God of Requests

[pubby]

I thought up a god: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... f_requests

The idea was to have a god that was unpredictable and risky but at the same time consistent and safe. Similar to Nemelex, except with a different focus.

==== God of Requests ====

"Ghib" is the god of requests. He allows followers to request and acquire items, so long as they do the same for him.

The basic idea of Ghib is that he will always have a request for you (visible by praying) along the lines of:
* Find and tribute certain items
* Go to a specified level that you have not been to
* Kill specified enemies (either a known unique or a number of a certain species) possibly with a requirement of having a certain item equipped
* Train a skill to a certain level
* Achieve a certain status condition
* Other strange things - think along the lines of Xom
Each request has a time limit - you get more piety the faster you fulfill his request.

===Piety===
* Gain piety when you fulfill one of Ghib's requests, lose it when you don't (along with a punishment)

===Gifts===
* Ghib gifts scrolls of acquirement and items that are in the "miscellaneous" category of the scroll. Gifts have a long timeout.

===Abilities===
* Piety level -:
* //Scroll of acquirement identified// (passive).
* //Treasure trove is free to enter// (passive).
* Piety level x:
* //Scroll of acquirement gives better items// - Rate improves with piety. (passive).
* Piety level xx:
* //Request help// - Provides one of the following (randomness weighted depending on the situation): (costs 2 mp, 40 piety)
* If enemies are close:
* Provide the effects of one potion of berserk, speed, agility, might, brilliance, or magic
* Provide the effects of one scroll of summoning, blink, teleport, fog, or fear
* If you are hurt
* Provide the effects of one potion of curing, healing, restore abilities, or resistance
* If one of your items is cursed
* Provide the effects of a scroll of remove curse
* If you are hungry
* A food that can be consumed by you
* Otherwise
* Gift a random scroll, potion, or a small amount of gold
* Disarm traps in the vicinity (possibly including magical traps)
* Magic mapping
* Piety level xxx:
* //Request magic// - Same effect as the scroll provides - choice of book, wand, or jewelry (costs 5 mp, 50 piety)
* Piety level xxxx:
* //Request weapon// - Same effect as the scroll provides - choice of weapon, armour, or staff (costs 5 mp, 80 piety)
* Piety level xxxxx:
* //Request resistance// - Gives you an item or mutation that has the resistance you specify with a chance of ++/+++ or additional artifact qualities (costs 5 mp, 100 piety)
* Piety level xxxxxx:
* //No more requests// - Ghib will stop making requests (passive).

Additionally, once per game you can pray at his altar with ****+ piety to spawn a bazaar portal.

===Punishments===
* Ghib steals an item or gold from you (with a high chance of him stealing a {god gift})
* Ghib requests a punishment from another (random) god
* Ghib sends you deeper into the dungeon
* Ghib forces sage effect (with one of your bad aptitude skills that you don't need)
* Ghib steals some of your XP

[Deimos]

Quick comment: Giving free treasure trove entry at no piety is a no-no.

[pubby]

Yeah, I wasn't sure about that either.

The rationale was that if you can't find the items for the trove then you could swap gods but the resulting punishment and god choice wouldn't be as good of a deal.

[xopods]

I like the idea of a god who gives you quests to gain piety (and punishes you for failing to complete them in a certain amount of time), but I don't like the reward system... seems overpowered, and not that interesting.

What if instead of items/acquirements, he gifted permanent allies?

[DuxOrbis]

I would REALLY like to see Xom be made into a god that demanded things as part of his whims, and rewards faithful servants.

[pubby]

What if instead of items/acquirements, he gifted permanent allies?

I don't think the game is very suited for permanent allies, but it's still an interesting idea.

What if instead of gifting scrolls randomly he instead gave you a small gift each time you completed one of his quests? There would still be some choice though - you would have two options to choose from each time. For example, you could either choose a scroll versus a potion, or something as vague as a small box versus a large one. Long-lasting allies could be included as one of these gifts.

I'm not sure what to do with his given abilities. Right now it's using piety as a currency, which I like, but I just don't know what to do with the rewards. If the acquirement ability is staying then it should definitely be merged into a single ability, along with balancing the scroll's categories. Dunno what the other ability(s) could be though.

[TehDruid]

I think permanent intelligent ally gifting (with a sensible cap on how many you can have) would be pretty awesome for Xom or a new, Mercenary god. Okawaru could also be revamped to this if losing allies just exhausted a bit of your piety instead of right away excommunicating you but then again he already offers a lot through ammo/armour/weapon gifts and hero/finesse are great.

[xopods]

(with a sensible cap on how many you can have)

Probably the best thing to do would be that when this god decides to reward you, you either get a new ally or an existing one is made more powerful, with the probability of a new one being e.g. (1 - # of allies/3), so you've got a maximum of 3, and when you've already got, say, 2, it's a 66.7% chance that he'll upgrade one of the two you've already got, rather than giving you a third.