the bit about changing conjurer into this, added start equipment/skills/stats, list of names
"Skipping spells" -> "Not investing in skills" (hadn't realised there is plenty of ?amnesia to go round)

I'd have fun with this background. I imagine a lot of people would.

This proposal is better if you don't require it to change conjurer into this background (you are arguing 2 things, cj should be removed and vehu zealot added, when you really just want to argue vehu zealot should be added).

I don't see the devs adding another zealot. Berserker is pretty divisive as it stands.

I don't really have a problem with a Vehumet zealot, and it is an interesting idea, though I am not sure I like it.

rigrig wrote:Skipping an offered spell would be riskier than normal, as you don't have your guaranteed book spells to fall back on if the next offer proves to be useless.

Why would one skip an offered spell? Just learn it and amnesia it later if required. However, if one rephrases the statement to "learn the spell and practice the spell schools to make it worth casting", then the statement becomes true and valid to an extent.

As an aside, imo, Vehumet gifts should be in the form of spellbooks (or otherwise permanent means) anyway. Gifting through the "M" screen is awkward and serves no purpose. As far as I can see, the only reason it works that way is because perhaps people thought that it would be too similar to Sif gifting books. Whether this was true in the past or not is not important; it's clearly not the case now. It would be similar to arguing that Trog and Oka are similar because they both offer gifts.

Edit: fixed typo and elaborated a bit.

FR: call this class shahids.

Knights of Destruction

bel wrote:Why would one skip an offered spell? Just learn it and amnesia it later if required.

Gifting through the "M" screen is awkward and serves no purpose. As far as I can see, the only reason it works that way is because perhaps people thought that it would be too similar to Sif gifting books.

I think the idea was that you would have a meaningful choice between learning a marginally useful spell now, or preserving your spell slots hoping for a better offer. Even without book destruction there still seems to be too much amnesia around for this to really matter though.

And of course you can just hang around in temple to drop your piety.

That sounds really cool. I'd play it.

I'd play it! Non-book "caster" start is interesting. Book-based early games are getting repetitive.

I thought I had responded to this or something like it recently, but maybe not. I don't think it's a bad idea in principle to have a magic flavored zealot background. The idea here seems to be some kind of middle ground between an elementalist and a wanderer. The problem I see is that Vehumet gifts all do roughly the same things with few exceptions. Those exceptions are a subset of the spells in elementalist books that give those backgrounds what distinctive character they have.

I see this proposal as not essentially different from giving the player a bunch of different weapons at the start and a little skill in each type. Is it interesting figuring out which weapon type you want to use? Not that interesting in my experience with wanderers. But it would be worse than that because there your selection would be influenced by a large number of weapons that spawn on the floor, whereas Vehumet gifts are sporadic and books are few.

A magic-y wanderer type that would produce different, maybe even interesting, games on a regular basis would be a Sif zealot with randart book. Of course, sif actually does something early in the game, unlike Vehumet, so there's a balance consideration.

One argument for this background is that it requires low effort to implement for testing in trunk, unless it's deemed absolutely necessary to update online scoring as well. If we can have separate backgrounds for every low level spell book in the game save for Cantrips, we might as well have a Vehumet zealot background too.

I'd at least give it a try.

I will be very, very surprised if the devs will add a new zealot background. We used to have several zealot backgrounds (rip priest, paladin, healer, death knight) and all bar three have been removed.

Do you know why?

i don't really like zealots because (rightly or wrongly) i tend to think of crawl's gods as being gods of the dungeon... they exist in the dungeon because of ...something something zot whatever... and your character meets them there for the first time.

Majang wrote:Do you know why?

At the time the discussions i recall centered around zealots resulting in less variation and being more boring, generally, adaption being considered a virtue in making games feel more distinct from each other, and god choice being something that was meaningful and impactful (in particular, the choice to take an early altar you hadn't anticipated taking) being good for the game, and most zealots removing that aspect of the game with no real recompense in terms of unique game play being added.

The zealots that remain were judged "distinct enough" in game play that they could stay.

I could be misremembering some details though.

rigrig wrote:We already have a warrior zealot (Berserker), so it would be nice to have a mage counterpart.

[1]Bikeshedding: name
Annihilator (An)
Sorcerer (So/Src)
Knight of Destruction (KD)
Warlock (Wa/WL)

Why knight, and not mystic, occultist, scholar or just destroyer? Vehumet doesn't even seem to have any subjects and generally seems to have teacher vibe.
The rest of titles are already used in the game.

I like this idea because unlike other zelots you have a fair amount of variation between games because of variable spell gifts. You are encouraged to adapt in a different manner than most backgrounds.

EDIT: and a lot more adaptation required than Be.

Lavandula wrote:
rigrig wrote:We already have a warrior zealot (Berserker), so it would be nice to have a mage counterpart.

[1]Bikeshedding: name
Annihilator (An)
Sorcerer (So/Src)
Knight of Destruction (KD)
Warlock (Wa/WL)

Why knight, and not mystic, occultist, scholar or just destroyer? Vehumet doesn't even seem to have any subjects and generally seems to have teacher vibe.
The rest of titles are already used in the game.

Sage of destruction

We could play on Vehumet's teaching theme with "Apprentice of Destruction (AD)"

"Vehuman"

or

"Vehuperson" if you are into that sort of things

Mystic Blaster...

I kinda like the variation aspect, but I never have been able to use many spells given by Veh. I'm not sure it would work well, although it cannot be said without playtesting. Maybe there could be a window in which you choose a book with two conj spells (like with choosing weaponry with meleers). Ideally, the two conj should come from different elemental schools.

Rightly or wrongly, the odds are much greater that a zealot class will be removed before another is added. If Jivya can't get a slime knight, there's no chance that Vehumet (who has a guaranteed altar in the early part of the dungeon) is, or really should, get one.

It's a shame because a lot of people seem to find the idea intriguing or fun enough.

This is definitely the most interesting Zealot as unlike Be it actually has interesting implications. The only reason the other two zealots are interesting is that 1. Lucy is nontrivial to workship otherwise. 2. the branded weapon for CK. Be is just "let's make a Gladiator worship Trog at level 1 rather than level 5."

Plantissue wrote:It's a shame because a lot of people seem to find the idea intriguing or fun enough.

Yeah, I have no strong opinion on it either way. It's just almost certainly not going to be put through for the above reason.

TeshiAlair wrote:This is definitely the most interesting Zealot as unlike Be it actually has interesting implications. The only reason the other two zealots are interesting is that 1. Lucy is nontrivial to workship otherwise. 2. the branded weapon for CK. Be is just "let's make a Gladiator worship Trog at level 1 rather than level 5."

I honestly think that if Zealots are going to be a thing that allows you to worship "boutique" gods, Berserkers shouldn't exist (and Slime Knights should). Berserkers only exist to aid newbies, but that a) gives the impression that Xom and Lugonu are also newbie gods (which they aren't) and b) neglects the fact that fighters are ALREADY a strong background. It also skews new players into Trog and encourages the bad habits that having Trog at D:1 gives you.

This whole conversation points at a slightly different problem, which is that Gods as a whole probably need a significant rework.

Factorialite wrote:
Plantissue wrote:It's a shame because a lot of people seem to find the idea intriguing or fun enough.

Yeah, I have no strong opinion on it either way. It's just almost certainly not going to be put through for the above reason.

It would require a convincing argument that it adds more than it detracts, such an argument could be made, i am not sure if it would be convincing.

Also it would be more likely to get into dev discussions (and be decided upon one way or the other) if someone who was enthusiastic about it submitted a patch.

I suspect a background that could choose any god at the start of the game, would be one of the most popular. Wouldn't that in itself be worthwhile?

Factorialite wrote:Berserkers only exist to aid newbies, but that a) gives the impression that Xom and Lugonu are also newbie gods (which they aren't)

Why? Unlike CK and AK, Be is showcased in tutorial.
I agree that slime yogi should be a thing.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:I suspect a background that could choose any god at the start of the game, would be one of the most popular. Wouldn't that in itself be worthwhile?

Oh yes. Let's call it Priest.

Lavandula wrote:
Factorialite wrote:Berserkers only exist to aid newbies, but that a) gives the impression that Xom and Lugonu are also newbie gods (which they aren't)

Why? Unlike CK and AK, Be is showcased in tutorial.
I agree that slime yogi should be a thing.

All three are in the Zealot category, which for better or worse infers that they are similar starts to the unspoiled player.

And then we can remove Monk. Finally.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:I suspect a background that could choose any god at the start of the game, would be one of the most popular. Wouldn't that in itself be worthwhile?

Popular doesn't imply worthwhile (from a game design perspective) a level 1 item that instantly kills anything in the game with 0 risk might be popular, it would not make the game better.

That isn't to say that popular isn't also valuable, it just isn't the same thing.

I don't see how it would be worse than Be but I do see how it can be better: new players can compare gods more easily.

Since this proposed background would come with the same stats for each start, it would be biased probably more towards all-round Gods like Gozag or Chei. Strategies that require a very focused stat development (and that would be the strategy to pursue when choosing Vehumet, for example) would find the starting stats to be rather mediocre. It would not make sense to have a choose-your-god-background with the pre-set high INT I would want for a Vehumet start. Which in the end means that there would still be no good background with Vehumet as the starting god.

Majang wrote:Since this proposed background would come with the same stats for each start, it would be biased probably more towards all-round Gods like Gozag or Chei. Strategies that require a very focused stat development (and that would be the strategy to pursue when choosing Vehumet, for example) would find the starting stats to be rather mediocre. It would not make sense to have a choose-your-god-background with the pre-set high INT I would want for a Vehumet start. Which in the end means that there would still be no good background with Vehumet as the starting god.

I'm not sure why you would make that presumption, Be has a focused stat allotment, I don't see why a theoretical Vehumet zealot wouldn't as well...

Actually it can be Wanderer. Random skills, random equipment. Why not random god?

Siegurt wrote:
4Hooves2Appendages wrote:I suspect a background that could choose any god at the start of the game, would be one of the most popular. Wouldn't that in itself be worthwhile?

Popular doesn't imply worthwhile (from a game design perspective) a level 1 item that instantly kills anything in the game with 0 risk might be popular, it would not make the game better.

That isn't to say that popular isn't also valuable, it just isn't the same thing.

I disagree. Popular features in games imply that an appreciable number of players enjoy the feature. Granted, this isn't universal, but probably largely holds true. Considering that games are ultimately about enjoyment, that makes it worthwhile to have popular features in games. Of course we can debate the potential negative consequences on other aspects of the game, and try to come to a balanced view.

One could argue that enjoyment isn't as important as good design, by whatever standard, but seems to be the path to a more specialised niche game with fewer players. More than is already the case, given the circumstances.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:
Siegurt wrote:
4Hooves2Appendages wrote:I suspect a background that could choose any god at the start of the game, would be one of the most popular. Wouldn't that in itself be worthwhile?

Popular doesn't imply worthwhile (from a game design perspective) a level 1 item that instantly kills anything in the game with 0 risk might be popular, it would not make the game better.

That isn't to say that popular isn't also valuable, it just isn't the same thing.

I disagree. Popular features in games imply that an appreciable number of players enjoy the feature. Granted, this isn't universal, but probably largely holds true. Considering that games are ultimately about enjoyment, that makes it worthwhile to have popular features in games. Of course we can debate the potential negative consequences on other aspects of the game, and try to come to a balanced view.

One could argue that enjoyment isn't as important as good design, by whatever standard, but seems to be the path to a more specialised niche game with fewer players. More than is already the case, given the circumstances.

Popular also doesn't imply enjoyable. Tedious, grindy behavior is popular particularly in some games, but it's not enjoyable, it's just an effective way to win. People are frequently willing to sacrifice enjoyment for success.

I am not saying popular features *can't* be enjoyable, or that they *can't* be good design, I am saying one doesn't imply the other, the best features are ones that would be popular, enjoyable, *and* good design, I am simply saying that just because something is one doesn't necessarily mean it's the other..

I believe there is some misunderstanding here. Word "popular" has at least 2 meanings:
1) What people want to do because they enjoy it.
2) What people do because they want to win, no matter if they enjoy it or not.
Popular features with first meaning are ALWAYS GOOD design features. Examples: being able to play DCSS, being able to speedrun, being able to play without spells, being able to play without melee, being able to play with specific god etc.
Popular features with second meaning can be BAD (people don't enjoy them) OR GOOD (people do enjoy them or just don't care) design features indeed. Examples of bad features: luring, Xom gifts farming, XP farming, Abyss farming, eating (as pure melee)

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I believe there is some misunderstanding here. Word "popular" has at least 2 meanings:
1) What people want to do because they enjoy it.
2) What people do because they want to win, no matter if they enjoy it or not.
Popular features with first meaning are ALWAYS GOOD design features. Examples: being able to play DCSS, being able to speedrun, being able to play without spells, being able to play without melee, being able to play with specific god etc.
Popular features with second meaning can be BAD (people don't enjoy them) OR GOOD (people do enjoy them or just don't care) design features indeed. Examples of bad features: luring, Xom gifts farming, XP farming, Abyss farming, eating (as pure melee)

Generally speaking i more heavily associate "popular" with "Selected by a large number of people" irrespective of whether they enjoy it. My view may be colored by watching too much politics.

But it does derive from the same latin root as "people" and "populous" the emphasis does seem to be on the "large number of people" factor, with it being a general presumption that a large number of people would usually only select something if they like or enjoy it (which can be false)

You are correct of course. I meant that "large number of people select" to do some things for 2 main reasons: they enjoy it or they just want to win (i.e. they enjoy winning, not necessarily the actual things they selected to do to win) and we should distinguish those two types of things/people.

Siegurt wrote:
Majang wrote:Since this proposed background would come with the same stats for each start, it would be biased probably more towards all-round Gods like Gozag or Chei. Strategies that require a very focused stat development (and that would be the strategy to pursue when choosing Vehumet, for example) would find the starting stats to be rather mediocre. It would not make sense to have a choose-your-god-background with the pre-set high INT I would want for a Vehumet start. Which in the end means that there would still be no good background with Vehumet as the starting god.

I'm not sure why you would make that presumption, Be has a focused stat allotment, I don't see why a theoretical Vehumet zealot wouldn't as well...

Sorry, I was not clear what I was talking about. The earlier proposed Vehumet Zealot/Annihilator would of course have good stats. My remark was about the later proposed background where you could choose your God. It would only work if you also had a "weapon-choice" menu where you can select your highest stat to begin with...

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:I disagree. Popular features in games imply that an appreciable number of players enjoy the feature. Granted, this isn't universal, but probably largely holds true. Considering that games are ultimately about enjoyment, that makes it worthwhile to have popular features in games. Of course we can debate the potential negative consequences on other aspects of the game, and try to come to a balanced view.

One could argue that enjoyment isn't as important as good design, by whatever standard, but seems to be the path to a more specialised niche game with fewer players. More than is already the case, given the circumstances.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I believe there is some misunderstanding here. Word "popular" has at least 2 meanings:
1) What people want to do because they enjoy it.
Popular features with first meaning are ALWAYS GOOD design features. Examples: being able to play DCSS, being able to speedrun, being able to play without spells, being able to play without melee, being able to play with specific god etc.

*a deep, guttural voice emanates from under the ground* "mountain dwarves"

Getting away from this popularity distraction and back to the OP:

I like the idea of a vehu zealot with no book for 2 reasons.

(1) Vehu zealot forces some adaptability by the player due to variance in spell gifts. Some book starts (IE, Su) have everything a player needs to get through lair, others (VM, Wz) have most of what you need but a few holes. Still, the player has the reliability of a complete or mostly complete starting book to build through the early game. Vehu zealot trades book reliability for god prowess. A vehu zealot is forced to adapt through the early game according to god gifts in a way that currently is not in the game, and I believe this has the potential for interesting play.

(2) Vehu zealot provides a means by which newer players can try out spells. I remember my first summon forest game. I was on a character that had either summoning or tloc and found summon forest early. I spammed it through a game just to get a feel for it. It was a fun learning experience, I ended up making a post about it on the forum.

"But edge, vehu is already in the game. Players can just pick vehu and learn."

You are asking players to (1) start a caster background (2) make it to a vehu altar and (3) get piety high enough that they start learning new spells. A vehu zealot specifically makes this process easier and more accessible.

Caveat: There is potential that a vehu zealot is simply a bad start, in which case vehu zealot may not make this process easier. I dunno though. I played alot of monks as a new player, and that is a very bad start to learn gods.

Thinking about this a bit... as much as I feel that zealot starts should only be used in extreme circumstances, I kind of like the idea of a bookless conjurer start.

CanOfWorms wrote:*a deep, guttural voice emanates from under the ground* "mountain dwarves"

Appropriate username.

CanOfWorms wrote:*a deep, guttural voice emanates from under the ground* "mountain dwarves"

It is off-topic in this thread but I don't see contradiction with what I wrote. Having a race which is enjoyed by most players is a good design decision. Having another race which is enjoyed by most players is a good design decision too. What is bad here is UI design for selecting species for historical (read "console") reasons.
Properly written games have all "aptitudes", "stats", "abilities" etc. externalized in separate resource files for easy modding (1 single file/zip per species!) so devs don't suffer from having to support permanently growing source code and source divers don't need to look into 5+ files to get an idea what species has and can do.
Properly written games allow users to see all relevant information during species selection, not in a several huge tables in a text-only manual with lacking searching/navigation options. You might even color-code things which are different from previously checked species so players could compare Te to DE or TeCj to DECj easily!

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Properly written games allow users to see all relevant information during species selection, not in a several huge tables in a text-only manual with lacking searching/navigation options.

While I agree that help/manual things should be searchable in game, it's nice to know that since they *are* text files, you can open them in your favorite text editor, and do any/all of your searching and navigating that you desire, I readily admit that is not a solution but it is a helpful workaround, for people who don't know.

Siegurt wrote:While I agree that help/manual things should be searchable in game, it's nice to know that since they *are* text files, you can open them in your favorite text editor, and do any/all of your searching and navigating that you desire, I readily admit that is not a solution but it is a helpful workaround, for people who don't know.

Yes, it's helpful but it cannot be seriously compared to:
TeCj DECj
HP -20% -20%
MP +1 +2
Fighting 0 -2
Int 15 19
Those 4 rows are generated from 5 different places/tables which is fast and reliable to get automatically but time-consuming and error-prone to create manually no matter what text editor you use.

Spoiler: show

I think this is most of a potential patch.

job-data.h

Code:: { JOB_ANNIHILATOR, { "An", "Annihilator", 0, 7, 5, { SP_DEEP_ELF, SP_NAGA, SP_TENGU, SP_BASE_DRACONIAN, SP_DEMIGOD, SP_FELID}, { "robe" }, WCHOICE_NONE, { { SK_CONJURATIONS, 4 }, { SK_SPELLCASTING, 2 }, { SK_DODGING, 2 }, { SK_STEALTH, 2 }, }, } },

crawl-ref/source/ng-restr.cc

Code:: { return species == SP_FELID && (job == JOB_GLADIATOR || job == JOB_ASSASSIN || job == JOB_HUNTER || job == JOB_ARCANE_MARKSMAN) || species == SP_DEMIGOD && (job == JOB_BERSERKER || job == JOB_CHAOS_KNIGHT || job == JOB_ABYSSAL_KNIGHT || job == JOB_MONK || job == JOB_ANNHILATOR) || job == JOB_TRANSMUTER && (species_undead_type(species) == US_UNDEAD || species_undead_type(species) == US_HUNGRY_DEAD); }

job-type.h

Code:: JOB_ANNHILATOR,

crawl-ref/source/ng-setup.cc

Code:: case JOB_ANNIHILATOR: you.religion = GOD_VEHUMET; you.piety = 35; break;

newgame.cc

Code:: { "Zealot", coord_def(15, 0), 20, { JOB_BERSERKER, JOB_ABYSSAL_KNIGHT, JOB_CHAOS_KNIGHT, JOB_ANNIHILATOR} },

The Tavern

New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: Turn Conjurers into Vehumet Zealots

Re: Turn Conjurers into Vehumet Zealots

Re: Turn Conjurers into Vehumet Zealots

Re: Turn Conjurers into Vehumet Zealots

Re: Turn Conjurers into Vehumet Zealots

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)

Re: New background: Annihilator (Vehumet zealot)