Cheibriados (was: Formicids)

[dpeg]

No, chei is not a good god for any species.

I know this is the conventional wisdom and it may correctly describe the current state (I don't know). However, I'd expect GDD to realise that a god denying haste is not necessarily gimped. To be sure, it's a major handicap but nothing that could be outweighed by other means. In other words, tweaking enough numbers (most simply, piety gain/loss and piety costs) would make the god arbitrarily strong.

There is another way to look at this: at any given time, there's certainly a bunch of gods which are weaker (to mainstream characters, say) and others which are stronger. This is almost inevitable because it's very hard to make gods equal in power. We don't even try very much although there will be buffs to the one group, and nerfs to the other, of course. If right now Cheibriados is "not good for any species", then that's a consequence of the numbers, not of the handicap.

[Tiktacy]

No, chei is not a good god for any species.

I know this is the conventional wisdom and it may correctly describe the current state (I don't know). However, I'd expect GDD to realise that a god denying haste is not necessarily gimped. To be sure, it's a major handicap but nothing that could be outweighed by other means. In other words, tweaking enough numbers (most simply, piety gain/loss and piety costs) would make the god arbitrarily strong.

There is another way to look at this: at any given time, there's certainly a bunch of gods which are weaker (to mainstream characters, say) and others which are stronger. This is almost inevitable because it's very hard to make gods equal in power. We don't even try very much although there will be buffs to the one group, and nerfs to the other, of course. If right now Cheibriados is "not good for any species", then that's a consequence of the numbers, not of the handicap.

Chei is good for most characters, you just need to know how to use him.

[dck]

Just thought I'd mention I think dpeg is missing the point of what makes chei awful and what doesn't. He's the one god in the game that gets worse and worse as you gain more piety because it accentuates the crippling facet of the god while providing you with a meager of power via stat boost and a couple of escape tools that in no way make up for the speed loss (and being locked out of the best spell in the game).
Unless what he meant by "tweaking enough numbers" was stopping all piety gain with chei whatsoever which means you worship him to play pretend as a naga.
Mind you, chei can be fun of course and it can make for an interesting run but he's awful in terms of actual power to the point of being worse than beogh.

[Wahaha]

No I'm sure dpeg knows what Chei does. There's nothing wrong with a god making you slower with piety gain, if he also gives you other things that are enough to make up for the penalty and then also help you. He means that if Chei gave +70 to stats, or the abilities cost 5 times less piety, he would be good even if he doesn't allow haste and makes you slow.

Beogh isn't weak btw.

Chei is good for most characters, you just need to know how to use him.

No.

[dpeg]

Wahaha: sure I know! It's obvious to me that any of a large number of changes would make Cheibriados arbitrarily strong, and I have no idea how anyone could miss that. Stuff like passive relatiation, cheaper Slouch etc. -- the list is endless. As so often in design, I believe the real question is not about power, but about fun. Cheibriados isn't a typical god (which would augment your playing style in some way), as it *is* a style. Other gods that (can) similarly dominate a game are Elyvilon (if pacification-happy) or Nemelex (if cards are used as a major feature). Perhaps Cheibriados is a bit different from even these two because there is not much of a middle course.

It's clear that a slow god will be unpopular with some (many?) players simply because it completely changes how you play the game. However, it's also clear from feedback that the god has a sizable audience which derives fun from it, and that's all I need to know for a start.

I have had a hand or two in all the recent gods (Jiyva, Lugonu, Fedhas, Cheibriados, Ashenzari, plus "new" Elyvilon etc.) and I love to hear ideas about how to improve them. Obviously, for Cheibriados improvement (in my eyes) is not to water down the handicap, it's about making the slow game more fun, which may, but doesn't have to, correlate with more powerful. So I am interested to know in which powers are rarely used, and why etc.

[dck]

@Wahaha: Yes of course if you take the "tweak enough numbers" to an exaggerate extent, but that's not a realistic option to even consider or any sort of argument to be made. Making chei beneficial to worship (or breaking even with being godless) would require those sort of insane "tweaks" to make up for everything he takes away.
I didn't say beogh is weak, but that he's the worst of all beneficial gods.

[Klown]

1) Less piety requirements for Chei's abilities. With the slowness, these are so important, and the piety getting drained so fast harms your survival chances significantly.
2) Chei Zealot designed as an armored mage-type. Unique to other backgrounds at least.
3) Remove speed boosting spells, adding depth to 'when do I use my wand of hasting/potion of speed?' instead of 'I messed up, activate haste, yay I'm safe.'
4) Bend Time is the ability I don't care for personally. Not saying it's bad or anything, just that something stronger/cooler could take it's spot. Plus the ** piety has no new abilities, perfect for a stronger ability.


Edit: I enjoy playing Cheibriados with a bunch of different combos. As long as you move carefully, it's not that bad. He's fun, and slouch is just another nice piece to the puzzle.

[dpeg]

Klown: The Haste spell has been nerfed several times and each time, removal was on the table. (If memory serves correctly, the spell has been hit with level increase, effect reduction and glow increase.) I agree that limited tools are often more interesting than infinite ones, and that means spells can be troublesome (that's why we cut Divinations, for example). It's unlikely that the Haste spell will be removed soon: every nerf tends to increase longevity as people have thought about and tinkered with the feature; also, it's valuable in the Charms context. However, I will talk to some people about piety costs.

[Sandman25]

1) Chei is not that bad for Na who cannot kite most monsters even with Swiftness. I even dare to say that max power Ice Storm with only 2 enhancers for Na (whose Int is very far from DE usually) and EV 35 (for large size species) is extremely powerful. Please don't tell me again that pre-lair is the most important part of the game.
2) Chei is not that bad for Tr who has very easy early game and can take a couple of hits even late game thanks to regeneration. Chei actually allows to have EV 27 and Repel Missiles in 3 rune game, dealing 121 damage to Orb of Fire in a single attack is very powerful too. Here you may tell me that pre-lair game is the most important part of the game
So I strongly disagree that Chei is bad for all characters.

[dck]

But it is the most important part of the game, so important that it takes titanic effort in most cases to kill yourself by the time you reach lair.
Idk about your trolls by mine have no problem having EV and casting a level 3 spell. They also deal a lot of damage because they start with claws 3 which is p strong.

[duvessa]

4) Bend Time is the ability I don't care for personally. Not saying it's bad or anything, just that something stronger/cooler could take it's spot. Plus the ** piety has no new abilities, perfect for a stronger ability.

Bend time is overwhelmingly the strongest Chei ability. Being able to reliably slow monsters adjacent to you is really good, and is probably the biggest reason that Chei is merely bad instead of egregiously awful. The ability is so strong that if you made it work on all monsters in LOS, it'd probably make Chei genuinely good.
As I've said before, the first change I'd make to Chei would be to allow haste*. Slow movement is interesting in at least some ways, but reducing your damage output by 33% is not an interesting conduct at all. It would still be very difficult to run away as a normal speed species (coinflip() ? 12 : 14 move delay, which is still well over 10). Possibly this would actually require nerfing bend time.
Whether that happens or not (I'm aware it almost certainly won't) I think slouch should cost less piety, the current cost is too high to use it for much other than emergencies and bee rooms and "slightly better refrigeration" isn't really something you want in most emergencies. Step from time is also rather poor for what it's presented as but I really don't have any ideas to improve it besides reducing the cost so you can use it more times in a row.
Temporal distortion's intended purpose, getting ranged attackers close, is weird - a ranged character would only want this if they want to use bend time or the monster is both wielding a launcher and not a master archer. And Chei is utterly unusable in the first place for characters that aren't ranged. However in practice it turns out to be useful for a few other things so I guess it really isn't that bad.

And holy shit, why would anyone think chei would be good on a race that can't teleport. What the fuck.

*and speed weapons for consistency

[varsovie]

So I am interested to know in which powers are rarely used, and why etc.

Bend time and step out of time.

Chei is probably my favorite god (close to oka, even won a CeMo of chei), just have to remember, NEVER go into the volcano. But those two spell are so unpredictable and require such an in-depth knowledge of the game and mechanics that it took me a while before starting to use them. And even now I'm not totally sure how they work, and I've looked the wiki and the code.

Bendtime because it's based on the HD of the monster, and without wiki, knowledge bot or LOT of trials, it is really hard to know on who will it work [ (Monster HD)d3 > ((16+INVO*8)d2)/2 check ]. Also in the end, trying to flee with Chei is a bad idea (even because of noise and wandering foo). So it's will bendtime gives me enough time to kill the foo? Well it's probably easier, funnier and defenitivly more reliable to cast sloush or another spell/wand. When it works it's powerfull though, and using it in corridors reduce the impact of the randomness by blocking.

Step out of time because it seems designed as a "Jail free card", but it's so unreliable (like uncontroled teleport) I don't want to use it. I use it most on stabbers, but with Chei stabbing is a dangerous affair and you kinda want an heavy armor. It also cost a lots of piety, nearly the same as sloush, but sloush repay itself. If we were able to see the monster wandering, at least we would know which way is safer to goafter.
Also at first it looks like a more powerful temporal distortion, while in fact it's VERY different and it confused a while.

Temporal distortion is good, situationnal but if you have weak ranged or need to avoid a nasty effect for few turns, it's your way to go, it's like mass blink other but always toward us.

Sloush seems fine or even a little OP, but maybe you should reduce XP gain while using it, at least reduce it after >30 kills in one cast. Because finding a vault full of bees and casting it can make you piety skyrocket (even moar with amulet of faith). It's one of the few god abilety that I macro hotkey. And unlike other Chei abilities, it doesn't seems to rely on Invo, it might be detremental to the god, why would you put points in invo if it works only with the very situationals spells?

For the slowing, yes it makes you weaker, but it's all the charm. If I "needed" to win I would go Ash instead. My only complain now is that with the "removal" of ponderousnes, unless you get very lucky on a fixedart, you have no permanent option to make yourself even slower, you must rely on wands, spells and potion on yourself. Maybe a ***** power that would allows you to brand something ponderous, usable only once like kiku pain brand or TSO bless weapon wpuld be nice.
Chei is a god I feel is still useful in the late game, the worse part is the early where you have the disadvantages (albeit small) but non of the cool stuff yet. And if you're not a Naga piety at first take ages to kick in.

[dck]

If you have the invo for step out of time to work at decent % the answer to "will bend time work?" is always yes on basically everything you don't want to bother opening the bots for.

[and into]

If you have the invo for step out of time to work at decent % the answer to "will bend time work?" is always yes on basically everything you don't want to bother opening the bots for.

This is true. Bend time is very good, and with about 15 invocations will work extremely well on almost everything. Duvessa is correct that bend time is, in practice, Chei's most useful ability, with temporal distortion being more situational but interesting and quite useful as well. Slouch *would* be most useful, except cost is too high.

I suspect that many people's opinions of bend time may be based on using it against toughies (with high HD) before their invocations skill is very high, in which case it may not be very consistent and could very well seem useless. Perhaps bend time should be made slightly less reliant on invocations—at high invo it works as it does now, but give it a bit more of a boost at lower levels of the skill. That would be a small tweak. A more significant improvement would be to have it work in a small radius of effect—that isn't quite as radical as full LOS, as duvessa suggested, but would improve the skill quite a bit. That, plus reducing piety cost of step from time and slouch, would go a long way toward making Chei better, while keeping him just as interesting.

Now, I don't think doing the above would suddenly make Chei a strong pick. For most builds he'd still, overall, make the game harder than easier, and so from a strictly "I am playing to win right now" mindset, he'd still often be a challenge. But the actual play experience would be more enjoyable and you'd feel you are actually getting a lot more out of this strange bargain.

Another alternative: I don't see why one of the things that duvessa suggested should immediately be taken off the table, namely, making Chei strictly about *movement.* Rather than punishing you for hasting, he simply keeps your movement speed 100%, inalterably constant (and slow) as you do it.

Another another alternative: Change the way chei slows you down to kind of a hybrid of what he was a long time ago, where you ponderized your equipment. The idea here is to use something like Ash's piety system, but only one-directional, and not mediated through items (maybe that's more confusing than helpful, bear with me). So, when you first join, Chei doesn't slow you down. You still get piety for killing stuff faster than you, however. At certain break points you will get a message about "Chei wishes to bestow his blessing upon you," at which point you can (p)ray in order to get a prompt, Y/N, that you wish to receive his blessing. Doing so means that you get slower movement speed, but this allows you to get more piety. So long as you have piety > 0 (so right from start of worshiping him) you can get the first blessing. Once you get enough piety, you can get second blessing, third, etc. These are like "gears" that you shift into, but you can only move forward voluntarily. You only speed up if you lose sufficient piety. ("Chei no longer bestows his Nth blessing.")

A certain level of blessing is required to get past "piety caps," however, so you can't just keep yourself slightly slower than average and expect to get full piety. ("Chei's favor for you will grow no further until you receive his blessing.") Nagas (or anyone who picked up cover ground slowly mutation, etc.) will "automatically" receive the appropriate blessing level from Chei. ("Your self-discipline already commands Chei's respect!")

This avoids the messiness that item-mediated slowness used to cause, but still gives player a lot of control over when exactly you get slower. A god for which you benefit from but also partially dread getting higher piety is kind of interesting, but it doesn't (IMO) work too well with Chei right now. It would be nice if you could stay at around naga speed for a while and use bend time and temporal distortion and like +8 to all stats, and delay going "full slowpoke" until you've gotten some good translocation spells (e.g.) online.

EDIT: No specific ideas yet, but interesting hunch: A god for which you *gain* piety every time you use its (very powerful) abilities, and under whom you gain rather than lose piety over time. But getting more piety makes the god's passive penalties / conduct much much harsher. I'm thinking something like a god of putrescence and decay, who progressively sucks the life force from you, every time you "strike a bargain" with him in order to invoke his mighty powers.

[reaver]

One idea on Chei that I think solves a problem immediately: make Chei's followers start with Bend Time like Lugonu followers start with the Exit the Abyss ability. This is to stop the rare situations where you can't run away from something because Chei is slowing you, and provide a bit of a power boost to compensate the immediate loss of running away.

Another alternative: I don't see why one of the things that duvessa suggested should immediately be taken off the table, namely, making Chei strictly about *movement.* Rather than punishing you for hasting, he simply keeps your movement speed 100%, inalterably constant (and slow) as you do it.

I like this idea mechanically, but I don't see how it would fit flavorfully. It fits with Chei stopping only the Haste part of Berserk, but Chei's the god of time, not the god of movement. Maybe something like "Fast objects appear displeasing from Chei's divine view of space-time, thus he asks his followers to walk/slither/fly slowly."?

[crate]

Chei is in a pretty good spot right now imo. He is clearly not intended to be a particularly strong god and usually he is not, but for some characters chei is quite powerful. In particular you can actually argue that for an AM-type character he is the best god in the game (probably competing with Fedhas).

I never use step from time so I have no comment on it, but chei's other powers are fine. Perhaps bend time could get more duration if you want to buff it but it's already pretty strong as-is.

Bend time is not for running and if you think it is I'm very confused. Bend time is for fighting. It is much closer to finesse in usage than it is to haste.

but with Chei ... you kinda want an heavy armor

I don't follow. I think with chei light armours are in fact still better than heavier armours for most characters.

[duvessa]

It fits with Chei stopping only the Haste part of Berserk, but Chei's the god of time, not the god of movement.

Chei doesn't give you penance for training weapon skills or more Slouch damage for wielding a scythe, and he gives less piety for killing nagas than humans even though they have the same action speed. Currently, he is the god of movement.
(And even if he is the god of time, why would that imply that he dislikes haste? For that, surely he'd need to be the "god of slow," and if that's really his theme I'm not sure why anyone would be so committed to keeping it.)

[Sandman25]

I think with chei light armours are in fact still better than heavier armours for most characters.

Chei allows characters to wear heavy armour with small EV penalty (+15 Str helps), level 9 spells (+15 Int helps) and high EV (+15 Dex helps).
I've seen some characters casting level 9 spells in CPA and it was even before latest body armour reform.

[crate]

if you're trying to convince me of something probably it is better to tell me things that I don't know

I didn't present an argument because it's really not important, but chei mostly shouldn't change your body armour decision.

[Tiktacy]

It fits with Chei stopping only the Haste part of Berserk, but Chei's the god of time, not the god of movement.

Chei doesn't give you penance for training weapon skills or more Slouch damage for wielding a scythe, and he gives less piety for killing nagas than humans even though they have the same action speed. Currently, he is the god of movement.
(And even if he is the god of time, why would that imply that he dislikes haste? For that, surely he'd need to be the "god of slow," and if that's really his theme I'm not sure why anyone would be so committed to keeping it.)

He is the god of patience and steady contemplation, not the god of time. Though if anything, he is more like the god of "slow-the-fuck-down-and-stop-holding-tab".

[Sandman25]

if you're trying to convince me of something probably it is better to tell me things that I don't know

I didn't present an argument because it's really not important, but chei mostly shouldn't change your body armour decision.

Chei allows to use heavy armour (artefact plate armour) instead of middle armour (FDA), or middle armour (FDA) instead of a light armour (robe) because your spells don't become instantly uncastable. Chei mostly provides you extra options for armour decision. When my last caster switched to FDA from a robe (with Str 9), chance for Discord sky-rocketed from 2% to 17%, that does not happen with Chei.

[and into]

A bit more elaboration:

For a lot of characters, I think Chei will ultimately give a *net* effect of making the game more challenging (though how much more will vary a lot). But focusing on net effect in this case is a really great way to suck a lot of the nuance (and fun) out of Crawl, really fast. I do think Chei could use some work to even out his power curve (such as it is), though—and that was really the thrust of my suggestions, most of which were just seconding and/or offering elaborations of stuff others suggested first.

I'll also say that, yes, most of what has been recommended would "buff" Chei I guess, but again "buff vs. nerf" is such a limited, blinkered way to look (or rather, not look) at game design.

Did removing nausea "buff" eating and thus, by extension, "buff" nearly all species in the game? Technically yes, I suppose. But that was neither the intent nor the most important effect of it. Did changing scroll of vorpalize to ?branding "nerf" or "buff" it? Who knows, I'm sure someone can crunch the numbers and give an exact answer. All that I care about is that branding now is a lot more fun than vorpalize was.

Chei is interesting because movement speed is very important in Crawl, and Chei slows your movement. This is a major liability, but also an interesting change to game play, and it does open up a space for god abilities that can be powerful (and potentially low cost and semi-spammable) without being overpowered. — And even then, we should keep in mind that avoiding "overpoweredness" is a good design goal for Crawl, not because it is an end in itself or due to any particular concern with fairness (what would that even mean in a one-player game?), but because overpowered things provide a cheap and short-lived sense of fun (the novelty of breaking the game over your knee) but very quickly make the game boring.


As for "heavy armor" or light armor: This is GDD, not advice. But I'll enter the fray because it will illustrate a point about the game design of Crawl, too:

Yes, you can use Chei's huge stat boosts to step up to a heavier armor without having to train as much as you normally would. That is one good way to take advantage of Chei's boost. But you can also take advantage of those boosts simply by sticking to mottled to have decent AC, and using the huge dex to get sufficiently high EV and stealth with much smaller investments in the respective skills, then taking the experience you have thereby saved and investing it in other areas (e.g., getting something like death's door reliable, because as a Chei-bro you are likely gonna need it!)

It may not look like it at first blush, but in *both* cases you are actually using the stat boosts to good effect. Any time you are in a situation where you can cast freezing cloud in plate armor with such-and-such skill training, you (alternately) could have stuck to a lighter armor and cast the spell with less training in the relevant skills. Yes, under Chei you should be considering ways to wring advantages out of the stat boosts, and strength does now help with armor penalties. Regardless, which of the two routes mentioned above is going to be better will depend on way too many specific factors to really say, in the abstract, "oh this one is clearly superior."

It is analogous to Veh's wizardry boost—you can use that to get firestorm by mid-game, or you can use it to get level 6 and maybe 7 spells online with a lot less investment (thus allowing you to train other stuff), or you can use it to don heavier armor without killing your spell success rate, etc. etc.

Regardless of your religion, "Heavy armor + level 9 spells + awesome randart battleaxe at min delay" becomes the optimal strategy only (and precisely) at the point when it has become a viable strategy—extremely deep into extended, when so much experience has been gained that very few decisions you have made in the entire *history* of the character matter any longer, and the game has long since become boring except perhaps for clearing ziggurats. Certain gods can make those uber-builds come into blossom slightly earlier and easier than others, but what does that really mean in practice? That you have, in effect, "maxed out" your character after clearing your SECOND ziggurat, rather than third or fourth? It just doesn't matter, for any remotely reasonable definition of mattering.

And that is the reason, by the way, why super-late game characters are not any basis for game design. A lot of decisions you've made with that character simply cease to matter—that's why so many late-game characters all look the same. But I don't think there is any easy workaround for that issue. What's wonderful about Crawl is that there are so many *completely different* ways to make things like +15 to all stats or wizardry do a lot of good for your character. All of that is lost when your character has killed enough dudes that he gets the experience to do *all* of them. Until that point, there are generally going to be more than one right way to build your character, and among those reasonable options whatever constitutes the "best strategy" (if there is a best) in most cases will depend upon what the RNG has provided in the context of a *specific* game.

[galehar]

(And even if he is the god of time, why would that imply that he dislikes haste? For that, surely he'd need to be the "god of slow," and if that's really his theme I'm not sure why anyone would be so committed to keeping it.)

Cheibriados is a god who meditates on the mystery of time. Those who choose to follow this deity's path will learn to eschew unnecessary haste, slow down both themselves and others, and hurt those who refuse to slow down.

Yes, he is the god of time and he likes you to take it slow. There is nothing in his theme about movement speed being different than action speed. There are a few simplifications because him disliking the training of weapon skills or preventing the reduction in delay would be dumb. Still, I don't see him allowing haste without destroying is theme. And haste increase movement speed anyway.

That being said, reducing slouch cost seems reasonable.

[Mankeli]

One should (and luckily people in this thread have) make a difference between power and fun. In terms of the former, Chei is pretty bad and certainly not "good on most characters" as some people would have you believe. You can make it work, however, as crate pointed out. In terms of the latter, I actually think Chei is pretty fun.

I have (at least) three Chei wins an all of them were pretty fun. Imagine a demonspawn with nighstalker mutation wearing CPA with good EV casting Tornado for out-of-LOS kills. Yeah ! One of the best times I've ever had with Crawl. Or imagine a truly suicidal 15-rune MuFi no-spells challenge game who went on to clear a ziggurat with Chei. Nerve-wracking but fun!

cheaper Slouch

While I agree that slouch does cost too much piety, one should be careful not to make a straight up damage invo too cheap -besides, wasn't slouch originally much cheaper than the current state and it was actually nerfed? Nevertheless, the cost is too high now.

I feel that Chei's invo powers are in general really strong. I've always had the impressions that chei invos need a high invocations skill to work, but know that I'm checking it out in wiz mode, invo 8 already seems to be enough to slow down d:15 mobs like cyclops, hydras and the like. The chance is based on monster HD so badder dudes need more invo and Chei's abilities definitely benefit from getting invo to at least 15. When you have 20 invo even zot:5 critters seem to be easily slowable. SfT seems to be good (at least in open spaces) as soon as you get it to a manageable fail rate (you probably want less than 10 % fail rate if you are are planning on using it in challenging situations).

The problem with Chei for me is the early game with Chei: At first, you probably can't spare that much exp to invo (and even if you can it takes some time to train it), you can't outrun things, you don't have enough escape options, you can't use speed pots to buff you in a dangerous fight etc...So maybe a thing that would make the very early game easier but wouldn't require major investments skillwise, like passive retaliation or something, would make the very early chei followers life longer and more fun?

Chei is not a powerhouse nor it it's a deity that I would consider in most games anyways. However, I think the slow god niche is really nice and an interesting way play the game from time to time [/pun] and the game experience certainly feels different enough to justify Chei's place in the Crawl pantheon.

[XuaXua]

the first change I'd make to Chei would be to allow haste*.

If the requirement of every one of your games is to have haste, then there's something wrong with either the spell or the given mindset for your play-style.

[Tiktacy]

A common misconception: Chei hates it when you go berserk.

Truth: Chei forgives you after a few kills, it's kinda like the crawl equivalent of missing church on Sunday to watch football.

[Sandman25]

Some players play always for win, others don't. Both styles are ok IMHO. My last two characters got the orb with either no-healing (bloodless Vp could try to find some monsters for potions of blood but I was lazy and curious) or no-haste (again I was lazy to return to Lair for potions of speed and was curious).

[crate]

Making slouch cheaper seems bad to me, you gain chei piety very quickly and slouch is extremely powerful. It needs its high piety cost so chei games don't just degenerate into "slouch literally everything dangerous".

[I want to believe]

I think chei is moreso, the god of time, if he was lazy and much preferred everything to be slow.

[Siegurt]

What I would like is if Chei allowed berserk, but removed the hasting portion of the buff from it (So your strength was increased, you get the "might" damage bonus and you get the exhaustion afterwards)

I would also like it if stasis (both the amulet and for Formicids) did the same thing.

[duvessa]

A common misconception: Chei hates it when you go berserk.

Truth: Chei forgives you after a few kills, it's kinda like the crawl equivalent of missing church on Sunday to watch football.

Chei removes the haste effect of intentional berserks as well as unintentional ones. It's basically completely useless.

Yes, he is the god of time and he likes you to take it slow. There is nothing in his theme about movement speed being different than action speed.

I consider the god's actual in-game conduct to be more important than ONE SENTENCE in its description.

Making slouch cheaper seems bad to me, you gain chei piety very quickly and slouch is extremely powerful. It needs its high piety cost so chei games don't just degenerate into "slouch literally everything dangerous".

To be clear I didn't mean change it to 3 or anything, I was thinking 6 would be good.

[Volteccer_Jack]

I have a lot of problems with Chei, but by far the biggest one is that joining Chei instantly cripples your character and gives you nothing in return until -after- you gain sufficient piety. I think the easiest solution would be to make Bend Time available immediately upon converting.

If the requirement of every one of your games is to have haste, then there's something wrong with either the spell or the given mindset for your play-style.

It's not a "requirement", it's a basic fact of crawl that you will have access to haste, be it spell, wand, or only the potions you find. The spell gives you an infinite supply, and yeah maybe it shouldn't, but potion of speed is one of the most powerful items in the game and being locked out of it is a severe detriment (wand of hasting is probably the best item in the game for any character, and it is nothing more than a glorified speed potion dispenser).

Yes, he is the god of time and he likes you to take it slow.

then why do his conducts contradict that

How about giving Chei a clearer theme that doesn't blatantly conflict with game mechanics? On that note, nothing about Chei's mechanics brings "god of time" to mind, except of course Step From Time. I assume you got that from some in-game flavour text, but I've always been under the impression that Chei is the "God of Slowness".

[Abominae]

One idea for Cheibrados would be to remove Bend Time and make it a passive, retaliation type ability. When a follower of Chei is subject to a hostile action, Bend Time is cast upon the target. It still checks HD, and its power still increases with Invocations. This retaliation is made regardless of whether your character dodges, blocks, or resists the action. The chance of retaliation would start low but rise with piety, eventually hitting a rather high percentage (or even 100% at maximum piety).

I have no idea how good, bad, or interesting this would be; its just a thought.

[njvack]

Yes, he is the god of time and he likes you to take it slow. There is nothing in his theme about movement speed being different than action speed.

Wait, does Chei decrease action speed? It's been a while since I rolled... well... anything... but I thought Chei was, as implemented, the god of slow movement. Both Bend Time and Temporal Distortion are rather geared towards mitigating slow movement while not messing with your action speed.

[johlstei]

Yes, he is the god of time and he likes you to take it slow. There is nothing in his theme about movement speed being different than action speed.

Wait, does Chei decrease action speed? It's been a while since I rolled... well... anything... but I thought Chei was, as implemented, the god of slow movement. Both Bend Time and Temporal Distortion are rather geared towards mitigating slow movement while not messing with your action speed.

No, but he doesn't let you use abilities which increase action speed. I think the discussion is a result of a suggestion that chei allow hasting/finesse/berserk, and simply have chei remove the movement speed increase while keeping the action speed increase.

[dck]

Chei allowing finesse eh.

[Jeremiah]

What about making Slouch a damage-over-time effect rather than instantaneous, and making the total damage higher than it is now, but done over several turns?

[duvessa]

What about making Slouch a damage-over-time effect rather than instantaneous, and making the total damage higher than it is now, but done over several turns?

Um, why?

[Hirsch I]

so it will slowly kill the monsters. chei would not apreciate an instant kill. (joke)
but, what if we reduce the damage from Slouch, but make it cause paralysis as well?
the ability would be suddenly stopping anything in LOS, the impact would damage the victims. (serious)
or, even more interesting, Slouch can transform the kinect energy into thermal energy, causing paralysis and fire damage, with the fastest monsters causing a fireball effect as well. (half serious)

the paralysis would make it an excellent escape mechanism, would make Chei stabbers possible, and would look cool.

[reaver]

the paralysis would make it an excellent escape mechanism, would make Chei stabbers possible, and would look cool.

The whole "stop the monster" idea is taken up by the Gong of Golubria. That's currently in a branch but part of the 0.14 design goals is to add it and a few other things mumra's worked on to the main game.

[Tiber]

I think if there's one aspect of Chei's that doesn't need buffing, it's slouch.
If I were to give Chei anything, I'd like to see an offensive temporal distortion/step from time. In essence, it would be similar to banishment, only the monster is unbanished after a semi-random amount of time.

[Hirsch I]

awwww c'mon...
why are all the good ideas already in use?
and I dont see this as a buff to slouch. right now, it can cause insane amounts of damage. if we reduce the damage to a fraction of it is, it will become more of a escape mechanism and less of a mass destruction weapon. I think this is much more like Chei. and escaping is right now the greatest issue with chei: if you see something, you must fight it.
this could change to "if you see something you can either fight it, or paralyse it so you can flee, or even paralyse it so you can stab, or drag it with Temporal distortion, paralise it and stab it..." this would add a lot of versatility.

the gong of golubria looks awesome, but it is a different approach. looks much more like a "mass hostile step from time" than a punishment to fast beings.

[njvack]

No, but he doesn't let you use abilities which increase action speed. I think the discussion is a result of a suggestion that chei allow hasting/finesse/berserk, and simply have chei remove the movement speed increase while keeping the action speed increase.

My take is that if Chei wants people to have slow actions, he should slow players' action speed along with movement speed*. If Chei isn't interested in slowing your action speed, I don't understand why he cares if you increase it.

If Chei wants a simple buff, I'm with duvessa. Allowing haste/speed to give you fast actions with still-horribly-slow movement sounds to me like one that would make his flavor more consistent with his current mechanics. A message like "Cheibriados keeps you (walking|slithering|flying) nice and slow" would make the mechanic and flavor apparent.

* Yes, I realize that this would be a major balance change and need to be offset with some pretty hefty bonuses. I am not suggesting it's a good idea.

[twelwe]

can i make a radical suggestion? that chei just flat out removes any weapon skill swing delay or sets it at a fixed level. a melee character training weapons and worshiping chei would be steadily increasing their swing speed over time, not something this god should be cool with. the swing speed could even be slightly lowered by each piety star and made up with the stat boost. so you join chei and know that your attack and movement speed will be completely fixed and while both will decrease with piety increase, you will hit much much harder and and enjoy other benefits from stat boost.

There is another way to look at this: at any given time, there's certainly a bunch of gods which are weaker (to mainstream characters, say) and others which are stronger. This is almost inevitable because it's very hard to make gods equal in power. We don't even try very much although there will be buffs to the one group, and nerfs to the other, of course. If right now Cheibriados is "not good for any species", then that's a consequence of the numbers, not of the handicap

likewise every tangible in the entire game is not balanced around haste, god or other.

[Jeremiah]

What if Chei did not "allow" haste, but just punished you with piety loss rather than blocking it or causing penance? He is meant to be the slow god, so maybe he would not notice straight away that you had broken his laws, and when he did, he could be a bit more relaxed about it...

[Tiktacy]

What if Chei did not "allow" haste, but just punished you with piety loss rather than blocking it or causing penance? He is meant to be the slow god, so maybe he would not notice straight away that you had broken his laws, and when he did, he could be a bit more relaxed about it...

That defeats the point of learning haste sort of, since the point is to gain an unlimited supply of a consumables effect. If you did this, the potion, the wandl, and berserking would be enough for most 3 runes.

[Sar]

Item haste is still haste.

[duvessa]

What if Chei did not "allow" haste, but just punished you with piety loss rather than blocking it or causing penance?

This was actually exactly the case early after Chei was implemented.

That defeats the point of learning haste sort of, since the point is to gain an unlimited supply of a consumables effect. If you did this, the potion, the wandl, and berserking would be enough for most 3 runes.

I know you're trolling and all, but for anyone reading this who is genuinely unclear about it: 'haste' means haste, it doesn't just mean the spell.

[Tiktacy]

What if Chei did not "allow" haste, but just punished you with piety loss rather than blocking it or causing penance?

This was actually exactly the case early after Chei was implemented.

That defeats the point of learning haste sort of, since the point is to gain an unlimited supply of a consumables effect. If you did this, the potion, the wandl, and berserking would be enough for most 3 runes.

I know you're trolling and all, but for anyone reading this who is genuinely unclear about it: 'haste' means haste, it doesn't just mean the spell.

Please reread my comment and try again.

Edit: you too sar.

[BlackSheep]

The discussion is about Chei and the haste effect. Learning the spell has nothing to do with anything.