dpeg wrote:The problem with the idea of slowness from piety is that "ponderous" is an existing ego: it makes you move slower. Don't think that that should be overridden.
I don't think that Chei making you ponderous by piety would be confusing to players or anything. Both an effect named that way and an ego could coexist, especially if they did the same thing (moving slower). Also, the game balance probably wouldn't be injured if there was a character who finds a bunch of ponderous items to get really really slow and get that extra Slouch damage. Then, we could get rid of the stat bonuses because they are not necessary to convince anyone that slower is better with Chei, because he forces them to be.
This has several effects:
* loss of voluntary slowing to be a more pious Cheibriadite (unless you find some rare ponderous gear) - but is there a point in worshipping Chei and not being slow? Should there even be one? After all, Chei is all about the slow conduct, choosing him and not being slow seems like a rather pointless option.
* if "Make ponderous" goes away, Cheibriadites could use randarts freely. That seems like a plus to me, having to rely on egos to make them ponderous and shunning randarts isn't particularly fun, even though it's powerful with current bonuses
* potentially abusive behaviour by spamming your costliest invocation to increase your speed (by reducing piety). That could be annoying if it was worthwhile in any situation. I'm not sure if it would be a problem, it doesn't seem that you would gain a benefit fast enough for it to matter (you must spam the invocation for several turns and you'll end up at one star anyway, which I assume would translate to one level of ponderousness, so not particularly fast).
* piety gain speed increases with... piety. That's easy to fix, just tinker with the formula (e.g. divide the final piety gain in current formula by piety stars)
All in all, this doesn't seem like a bad idea for me. I would be more interested in playing Cheibriadites with such a change, because it's more flavourful, less annoying (finding randart armour with a Cheibriadite is a letdown; deciding whether to ponder my gear or wait for enchant scrolls isn't particularly fun either) and it isn't discriminating slot-limited races.