Subsequent Trog gifts strictly worse than previous ones

[smock]

Subsequent Trog weapon gifts can be strictly worse than previous ones. This doesn't seem fun. For example, I just received several slings of frost, the first of which was +1 +8 and subsequent ones has strictly worse enchantments. Might it be better to have Trog give a weaker gift early on than a strong gift followed by several weaker ones? First, players may be disappointed to get "bad" gifts later in the game. Second, it makes Trog seem forgetful -- why does a god forget the what she just gave you? Third, some strategies might allow the power of gifts to grow over the course of the game, meaning fewer extraordinary weapons early on and fewer useless gifts later on; this might make the gifts more balanced and more useful in the late game. Same goes for Oka gifts.

Please forgive me if I missed some discussion in the Tavern, a wiki page, or I am misunderstanding the god gift algorithms. I can think of a few ways to help with this:
(1) Weight gift values by the "gift number", where Trog's first give is likely to be low-value and subsequent gifts are more likely to be higher-value. There are lots of ways to do this and I don't think any would be very hard to implement. Gift types can still be weighted by skill, as is currently done. One way to do this is to re-roll a gift if the gift value is below X+A*N or above 10X+2*A*N, where X is some base value, N is the gift number, and A is a constant. The formulas are arbitrary and surely would need tweaking. The rerolled gift is then gifted regardless of it's value. This would reduce lower value gifts later on and reduce higher-value gifts earlier on.
(2) Before giving a gift, check to see if the gift is strictly worse than another gift. Certainly a +0 +0 Ankus is strictly worse than a +2 +2 Ankus. Perhaps a +0 Hand Axe could be considered strictly worse than a +0 War Axe as well. If so, "re-roll" that gift until it is not strictly worse.
(3) Both 1 and 2.

[galehar]

Interesting idea. For (1), I think a better scale variable would be total piety instead of gift number. Total piety meaning all the piety you've ever gained with this god (not sure if we track it, but it's trivial to add). I don't think (2) is good, we want to keep it random. And no, Trog doesn't keep a precise record of gifts, nor does he really care that he already gave you something better. Do you think you're the only Berserker down there?

[TwilightPhoenix]

I don't think of Trog actually giving gifts. Instead, he's in a rage and throwing things around in his anger. The fact that it happens to land neatly at your feet is simple a convenient, and oddly constant, coincidence.

[smock]

Total piety is a good call.

Re randomness, Trog gifting has lots of randomness -- type accuracy, damage, ego, artefact status and properties are all chosen. Gifting already accommodates skills, meaning it's not totally random anyway. Re-rolling a small share of gifts wouldn't make it too much less random. However, completely rerolling would tend to diversify gifts, since you'd be unlikely to roll another sling of frost -- this would make gifts quite a bit stronger.

Another approach is to, instead of re-rolling, after type and ego are decided, ensure that one of accuracy or damage are higher than the max accuracy or damage on previously gifted weapons of that type and ego (or some similar algorithm.) So the type and ego would be completely at random but the damage and accuracy would be conditionally random. And no gifts would be strictly inferior.

Randomness is good, but it'd be nice to have randomness that isn't annoying. I'd prefer to simply not receive strictly inferior gifts -- that way I wouldn't think "stupid Trog" to myself after some significant share of gifts.

[bobross419]

Trog isn't exactly known for his intelligence...

I like Galehar's idea modification for total piety giving better gifts myself.

[ElectricAlbatross]

It seems to me that gifting improving based on your standing with the god would be more appropriate for Okawaru than for Trog.

[hxy]

Wouldn't it be a bit over powered if the gifts get better and better over the course of the game?
Maybe probability of a good gift should be in direct relation with piety, but not to the extent of re-rolling if a bad item turns up.

[njvack]

Do you think you're the only Berserker down there?

Well, I've never seen anyone else beating on Boris

[smock]

Wouldn't it be a bit over powered if the gifts get better and better over the course of the game?
Maybe probability of a good gift should be in direct relation with piety, but not to the extent of re-rolling if a bad item turns up.

Not if the gifts started less powerful and the rate of increase in power is not too high. Anyway, a late game Troglodyte diving into a Zig is going to need some real power.

galehar suggested gift power scaling with total piety accrued. I think it's a good idea.

[dpeg]

I believe the underlaying problem is with certain gifts in general. Consumables (items and allies) are mostly okay, but permanent ones are often not. There are just three cases of a player's evaluation with the latter: better than what I have now; worse; situational. (By contrast, perishable gifts call for more choices.)

The solutions that I see are completely different from the OP:
(4) remove weapon and armour gifts (for Okawaru, I came up with a system that makes armour gifts more interesting)
(5) keep gifting, but treat them as "borrowed", i.e. timed (then we can afford to make them much better)

[XuaXua]

(5) keep gifting, but treat them as "borrowed", i.e. timed (then we can afford to make them much better)

When I first read the term "gift timeout", this is exactly what I thought it meant. I was in such a rush to use every god-gifted item I received till I realized they were permanent.

[dpeg]

XuaXua: I treat this as support for (5) The ideas needs some thought and perhaps there are unsurmountable obstacles, but I'd hope that it would at least occasionally create a choice (the standard example is a weapon of rP, making you consider doing Snake with it). There are a number of options, too: using a Trog gift and killing with it could increase its time.

(By the way, my idea for Okawaru armour gifts: you get a tempoary armour item. Impressing Okawaru while using it (could use tension here) will increase time and may ultimately make it permanent -- a very similar idea to the above.)

[smock]

Treating gifts as borrowed with a chance of becoming permanent! Within that system I can see it being feasible to not give inferior gifts and to increase the power of gifts over time (or total piety or whatnot).

[jejorda2]

Let's make all weapons temporary and mulchable! When you deliver a blow, there's a 1/50 chance that the enchantment decreases by 1. When you get to -10, the weapon crumbles.

This would make floor trash more valuable and would make learning more than one weapon skill more valuable. Or it would make melee less attractive than spells. Maybe higher weapon skill could decrease the mulch rate, so then you wouldn't stop when you got to minimum delay on a good weapon.

Brain mulching spells may be the answer.

[thenewflesh]

Melee gods should gift decent gear, like magic gods gift books. It makes perfect sense, there's absolutely no need to mess around with it. It's kind of nice when something appears at your feet. Gifting is nice and fun mechanic.

By the way, my idea for Okawaru armour gifts: you get a tempoary armour item. Impressing Okawaru while using it (could use tension here) will increase time and may ultimately make it permanent -- a very similar idea to the above.

I hope that means no more -2 animal skins? Sometimes, it can be a problem, though. For example I might not have enough armour or shields skill to use item effectively (i.e., without getting killed). Or is that the intended effect?

Mulching melee weapons is the worst idea ever, ammo mulching is already so bad that you can't actually afford to play as an actual ranged character until late midgame.

[bobross419]

Mulching melee weapons is the worst idea ever, ammo mulching is already so bad that you can't actually afford to play as an actual ranged character until late midgame.

I've gotta agree with this.

Also not sure how fond I am of temporary gifts, unless the mechanic is also added to allow you to make it permanent through some actions which then makes the whole idea awesome.

[Moose]

-1 for temporary gifts.

turn 500: Trog gifts you the +12 +12 Executioner's axe {elec, rF++, sInv, EV+7} Opression Ender (vanishes in 500 turns).
turn 990: You notice Xtahua!
turn 990: You notice a dragon!
turn 990: You note 3 firecrabs!
turn 1000: Opression Ender vanishes in a burst of fire!

Damn, there goes my weapon... Now I switch to my fallback, probably some broad axe of chopping or some other dungeon trash, spend 500 turns, and some potions to kill the baddies, then

turn 1112: You kill all the above!
turn 1113: Trog gifts you another badass weapon that you don't need right now, but will surely expire when you need it most!

[dpeg]

You folks lack reading abilities as well as fantasy.

[thenewflesh]

Also not sure how fond I am of temporary gifts, unless the mechanic is also added to allow you to make it permanent through some actions which then makes the whole idea awesome.

Impressing Okawaru while using it (could use tension here) will increase time and may ultimately make it permanent

[bobross419]

Thanks newflesh...

[ximxim]

For Okawaru, how about something like:
1- (# of recieved gifts/(1+# of recieved gifts)) = chance to get a (fairly good) weapon or armor. The formula could be tweaked depending on what quality of items you intend to give out.

Then if you don't get an item, maybe select from a list of minor blessings, like enchant armour/enchant weapon or a free use of a god ability.

[Blade]

Speaking as a fairly new player, I strongly dislike the idea of making Trog/Oka gifts temporary, even if there's a way to make them permanent later.

Trog and Oka always seem to me to be early-game gods. People abandon Oka for TSO if they're trying for 15 runes, and rarely even go with Trog at that point. They are both, however, very easy to understand, easy to play with, and provide simple benefits that are helpful in the early game.

In other words, they are the perfect gods for new players. Many of the others have long lists of things to do and things not to do, powers that require experimentation and care to work right, et cetera. I still haven't touched Ash and Chei for exactly this reason -- they are difficult enough to learn how to use correctly that I would like to get a bit more experience under my belt before playing with them. (I plan to play them eventually, though; their powers seem like great fun, once I can use them without dying)

So...what would temporary gifts do to this, then? They would add another layer of complexity to two of the most newbie-friendly gods. Crawl already has a fairly steep initial learning curve, and it helped me immensely when I was just starting out to have gods that didn't require any micromanaging or careful play, but rather gave you simple bonuses for doing what comes naturally (that is to say, killing).

Of course, I could be completely wrong on this. There could be a simple, newbie-friendly way to have temporary god gifts, but I just don't see the need for it. I think the gifting system with Trog and Okawaru works just fine as it is, and the idea of it being changed to something more complex worries me.

[o_O]

Temporary gifts would be awesome if and only if Trog and Ok knew how to give you things you would find useful immediately or very very soon. Example, I enter the hive and Oka loans me a cloak of poison resist. I enter the Elven Halls and Trog drops an axe of Elf slaying on my head (or whatever). Those items would be useful for a limited amount of time, and be available for a limited amount of time. As a bonus, it would strongly encourage hacking your way straight down to the bottom of certain branch instead of the normal practice of clearing all but the last level. Maybe prayer could be tied into gifts as well. You pray, and if you have sufficient piety/gift timeout your god loans you a context sensitive item that would be good for the area you are in (or the area he wants you to go too...) Not sure if that would be incredibly hard to implement or not.

Permanent gifts could still happen as well, but they could just be more rare and special.

[Galefury]

Ash and Chei are actually pretty simple gods.
Ash: curse all your gear for a great skill bonus. Oh, and some divination type stuff and reskilling.
Chei: you are super powerful in every way but cant run, so whatever monster it is: kill it or die. Or use Time Step. Or teleport. Or learn cblink.
Of course the devil is in the details, and that is what actually kills you, but it's the same for Trog and Oka powers.

The trouble with gifting is that gifts are permanent, while worship is temporary. The obvious solution is to take them away upon abandoning the god. This is one of the reasons why Ash's exp bonus got replaced with a skill bonus. Of course taking equipment away has some problems of its own, but these apply to any idea involving temporary items.

I don't like the idea of using rare and risky actions, like killing powerful enemies, to make items permanent. Mostly because I cant imagine an intuitive and consistent way to do this that doesn't lead to degenerate behavior. Example: "stashing" powerful uniques to kill them when you need a strong enemy. This could be avoided by degrading the value of an enemy with time after the first encounter (possibly only if it is out of LOS). This is not how I would expect it to work, though, after all the fight is not that much easier just because I did something else for 100 turns. And of course crawl is quite bad at determining what enemies are actually challenging for a particular character. And of course gifting is extremely random, encountering powerful enemies is random, and actually making the item permanent would presumably be random too. This would only lead to frustration.

o_O's idea sounds interesting. Context sensitive items should not be that hard to do for most areas. Possibly even recently seen uniques could be taken into account. And of course the stats of the character.

[dpeg]

Blade: Players also "strongly disliked" making book acquirement non-deterministic, or the (hopefully upcoming) change from Vehumet books to spells. As a player, you are fully entitled to this opinion. I have tried to explain once why I consider this bad design (and there is some supporting material in this thread) and I won't repeat it.
Permanent gifts are not even a source of great fun as the innumerable threads about Okawaru's animal skins on forums worldwide show. (And if we make Okawaru a bit more clever, the issue will remain. Once you understand that, you're half-way to rejecting permanent gifts.)

[galehar]

Trog and Oka's gifts have many problems, but I'm not sure that permanency is one of them. And I think blade made a very good point about how it would add complexity to newbie friendly gods. In my opinion, the main problems with Oka and Trog gifts are:

Too frequent and too much crap. It's annoying and bad for theme.
No scaling. You're just as likely to get something extremely good for your first gift than for you 1000th.

What is the problem with permanent gifts? It encourages you to ditch the god as soon as you're stuffed with awesome gear. Why? Because the longer you stay with the god, the less likely he is to give you something better than you already have.
If gifts get better the longer you stay with the god, then you'll keep improving your gear (even if at a slower rate), and your old stuff would be obsoleted by the new stuff. Ditching Oka for TSO would still be a very common strategy, but at least staying with Oka would be a viable alternative. Especially when we bring more variety to the extended endgame.
The scales (upper and lower limit) need to be logarithmic and the frequency decrease with time. You get better and better stuff, but less often.

[absolutego]

scaling would be great. oka could even start gifting stuff earlier.
if ditching is a problem (it is, but only a part of it), the scorned god could take away all or some of the gifts, or even drop their enchantment or properties, artefacts included, upon renouncing or as part of their wrath. (i'm sure i've heard this proposal a few times.)

that's for oka and trog, of course. vehumet's already in the works, and then there's sif.

[dpeg]

It's been said already: if an item is permanently plopped down (no matter whether book, weapon, armour), the player's sole decision is: Is it useful right now? Will it be useful sometimes/later? That's it. If the item is really good, it will reduce the further appeal of the god (and this happens with books, weapons and armour items).
With temporary (ignoring the option to make it permanent for now), you're still thinking about another, mainline item. Furthermore, knowing that the item won't last forever, you may sometimes find that best use of it is not by going on with whatever you were doing. (In other words, instead of getting an item fitting the branch you enter, the player should go to that branch if a fitting gift appears, in my opinion.)

I don't buy the "new player" argument. Trog is easy to get along with no matter if he takes that giant spiked club back later on or not. Obviously (this also goes to those who lacked fantasy upthread), Trog would announce the taking back some hundred of turns earlier, and it would never happen in battle.

galehar: Your proposal of giving good items, slowly increasing in worth means that gods cannot dish out somehing *awesome* early on. I believe this reduces appeal. In my opinion, the god is more interesting (gameplay and for new players) if good stuff can occur sometimes early on and is temporary, rather than it occurring reliably, but very late.

To sum up: permanent gifts are bad because they narrow down the decision tree; temporary gifts are good because they add branches to the decision tree.

[ElectricAlbatross]

If the item is really good, it will reduce the further appeal of the god (and this happens with books, weapons and armour items).

What if the gift was taken away only if you abandoned the god?

[smock]

galehar: Your proposal of giving good items, slowly increasing in worth means that gods cannot dish out somehing *awesome* early on. I believe this reduces appeal. In my opinion, the god is more interesting (gameplay and for new players) if good stuff can occur sometimes early on and is temporary, rather than it occurring reliably, but very late.

Weighting gift value by total piety need to eliminate the odd awesome early gift! It would mean that in the early game you're more likely to get a vorpal falchion, while in the late game you might be more likely to get a flaming demon blade. A vorpal demon blade gifted on D8 might be so powerful as to trivialize the early game. Having early powerful gifts happen sometimes is ok, but early powerful gifts that can't be bettered by later gifts is not good and should happen rarely, in my opinion.

Part of the appeal of Trog is the chance of getting an awesome early weapon. But once it happens, Trog could become totally unappealing! Suddenly Trog's no fun.

[nicolae]

If the item is really good, it will reduce the further appeal of the god (and this happens with books, weapons and armour items).

What if the gift was taken away only if you abandoned the god?

It would certainly make dealing with Trog and Okawaru wrath summons more of an adventure.

[dpeg]

smock: I feel misunderstood. My point is that part of the gods' appeal is the really awesome early gift. (I am in particular thinking about players who never went beyond midgame. A truly strong randart tells a much more interesting story to them than a "more appropriate" vorpal falchion.) Yes, some weapons are so strong as to trivialise many monsters. This is not an issue with temporary weapons! Much rather, with such a weapon you're inclined to player faster (in game, not real time, of course), in order to get as much out of the item as possible. This is an option, i.e. a choice!

> "...early powerful gifts that can't be bettered by later gifts is not good..."

Agreed for status quo (permanent gifts). But again, not an issue with temporary gifts.

I've been thinking about gods and gifts for quite a while and I am actually quite sure what I want. The main reason why I spend so many words is galehar's reply.

[Jeremiah]

Giving nice equipment and then taking it away again seems more appropriate to Xom than Okawaru, though I think it could be fun if the items were guaranteed to be awesome. Maybe there should be some unrandarts or fixedarts that cannot be found anywhere other than as god gifts.

I'm not sure if temporary gifts would fix the problem of the god becoming less appealing in the later game, because you will still (hopefully) get better equipment as the game goes on, so any gift is still less likely to be superior to what you already have (unless the gifts get really awesome...)

[dpeg]

Jeremiah: This is a phenomenon with almost all gods: the stronger you get, the less you rely on your god. But the opposite effect, that you god has nothing to give you anymore does come up (and should be avoided). It was strongest with old Sif (when books where deterministic) and old Vehumet (when there were no boosts of offensive spells).

The flavour of the temporary gifts is in our hands. Instead of a Xommy "hehe, see how you get along without it", it could easily be "valiant warrior, I can give you this for the upcoming battles, may it help you on the way".

[thenewflesh]

I think, gods in crawl conceptually offer a certain degree of determinism, something you can count on. You can count on Oki to eventually fill your armour slots, give you at least a decent weapon and supply you with ammo. I like the idea with gifts that can be taken back / broken if there is a sure way to make it permanent so you can make a concious decision whether it's worth the risk / trouble / etc. or not.

[galehar]

To sum up: permanent gifts are bad because they narrow down the decision tree; temporary gifts are good because they add branches to the decision tree.

I think this can be achieved too with permanent gifts with obsolescence instead of temporariness (is that a word?). Use it now, because later it will be useless. A bit like low-tier wands.
Of course temporary gifts have a stronger gameplay effect, but I think it weakens the flavour a bit. Maybe I just like the simplicity of permanent gifts and I think they can be balanced well.

My point is that part of the gods' appeal is the really awesome early gift. (I am in particular thinking about players who never went beyond midgame. A truly strong randart tells a much more interesting story to them than a "more appropriate" vorpal falchion.)

I'm not suggesting we remove the chance of awesome gifts and always deliver level-appropriate stuff. But that the chance take total piety into account, with maybe some kind of poisson distribution for the level of awesomeness. That you mostly received level appropriate stuff, occasionally better or worse stuff, and rarely awesome randart or utter crap.
Also, everybody likes gifts and dislike it if you take them away. Temporary gifts might make the game more interesting, but maybe it will be less fun. It can still be a good idea if it makes it much more interesting and a little bit less fun. But I'd rather try to improve permanent gifts first.

[dpeg]

galehar: You are talking to the developer who is responsible for removal of four species, a spell school, the Tomb spell and probably some more litter. I'll gladly shoulder removal of permanent gifts as well. (In fact, the randart books of Sif were a modest attempt to break up Sif's determinism; the hopefully upcoming Vehumet change does the same for that god.)

To put it bluntly: I am convinced that the game would be improved by just scrapping Trog and Okawaru gifts. Since I know how much gifts are liked, I am trying to keep something along these lines.

The obsolescence approach might work. But note that gifts are competing with floor finds, shop items, monster items and player-made enchantments. This makes it hard to get permanent gifts right if you want to meet the boundary conditions. With temporary gifts, you can dish out the stuff much more light-heartedly _and_ create opportunities for decisions. (Of course, I am utterly biased in that I am confident temporary gifts will increase fun.)
There is also no reason not to mix both approaches, but each of them is some work. (Obsolescence: have to gauge what an interesting but not overpowering item is. Temporary: announce fading away, make sure weapon does not disappear in battle; additional work if duration can be increased by player actions.)

[smock]

With temporary gifts, you can dish out the stuff much more light-heartedly _and_ create opportunities for decisions. (Of course, I am utterly biased in that I am confident temporary gifts will increase fun.)
There is also no reason not to mix both approaches, but each of them is some work. (Obsolescence: have to gauge what an interesting but not overpowering item is. Temporary: announce fading away, make sure weapon does not disappear in battle; additional work if duration can be increased by player actions.)

I like this statement of why temporary gifts could be great. I also think mixing approaches would be good.

If a way to prevent superbad gifts like a -2 robe or whatnot is possible, consider adding that as well. I don't even want to see such junk!

[A Bad Place]

I'm just brainstorming here, but I thought that a good compromise between permanent and temporary gifts would be, I dunno, let's call them "conditional" gifts, which would only be revoked when the player offends the god in some way. This would probably require Oka/Trog's conducts being made a little more complex but I think it would make the melee gods much more interesting to play. As a poorly-thought-out example, say Trog extended his hatred of magic to wands, and would revoke gifts for their use. Now the player will find themselves in situations where a wand might be their best chance of survival, and be forced to ask himself whether it would be worth it to risk his life for all that neat, god-gifted gear. In short, the gods would still make the player more powerful through gear, but force him to play with more awareness/risk in order to keep that power. With a properly balanced set of conducts, I think it might be really fun. Just a thought!

[jejorda2]

What if the rule is that the temporary weapons disappear when another weapon is wielded? That way you can still butcher, and you can use the weapon as long as you like, but you have to decide whether to switch to your flaming falchion against the hydra or keep the Okawaran +10 electric double sword and use up wand charges on the hydra. Or maybe Oka lets you keep the weapon until you actually hit something with another weapon, so you can check for curses and brands and such.

[dolphin]

I'm just brainstorming here, but I thought that a good compromise between permanent and temporary gifts would be, I dunno, let's call them "conditional" gifts, which would only be revoked when the player offends the god in some way. This would probably require Oka/Trog's conducts being made a little more complex but I think it would make the melee gods much more interesting to play.

What if the conducts were tied to use of that particular gift? Oka or Trog could accept corpses only of a certain type for piety above **. so if you start skewering with the trident "Giant-Impaler", then only Giant corpses count for the majority of piety. Fail to use the gift and it will disappear.

There are several good ideas for conducts in Random Gods, but unless the possible conducts were carefully selected bloody and battle-oriented, they would turn Trog and Oka into Xom.

[dpeg]

Okay, so there are several options if the current situation is considered unsatisfactory (definitely by me). Adding finer conducts would make the gods much more complicated than temporary gifts, so I won't list that here.

a) Permanent gifts.
Those always have the god's name as part of their name ("Okawaru's axe of Vengeance").
They are removed (taken back by the god) when the god is abandoned.
Generating those gifts tries to walk the fine line between overpowering and actually useful. (This is hard to do!)

b) Temporary gifts.
Those are given for durations like 2000-3000 turns. Retraction is announced well in advance (think 100 turns) and won't happen in combat.
Generating those gifts tries to give outstanding items.

c) Conditional gifts I: Permant -> temporary.
Only the simplest approach and only for weapons here: The weapon gift is permanent as long as the player never uses a different kind of weapon for attacking. If he does, the gift vanishes. (Drawback: need prompt or other kind of warning to prevent accidental loss of gifts.)

d) Conditional gifts II: Temporary -> permanent.
The idea is that special feats can make an item last longer or permanent. I see two viable approaches:
* Upon delivering a temporary gift, a task is announced. E.g. "May this help you to fetch the barnacled rune." If you manage, the item becomes permanent. Ideally, the item's name reflects the challenge.
* Beating tough opponents has a chance of increasing duration. If duration was increased three times already, the gift becomes permanent. (Drawback: even if we don't use tension, toughness may be scummed -- e.g. by leaving uniques or branch ends for that purpose. It can be circumvented by the god attaching bounties to enemies coming into view. That'd be a small scale version of the other approach.)

All of these sound interesting, and several/all could be applied. (Note that we have two gifting gods and we can also make a distinction between armour and weapon gifts.) However, it is quite some work. Short of simply removing weapon/armour gifts, I happen to believe that b) is the least amount of work. If someone comes up with an algorithm for good gift generation in a), that'd also help.

[jpeg]

Okay, so there are several options if the current situation is considered unsatisfactory (definitely by me). Adding finer conducts would make the gods much more complicated than temporary gifts, so I won't list that here.

a) Permanent gifts.
Those always have the god's name as part of their name ("Okawaru's axe of Vengeance").
They are removed (taken back by the god) when the god is abandoned.
Generating those gifts tries to walk the fine line between overpowering and actually useful. (This is hard to do!)

b) Temporary gifts.
Those are given for durations like 2000-3000 turns. Retraction is announced well in advance (think 100 turns) and won't happen in combat.
Generating those gifts tries to give outstanding items.

c) Conditional gifts I: Permanent -> temporary.
Only the simplest approach and only for weapons here: The weapon gift is permanent as long as the player never uses a different kind of weapon for attacking. If he does, the gift vanishes. (Drawback: need prompt or other kind of warning to prevent accidental loss of gifts.)

d) Conditional gifts II: Temporary -> permanent.
The idea is that special feats can make an item last longer or permanent. I see two viable approaches:
* Upon delivering a temporary gift, a task is announced. E.g. "May this help you to fetch the barnacled rune." If you manage, the item becomes permanent. Ideally, the item's name reflects the challenge.
* Beating tough opponents has a chance of increasing duration. If duration was increased three times already, the gift becomes permanent. (Drawback: even if we don't use tension, toughness may be scummed -- e.g. by leaving uniques or branch ends for that purpose. It can be circumvented by the god attaching bounties to enemies coming into view. That'd be a small scale version of the other approach.)

All of these sound interesting, and several/all could be applied. (Note that we have two gifting gods and we can also make a distinction between armour and weapon gifts.) However, it is quite some work. Short of simply removing weapon/armour gifts, I happen to believe that b) is the least amount of work. If someone comes up with an algorithm for good gift generation in a), that'd also help.

Thanks for the summary!

In my opinion, a) should be applied regardless of whatever else happens (with a possible exception for d) if the feat is great enough), so I think that would be a good point to start with. For temporary gifts, one thing to take into account is how two temporary gifts are supposed to interact with each other.

Also, in the long run, Trog and Okawaru could use different methods.

[Tiber]

Another idea: Gifts are temporary, but you can spend piety to extend the duration. However, there is either a limit on how many times you can do this per weapon, or the piety cost rises for each extension of the same weapon.

[dpeg]

Tiber: Buying duration with piety is in principle an interesting idea. However, it is very hard for the player to make a reasonable guess when it is actually worth it. You can convey this information to the player (so that it is not spoiler material) but this is not particularly easy either, in my experience. That's why I support the more passive approaches of my list.
Note that some gods have a thematically similar power by blessing weapons. This might be a reason for Okawaru and Trog not to do the same. I agree that it could lead to interesting decisions, though.

[Thasero]

And an important flip side of "temporary weapons" is that if you get temporary weapons, once the first one runs out you'll get a second one later anyway. You might decide to try and hold on to the "best" weapon you get, but you would have to know the gift algorithm and/or the game pretty well in order to know whether the gifted weapon is particularly good compared to other possible gifted weapons. After all, part of the idea is that the temporary weapons are almost always better than normal items you find in the dungeon, so a relatively bad temporary weapon might still be the best weapon you've seen throughout several previous winning characters. In order to decide if it's a good idea to hang onto a particular temporary weapon - rather than waiting for the next one - you need to know how good the average gift from the gift algorithm would be; you can't compare the items to anything else.

An important question would be: What percentage of the time do we think a character will be using a temporary weapon, all else being equal? Does a Troglodyte almost always have a temporary weapon they're using and swap from old to new as the gifts flow, or (once they're qualified for gifts) do they spend half the time playing normally and half the time juiced up with a really great Trog weapon? I would lean towards making temporary weapons pretty commonly available, since we wouldn't want players to scum weaker areas until they get a temporary weapon so they're strong enough to hit a branch end.

Although one alternative would be to explicitly aim for that by making "ask for a temporary weapon" a player-invoked power; you're guaranteed to get an awesome doomsword for chopping up everything in Elf:5, but you have to hurry and get on with it. If you play too conservatively, your weapon times out and you're back to clearing vaults the hard way. That would make the gifts like a very powerful and long-lasting buff, presumably balanced by a very long cooldown until you can get one again.

[ximxim]

A random idea: Trog and/or Oka gift a weapon directly on worshipping. Only kills made by that or a given upgrade weapon give piety. "Go forth and slay in my name with this weapon".

Or

Kills made by god-gifted weapons give extra piety.

[Galefury]

Fleshing the idea of an equipment boon out a little:

New Oka power to replace gifts: request equipment.
High piety cost, success rate like Finesse. Takes one turn, the item is automatically equipped, replacing anything that is currently using that slot (no turn cost for equipping). Max of one item at a time. Some of the piety earned while it is equipped goes to extending the duration. Extending should be quite expensive, and the cost could depend on item quality. The fraction of earned piety that is put into this goes down the more you extend the duration, eventually reaching 0, which caps the max duration. If the item would time out in combat piety is spent to extend the duration until out of combat. To stop extending duration just unequip the item. It could then either disappear, simply time out at the regular rate, or something in between. I'm not sure what to do with the piety already spent to extend the duration if the item disappears. It could be lost or given to the player, both have some disadvantages.

Temporary items should always be artifacts, even if they are really just regular ego items or unbranded. They should always be an improvement over what they replace, and probably always of at least ego quality (gift quality could depend on piety or invocations). Picking the slot to replace should use the following priority fairly strictly: empty > unbranded > branded > artefact. If a branded item is in an armor slot some brands (resists, conservation, running, probably archery) should often be preserved, as these tend to be very important to the overall equipment choice. Item quality should depend on what is replaced to discourage unequipping slots with useful brands to get for example boots of running.

Weighting gifts to be appropriate to the current situation is possible. Branch and enemies in sight (or recently seen) could both be used. Duration will need to be fairly short if this is done, because that would almost guarantee extremely useful items. One way to do it would be to define a list of useful properties with weights for every branch (depth dependent for D), then compare it to the player's current equipment and pick properties (number depends on piety or invocations and quality of replaced item) from the difference. Recently seen (still living) uniques could be added to the list with a high weight. In that case killing the unique could give an extension bonus, but this would be quite prone to gaming. Only giving a chance to get the extension quest would help with that.

[KoboldLord]

c) Conditional gifts I: Permant -> temporary.
Only the simplest approach and only for weapons here: The weapon gift is permanent as long as the player never uses a different kind of weapon for attacking. If he does, the gift vanishes. (Drawback: need prompt or other kind of warning to prevent accidental loss of gifts.)

I don't really like this one. Okawaru and Trog tend to be followed by fighter-types, and fighter-types already have a crippling (and boring) lack of versatility. Do they really need to lose the ability to use slings and rods, too? Also the ability to switch to a non-slashing or flaming-slashing weapons to fight a hydra, although that's relatively minor. Ashenzari already has the never-change-your-weapon conduct, too, so it would dilute Ashenzari flavor as well.