God of "creating your own artifact"


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Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Friday, 7th January 2011, 01:43

Post Sunday, 10th December 2017, 12:53

God of "creating your own artifact"

Recovering an idea of mine, also inspired by the "Excalibur god" and the defunct inventive god Pakellas, let me present you the God of ego branding or the god of "creating your own artifact"

The god let you choose ego brands and stack them on your mundane armor/weapons after X time like Ru. (Alternatively, you invest piety points to apply a brand from a set; the set of brands enables more of them as you progress on your piety levels).

The brands are those which are currently found in ego items but also they could be those which were a thing in the past and are currently replaced by effects of potions/jewelery/scrolls.

You gain passive enchantment points on your gear after X time.

You can rename your item(s) with a fancy name.

You cannot apply brands on initially branded items you find in the dungeon or shops. The items have to start being mundane.

Eventually you gain the ability to transfer brands between items.

The god likes to rely on your own designed super-devices, not on anything else. Thus, you gain piety exploring the world while carrying the less items you can in your inventory. The piety grow is inverse to the slot items you fill.
(Alternatively, the god forces you to avoid the temptation to gather items disabling progressively the inventory slots by piety level. The soft of hard inventory renounce conduct should be discussed.)

The god is jealous of the works of others. Therefore, the god also accept and likes the sacrifice of whatever un/randart.

Abandoning the god makes to lose all the brands you gained and your items become mundane again. There is a chance to get curses on your items while in combat or a chance to find that items in your LOS are teleported to somewhere else in the level or even disappear before your eyes.



The god in a nutshell: a god that benefit warriors or casters who need training evocations on some active brands. There is also the trade-off between what you gain with granted artifacts and the restricted conduct on the inventory.
duvessa wrote:Christ, you can't remove anything without tavern complaining about it.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Tuesday, 19th December 2017, 18:29

Re: God of "creating your own artifact"

I'm not sure about the restricted inventory slots, that sounds more like it'd be frustrating to deal with then I'd like. It would limit potions and scrolls sure, but I'd rather it just be a simple piety gain, either kills or based on exploring with self-made items.

Power level of the god seems fairly low if you're just applying an ego to things, so I'd need more detail about when you can apply a second ego - the difference between getting a cloak of MR vs a cloak of MR, rF, RC is significant. Especially since you can find the first on the floor without a god, so it isn't really much of a power increase. If you can create a cloak with properties like +3 slay, or +3 ev, then the god starts to become really strong.

The brands are those which are currently found in ego items but also they could be those which were a thing in the past

If you want to make the god overpowered, bring back the old HP+9 artifact property, I'd slap that on <everything>.

In short, the power level is going to depend a lot on how fast the properties are given out and what the cost is to go beyond one enchantment on an item. If you can start crafting 2-3 ego armors quickly, it's a pretty strong god. Especially if you have property choices which aren't just resistances. I know mages would really love to just throw 2-3 MP+9 effects on and never run out of mana.

If the god's jealous of other items created by the dungeon, don't require/offer the player the chance to sacrifice them, it's tedious. Just have a chance (or a certainty) that when they come into LOS, your god destroys them.
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Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Friday, 7th January 2011, 01:43

Post Tuesday, 19th December 2017, 22:19

Re: God of "creating your own artifact"

Thanks for the feedback, I thought the idea was going to be buried soon.

I have been thinking on you have said and I was considering it already: the fact that you need to gain piety not carrying things lead to a stash management were you eventually go back to pick whatever item of your interest and this is definitely a no-no.

The idea around the god is that enforces your gameplay based on the gear that you progressively enhance rather than on what you find in the dungeon.

Said so, let me try an adjustment to the proposal: what if stashing is prevented by making whatever item you drop to disappear? Thus you have to choose carefully what you pick. If this is not enough and still enforces some Ctrl-G to go to get that item you found and you may need, then put an additional constraint: not only dropped items disappear but those items in sight have a time counter before they disappear too, so every time the player needs to decide what is worth to pick or just rely on the enchanted gear.

This wouldn't affect edibles or projectiles however a must on jewelery, armor, weapons, scrolls, potions, wands, books...

To put into another words, the conduct is like a sustained, continuous yet modulable sacrifice related to items, or a piety founded in a renounce to use items. The god would fall in the type of gods which makes the player lose something in order to gain something: Ru (no turn back sacrifices), Cheibriados (lose of speed), Ashenzari (modulable cursed items => imposibility to swap what you carry).
duvessa wrote:Christ, you can't remove anything without tavern complaining about it.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Tuesday, 19th December 2017, 23:17

Re: God of "creating your own artifact"

If you want to go the conduct route, it might be a good idea to make it more extreme: The worshipper cannot use any equipment not given/crafted by the god. On worship all equipment is removed, you are offered a weapon (you pick the type), and get a body armor (if your race can wear one). Maybe offer "light, medium, or heavy" armor choices, but don't let the user pick exactly what they get. Initial items are of relatively low quality. You then get to upgrade them over time.

An initial worshipper thus only has those two slots. You can use abilities (either manually activated, or via gifts with a timeout) to upgrade them, or get new items (ie: rings, boots, cloak, etc).

Going unarmed would just mean giving up the initial weapon gift, but let's say you were comparing an unarmed worshipper to a mace worshipper: that initial on join gift would probably be something simple like a +2 flail, unbranded. Giving that up isn't a huge loss - the unarmed character still gets some armor, and then can spend their piety/gifts on getting armor without having to upgrade a weapon.

Now you don't have to worry about items which generate in the dungeon - they are all useless by conduct, and you can just leave them there. If the player abandons the god, their gear should either be destroyed or revert to base items, and then they can go back and use whatever they found in the dungeon with their next god. Assuming you don't plan on abandoning the artifact god, there's no reason to ever stash anything. There is some incentive to track powerful items if you do intend to abandon the god, but I think this will be rare and not worth worrying about.

This god would join the ranks of Gozag and Okawaru, who offer different ways of getting better equipment, but seems (at least in my head) to be a more direct, reliable way of doing it. That could be a point either for, or against the god. You might have issues where all fighters end up wanting the same egos, all casters take the same egos, etc. There would be a few different ways of playing the god, but characters within the same silo are probably going to pick the same sort of equipment enhancements.

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