Proposal: God Portals

[PostmodernBrony]

I am keenly aware that submitting anything to the GDD board is an open invitation to being told my ideas are bad and i should feel bad. Therefore, for the most part i am going to defer my judgement on any specific ideas to the senior members of the board: This idea is a general proposal.

In a vein similar to the slime pits, why not have "God Portals"? These portals would function like other portals, the catch being that at the beginning of the portals in question there would be an alter to one particular god. Monsters would either...
A. Be themed around that god in question,
B. Provide extra incentives to destroy if you worship the god whose alter is at the beginning of the portal, or
C. Both.

an example of each might look something like...
A. "The Halls of Trog" - contains a trog alter at the front; monsters throughout the level would be of kind that could be summoned through the Brothers in Arms ability.
B. "TSO's lost temple" - contains a TSO alter in the front, and various undead, demons and evil creatures throughout the level. Converting to TSO at the beginning of the portal would therefore provide a bunch of piety right off the bat, if the character in question was willing to clear out the monsters within.
C. The Slime Pits is pretty akin to this already. Converting to Jiyva allows free access to a bunch of loot and the rune, without having to fight anything; otherwise, the PC has to fight the kinds of monsters Jiyva likes (jellies and slimes).

There would probably be loot at the ends of these portals, too, but there's no point in discussing details if the idea gets shot down. Ideally, it would be loot that would be particularly useful or thematic to the gods in question - maybe a guaranteed pain-brand weapon at the end of the kiku portal, for example, or a book of randomly selected mid-high level conjurations at the end of the vehumet temple.

I know that a couple of branches already do this; i also know that in other threads, people have expressed a desire to axe them because they are "boring." Portals seem to be fairly popular here, due to their flavor, compact nature and urgency; i'm pretty fond of them, as well. These could have as many flavors as there are gods, be ready sources of mid-late game XP and allow for alters outside of the ecumenical temple - cutting back on backtracking for players that want to change gods over the course of the game.

Thoughts? anything salvageable about this idea?

[mumra]

This is very similar to the Testing Grounds / Arena proposal on the dev wiki: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:dungeon:portal_vaults:portal_vaults#testing_grounds_arena. It seems some work was even done on implementing it, but it doesn't sound finished.

[PostmodernBrony]

Ah, well. i can't even complain, if they're gonna put that much effort into it - it seems like a cool idea. it might be a bit harder to balance some gods than others, though. (most of the holy enemies i know are really tough, so i imagine zin/TSO coliseums might be a lot tougher than fedhas ones). Still, they've probably got that kink figured out.

Would it be sensible to suggest offering, among the other loot, a magic item relevant to the god as a reward for completing the coliseum? say, a holy wrath weapon at the end of the TSO arena or a pain-branded weapon at the end of the kiku one?

[KoboldLord]

It would probably be an excellent activity for anybody who feels the inspiration to make a themed set of deity maps for early portal vaults. Lots of deities fit right in with the theme of a bailey, Kiku and Yred both fit in with an ossuary, Jiyva with a sewer, and so forth. Even if a hypothetical Testing Grounds portal does go through at some point, the effort wouldn't be wasted because there's always room for good maps for the portal vaults we already have.

Probably the rewards would need to be substantially less than a guaranteed pain brand or a guaranteed book of mid-level spells, though.

[Kate]

Holy/pain weapons are what you get for actually committing and worshipping those gods, so it seems unwise to hand them out in a vault. It would have to be much more minor loot.

There are also already some god-themed vaults that have some decent loot and cool flavour and show up later in the dungeon. Those work pretty well without being portals, I think.

[XuaXua]

"You try to enter the sphincter of Xom, but the sign reads 'Exit Only""