Demigod update

[pubby]

Hi. I haven't been following Crawl dev for quite a while, but recently I've regained interest. I think pretty much everyone agrees that Demigods could be improved, but nothing has really happened after that Abstract Worshipers proposal. Many ideas proposed were quite interesting, but unfortunately a bit too abstract! Here's my spin on things:

First off, demigods are now a class/religion instead of a race. You can only become a demigod at the character selection page, and you're stuck as one for life. Demigods have slower leveling but higher stats, meaning a new human demigod is essentially the same as an original demigod.

Piety is a measure of your renown, and invocations your godliness. You gain piety through killing uniques and getting runes, and you gain invocations by training. Together they represent your power level which is used for your abilities.

Demigods have the ability to create artefacts by reading enchant armour and weapon III scrolls. In the process, you destroy a potion or scroll which acts as the inspiration for the artefact. For instance, destroying a scroll of blinking gives the artefact +Blink, along with a few extra random properties. I'm being very careful to keep this aspect balanced.

In addition, demigods have the ability to summon their followers by reading a scroll of summoning (rerenamed). The summons are of the same race as you are, permanent, and their power scales with yours.

Their final ability is simply an invokable smite. It's not a very interesting effect, and I'd love to have a replacement. The only reason I really added it was because I couldn't figure out how to enable invocations otherwise.

The Abstract Worshiper proposal suggested that the other gods should attack you, and I'm thinking one way to do this is to make them Temple a portal vault when playing as a demigod, similiar to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6978

Anyway, I started some coding to test these ideas out. I figured having something that exists is better than simply an idea. I'll finish the job if these ideas aren't deemed terrible.

Thoughts?

[One-Eyed Jack]

I think pretty much everyone agrees that Demigods could be improved

I don't agree

[BlackSheep]

Relevant links:
Mantis ticket
Dev wiki entry

[mumra]

The Abstract Worshippers proposal certainly isn't dead, I did a large part of the implementation way back when and more recently rebased it to trunk and finished a bunch of things off. There are still some features to finalise and quite a bit of text content to write (dpeg where are you? ) but it's working and playable.

Demigods are a very good race and a lot of people enjoy them for the simplicity. The only complaint some have is that they're a bit boring compared to other races because of the lack of deity interaction and mechanics. Abstract Worshippers solves this by, rather than making Dg more powerful in any way, it simply injects the flavour of the pantheon (and the wider world) in a largely optional way and adds a little extra unique challenge.

[starless]

I don't find Demigods boring or in need of improvement. In fact, I don't particularly like the Abstract Worshipers proposal either.

However, perhaps there should be some reward for any species who do not worship a god. I was thinking because of your refusal to become religious, your character is less credulous and thus his resistance to certain spells and effects might increase with time. These benefits have to be quite significant in order to be tempting to non-Demigods, though.

Your levels of disbelief (similar to piety) could be:

* Apatheist
** Agnostic
*** Nontheist
**** Atheist
***** Antitheist
****** Hitchens

Possible effects:

* none
** MR +20
*** MR +50
**** Resist enchantments effects/attempts 1 in 5
***** Resist enchantments effects/attempts 2 in 5
****** Resist enchantments effects/attempts 3 in 5

[Davion Fuxa]

I actually sort of like how Demigods currently operate with the higher stats and no God worship. Generic improvements like what starless suggested might be a nice way of improving the Demigod to make them a bit more interesting for those who find less interest in them.

Of course, another idea might be to change the Demigods to have abstract worshippers and whatever else, and to make a new race that can mirror what the Demigods do now; have the best of both worlds.

[mumra]

I think some people might not fully understand the Abstract Worshippers proposal: it is literally only adding flavour, it doesn't make Demigods in any way more powerful. A number of people have misunderstood this from only briefly reading over it: it's not like there are worshippers coming to help you out as allies (which is the common misconception) - you just get messages sometimes about how your followers on the surface are reacting to your progress, and sometimes the other gods send tough minions to challenge you (right now they are very tough, and you might choose to just run away - your followers won't approve, but if you don't care about that metagame then you don't have to care about this). It's about adding content to entertain the player, not about changing any aspect of balance (well maybe a small amount of extra XP and loot but it doesn't even start arriving until a decent way into the game).

There are problems with all the other Demigod proposals and they've met extreme opposition for one reason or another. A lot of people find them just fine as is; whereas many people have never even really tried them out because they don't seem interesting. The nice thing about this version is that people who are fine with the status quo can just ignore the new stuff, on the other hand you might find you enjoy the additional content.

[crate]

I'm not sure how randomly getting tough minions to challenge me would be "literally only adding flavour"...?

[mumra]

Ok yeah that was a bad use of the word "literally". But you can just run away from the minions and they'll disappear after not too many turns so you really can just ignore this stuff if you don't like a challenge.

[pubby]

I don't agree

Well then what makes them so absolutely perfect?

The Abstract Worshippers proposal certainly isn't dead, I did a large part of the implementation way back when and more recently rebased it to trunk and finished a bunch of things off. There are still some features to finalise and quite a bit of text content to write (dpeg where are you? ) but it's working and playable.

Ah! I saw you had started but didn't realize you had gotten so far. Guess I should test it out!

I actually sort of like how Demigods currently operate with the higher stats and no God worship.

I feel like Chei does this better. You still get the higher stats, but with a harsh penalty that actually makes the game different.

[crate]

I like demigods right now because they are nice and simple. You don't have to deal with any gods and you're not punished nearly as much for wanting to play godless as e.g. a human would be. (In fact I had a recent human where I wanted to be godless because I didn't want to deal with any gods, but I ended up just worshipping Sif for some benefits anyway with no drawbacks. I would have much rather been a Dg that game than a Hu.)

[mumra]

Ah! I saw you had started but didn't realize you had gotten so far. Guess I should test it out!

The relevant branch/clone is: https://gitorious.org/~mumra/crawl/mumra-demigods/commits/demigods

Any help with testing/coding/content is of course much appreciated. The main things left to implement are giving equipment/loot to the minions, fleshing out their spell/abilities selection, and general tweaking and balancing. Currently the minions have a high HD to make up for their lack of gear but it's probably way too high atm. The important thing to balance is ensuring a good progression of how much you are worshipped vs how much you ire the gods and therefore how soon you encounter minions and the rate at which they are sent. Ideally they should start showing up around Lair, this worked well for me but ymmv. They shouldn't show up too often, perhaps at most every few levels or so, at least until you really anger the gods. There's also a load of text needed for the gods goading you, hearing what your worshippers are up to, that kind of stuff. Haven't worked on it for a couple of weeks, was waiting for text content from dpeg, but also some feedback on the current state would be really useful at this stage!

[starless]

My problem with the new proposal is that other Gods' minions could appear at any time, even when you are already in a difficult situation, down to a few HP, trying to recover or trying to escape.

[mumra]

My problem with the new proposal is that other Gods' minions could appear at any time, even when you are already in a difficult situation, down to a few HP, trying to recover or trying to escape.

There's an easy solution: tie their appearance to low tension. Another option would be to hint with god speech when one is arriving soon.

[pubby]

There's an easy solution: tie their appearance to low tension. Another option would be to hint with god speech when one is arriving soon.

Now that I think about it, I don't really like god-wrath summons. The common way of dealing with them is either teleport away or tab through them, neither of which is very interesting. Although, I'm not so sure there's a better alternative.

[dpeg]

Many thanks to mumra, both for explaining the idea of abstract worshippers (that terminology is by me - I guess I have a tendency to speak in tongues) and for actual code.

I made a pact with the devil to deliver my part of the bargain, which is a lot of speech. (And godspeak.txt is growing at my place.)

I cannot promise that everyone who likes current Demigods will still like them with the changes; neither can I promise that players who despise current Demigods will accept them afterwards. But I believe that I know a bit about Crawl flavour and I'm confident that most will be fine with the changes.

[Jeremiah]

I quite like the idea of the god's minions appearing via a timed portal vault rather than just appearing. That way, the god can say "come and challenge me if you dare" and leave it up to the player, rather than throwing summons at the player when he is possibly already in a dangerous situation.

[dpeg]

Jeremiah's idea is interesting. It has the advantage that a player can completely ignore the godly challenges. If we keep the principle that you can flee from portal vaults, then I don't see any drawback either. However, the step from the current implementation to randomly generated portal vaults is small, so I suggest to test without further complications.

[Jeremiah]

I don't think it was really my idea, I'm sure I read it somewhere else.

[Mumcon]

To the OP, pubby: as far as I can tell, what people like about demigods are that they give you some useful bonuses if you want to play without a religion. That predisposes the player against religious professions, but with their well-rounded attributes, they still currently play many professions well. So I don't think it would make sense to convert demigods to a profession. It sounds like you've designed a new profession with inspiration from demigods, but I doubt people who like demigods will want to scrap the species for your proposed new profession.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that Demigods could be improved

I don't agree

This seems like an issue of what "improved" means. If it means "made better", then no, they're certainly fine and don't need to be buffed. If it means "made such that they feel like a real race rather than just Stat-Buffed Atheists", then... well, still no, because some people don't care about flavor so much, but I think that those who do care find the fact that they're demigods yet it means nothing, not even a little bit of flavor, to be a bit of a waste. I'm personally interested/receptive toward any new ideas that won't buff or nerf the species.

But just reading what's been said about Abstract Worshippers, I personally would like it if that content was optional in the same way that worshipping a god is optional for a non-demigod. Like you'd have to allow an altar to yourself in the Temple, otherwise you'd be able to live as an anonymous demigod with no desire for fame or worshippers. Or some other way to "cancel" worshippers. In the end, I think balance and freedom of choice are most important.

[Kalma]

I (have learned to) like demigod gameplay. They don't really need changing.

Their flaw is just with the flavour. Why would a human-god hydrib have no interaction with gods? Current demigod should be renamed to a human sub-species that cannot worship gods for some reason.

[BlackSheep]

Yred has a worse winrate than hill dwarves, which don't even exist!

In fairness, Yred worshipers probably all die of boredom.

[Stormfox]

And then Yred zombifies you and airdrops you on the next worshiper.

[Sporkman]

Jiyva explodes into translucent rock walls when ONE of her worshipers bites the dust.

... wait, the 'temple' in the last level of the slime pits is the body* of Jiyva?

*For lack of a better term

[khalil]

Jiyva explodes into translucent rock walls when ONE of her worshipers bites the dust.

... wait, the 'temple' in the last level of the slime pits is the body* of Jiyva?

*For lack of a better term

Sortof. Gods die when you kill all their worshipers. The problem is Jiyva only has one worshiper. (The other jellies, including the disolver, are unintelligent and can't worship things.)

[rebthor]

Jiyva explodes into translucent rock walls when ONE of her worshipers bites the dust.

... wait, the 'temple' in the last level of the slime pits is the body* of Jiyva?

*For lack of a better term

Sortof. Gods die when you kill all their worshipers. The problem is Jiyva only has one worshiper. (The other jellies, including the disolver, are unintelligent and can't worship things.)

I think you meant Dissolution. And Dissolution is intelligent; the flavour for why Jiyva "dies" when TRJ does is that Dissolution becomes an atheist when it sees that Jiyva can't even save the king of the Js.