New God: Dang, the Shadowed


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

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Post Sunday, 8th December 2013, 16:07

New God: Dang, the Shadowed

My initial thoughts in this god proposal are that there could be niche to be filled by what can be seen as a 'stealth god'; I have certainly seen some interest in it, anyway. However, I don't think it would work well by just being some god that passively enhances your stealth and stabs or whatever. This would be problematic just because of how stealth and stabbing work in crawl, but also it wouldn't be as fun as something that has active components that may enhance a stealthy playstyle but also has potential for doing other things. Therefore, I propose Seth:

Flavor: A vaguely evil god that demands you gradually give away your true self (essence, soul, whatever) to gain power as a shadowy being.

Likes: Killing.

Dislikes: Idleness.

Abilities:
* Umbra (passive)
** Shadowport (active, piety and mp cost): Shadow tiles are now displayed adjacent to monsters and large dungeon features (doors, statues, portals). As long as you are standing in a shadow, you may activate this ability and pay its cost to teleport to another shadow.
*** Bleed smoke (passive): When taking a high enough % of your maximum health in damage, there is a chance for smoke to be created around you, which can block line of sight.
**** Shadow action (passive): You have your own shadow tile, which occasionally performs melee attacks or casts spells on the same target you attack.
***** Become Shadow (active, piety, mp, and temporary skill draining cost): For the duration, you gain immunity to poison, draining, torment, and hostile enchantments. All incoming damage is reduced by 50%. Bleed smoke now triggers on every source of damage, and the smoke is replaced with miasma.
Last edited by mikee on Thursday, 13th February 2014, 06:24, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Sunday, 8th December 2013, 17:04

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

What are shadow tiles? Can you shadowport to any on the level, or just ones that are in LOS? Does shadowport also apply to your "shadow action" helper?

Is the helper the same type of "shadow tile" as appears around statues etc? It sounds more like this one would behave as a sort of ally... kind of a friendly "mara illusion" ally, but with AI that mimics your behaviour instead of acting independently. On that note, can monsters attack the helper?

Become shadow sounds entertaining, the miasma-on-damage might make players want to carry around a weak conj spell for selfdamage though. I can imagine situations where you'd want to dump miasma somewhere without being in direct combat, and in that case you'd be able to do it by hurting yourself.

Also, I don't know if this idea would work with the theme, but I've thought that one "stealth god" ability could be a sort of "super-invisibility" effect. It would basically be the regular invis spell, but if you cast it in LOS of an enemy (including being right next to one), they can't guess your position right away. And it wouldn't glow you, but it would have a steep piety cost.

Another idea which might be fun is if you could blind enemies by engulfing them in shadow. It could be some passive thing maybe (tied to shadow form melee?? dunno). I don't think blinding would be a fun invocation by itself though, generally I think debuffs are a lot cooler when they are tied to some other effect/ability, so its not just some generic hex spell.

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Post Sunday, 8th December 2013, 17:07

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Is Shadowport like an instant teleport which can land out of LoS?
I think Become Shadow should decrease outcoming damage also (except poison and pain).

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Post Sunday, 8th December 2013, 22:31

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I imagine the shadows as like, little single-tile clouds that follow people around. Probably LOS should be required for teleporting to them, as it would just be this really obvious escape all the time otherwise. Mostly I find ideas related to short range mobility to be fun, and I think there are a lot of possibilities that aren't covered by just the different types of blinks and golubria and whatnot.
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Post Sunday, 8th December 2013, 22:55

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

mikee wrote:I imagine the shadows as like, little single-tile clouds that follow people around. Probably LOS should be required for teleporting to them, as it would just be this really obvious escape all the time otherwise. Mostly I find ideas related to short range mobility to be fun, and I think there are a lot of possibilities that aren't covered by just the different types of blinks and golubria and whatnot.


well i have a few of those ideas left over!

You should consider my transfocus teleportation idea from the skald god proposal a few months back. you gain a buff ttele after a successful that allows you to teleport directly next to any monster in los. my design was that the player lands on the target's adjunct square closest to your current position but could be a random adjacent square or any other design really. i also had ttele expire after one turn.

I actually thought of umbra when trying to design a "delayed aura" of shadow from which the player could utilize several abilities including a blink. when i say a delayed aura, i mean that as a yred follower umbra tends to lag behind the player during travel, giving umbra a "delayed" effect. i like the idea of the player character itself exuding a divine delayed aura. for example, a shadow aura that grows from the player at two tiles per turn - not outside player los - and allows the player controlled blinks to any monster within the aura. stepping into a new room does not allow for an immediate controlled blink to a stabbing target, but would after a few turns of stealth checking while the aura grows. i toyed around with some other ideas like being able to project the aura into a room and a corruption-style once-per-level shadow that centered on the player character and progressively lost potency over a 20 square radius.
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Post Sunday, 8th December 2013, 23:00

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Necessitating LOS would make shadow teleporting into a slightly different kind of jumping. It would let you more easily jump to non-enemies, but it would also lose the attacking component; it seems like if you blink into an enemy's shadow, you'll just end up letting it get a free hit on you, unless it works in a way like passwall. Unless, I suppose, you maintain your stealth throughout the procedure, which would then make it much better than jumping for stabbers. Jumping is currently extremely rare (only available as boots, which aren't stupidly common), so if blinking next to enemies is really a desired playstyle, I don't see why we can't bring it back as a mutation and evocable component of artefacts instead of designing a whole god around a modified jump.

If we're trying to make a stealthy god, why can't the shadows just give a bonus to stealth checks, or maybe even dampen noise? Or what if it actually weaponized your stealth stat, such that the god's abilities work based on stealth (like Nemelex with evocations)? This might be a good way to create a bigger space for non-magic and non-needlestabbing stealth builds, though the abilities would still need to be hashed out.

All that said, I like the proposal as-is too, and I think better people than me can suss out improvements.

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Post Monday, 9th December 2013, 01:54

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

evilmike wrote:Also, I don't know if this idea would work with the theme, but I've thought that one "stealth god" ability could be a sort of "super-invisibility" effect. It would basically be the regular invis spell, but if you cast it in LOS of an enemy (including being right next to one), they can't guess your position right away. And it wouldn't glow you, but it would have a steep piety cost.


Could this work as just a simultaneous blink and invisibility? So you become invisible and blink, but the AI still treats it as if you cast normal invisibility and guesses your position based on where you were.

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Post Monday, 9th December 2013, 06:42

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

This god would be hideously OP for Ds with nightstalker. at Ns 3 thats a stealth increase of a factor of 3.2 (even more with darkness, RoN), on top of the + 120 from Ns.
And isn't umbra Yred's thing? AFAIK the undead and followers of yred are immune to the -to hit penalty of being in an umbra.

Should probably appreciate killing anything with M_GLOWS_LIGHT or M_GLOWS_RADIATION (e.g. angels and glowing shape shifters)

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Post Monday, 9th December 2013, 14:45

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I love this proposal, and if it were added I would likely choose this god on the majority of my characters. It doesn't require sacrificing corpses, it doesn't give legions of minions to shepherd, and it gives significant, powerful survival tools, some of which are passive.

About the umbra at zero stars, though: doesn't this literally double your stealth rating? If so, that might be a bit much. Unless you also get the umbra accuracy penalties. . .
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Post Monday, 9th December 2013, 15:01

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Lasty wrote:About the umbra at zero stars, though: doesn't this literally double your stealth rating? If so, that might be a bit much. Unless you also get the umbra accuracy penalties. . .

What if umbra boosts your stealth rating AND also alerts enemies in LOS that something is not right? Well, I think you would notice it if a spot nearby suddenly gets darker than it should be, even though you wouldn't notice that there's someone in that dark spot. So I think, with umbra you'd get stealth boost but you wouldn't be able to do tier-1 stab on sleeping enemies (because they would be looking for you).

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Post Monday, 23rd December 2013, 03:39

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Necroing because I was busy around the time this thread was active, but I like discussing gods and I really like mikee's proposal. Some thoughts:

Regarding Umbra: I don't know if this is what mikee had in mind, but I imagine that the umbra would start small and grow with piety—think of it as the antipode of TSO's halo. Right now profane servitors have, by comparison, the "full" umbra effect. At * piety, the Seth-given umbra presumably would be a small radius, and only bestow a fraction of the stealth bonus.

One thing that has been recommended for stealth gods before is to cause "dark spots" in the dungeon. An alternative (or addition) to Seth's umbra then would be for Seth to create "shadow" tiles along walls and in small pools near the center of large rooms. The frequency of these could scale up with piety. While inside these poorly lit areas, worshipers of Seth could enjoy a sizable bonus to stealth (and perhaps EV?); these shadow tiles would obviously come into play with the Shadowport ability too: that ability lets you teleport from one shaded tile to another in LOS. You could have this ability give the "Exhausted" status if you like—"Contact with the shadow-realm wearies you." Alternately, it applies a non-damaging draining effect that ignores rN+(++), that scales up with distance covered, such that one use over a relatively small distance is fairly negligible, but multiple uses over large distances leaves you pretty deep in red draining.

I wonder if shadow action wouldn't work better as an activated ability: You get a buff that gives a duplicated version of your attack. Likelihood and strength of the duplicate version scales up with piety. You could also have likelihood and strength scale up based on how "shaded" the area around you currently is.

The "shaded areas" would affect how you move in the game, and how you interact with dungeon features; that's a plus. Some of the ideas I introduced would possibly encourage kiting, however. Easy (and thematic) way to discourage that is to make it so that Seth disapproves of enemies' noticing you for an extended period, unless you are actively killing them—if they see you, and you don't either get out of LOS and flee *or* begin hurting said enemy within X turns, you begin losing piety at a rate that ramps up very quickly. Taking a couple steps back to fight in the shadows would be fine, but extended kiting of enemies back to shaded areas would incur a high piety cost, and thus generally not be worth it—instead, you'd have to explore thoughtfully and judge how to approach enemies intelligently on a case-by-case basis, using the shadows around you to your advantage.

Finally: Mentioned before, but any drained status effects caused by Seth's abilities should ignore any rN the player has.

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Post Monday, 30th December 2013, 17:46

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I think this is a great idea. Especially for extended. Torment is annoying it is good to have an option to avoid it other than necromutation or playing a mummy or something.
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Post Thursday, 2nd January 2014, 20:08

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Definitely think this is the best stealth god proposal I've heard.
Ideas on abilities:

Umbra: As long as it's a lesser version of umbra (possibly just called darkness or something) then I think this makes a lot of sense as a passive ability. Possibly a shuffle around of Yred and Seth would work a bit.
Shadowport: I feel this should be a bit random. Having it next to all features/monsters might get a bit grindy (although it should definitely have a much higher chance around them) and might make this useless in some areas (open levels) where a stealth god would be most appreciated.
Bleed smoke: Sounds good.
Shadow Action: I think this should only be able to be activated on smoke that you've bled out (or possibly costing more to create it from nothing). Balancing this as a constant companion might be difficult as well.
Become Shadow: Great idea to give another resistance to torment which I feel is needed and turn you into a more heavy build for late game where stealth isn't as useful.
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Post Friday, 3rd January 2014, 07:03

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I actually really like the concept of a stealth deity. It's true that most deities take a major "feature" of Crawl (physical combat, magical combat, overall magical mastery, decks, killing demons, etc.) and enhance it.

I just ran a quick search to see why a stealth diety doesn't exist already, and found a thread called, appropriately, "Why are there no stealth gods?". Anyone who's interested should check it out.

However, regarding this proposal (Seth), I would expect more stealth-related abilities for a stealth deity, and I don't find the "shadow" theme (as it's realized) strategically compelling.

(*) Umbra is the only ability I see that actually interacts with the stealth mechanic, and because it's passive, players wouldn't utilize any distinct strategies in conjunction with it. The rest of the proposal is an assortment of "shadow"-themed translocations, summons, and enchantments. Not that there's no place for those in a shadow-themed diety, but... Well, the current proposal seems to me like the sort of deity proposal I've seen before in GDD, where someone takes a theme that they find cool and comes up with some abilities connected to that theme. To give specifics comments on the abilities, I would say that (***) Shadow action and (****) Become shadow don't seem to have any direct strategic connection to either stealth or stabbing.

Not to derail the thread from a discussion of this particular proposal, but I would imagine a stealth-oriented god having abilities like
- actively invoking dramatically heightened stealth in exchange for a piety cost
- active or passive ability to grants glow-less invisibility in certain situations
- extremely brief, or relatively brief and extremely costly, yet "perfect" stealth that not even Cerebov can detect
- brief yet perfect stealth in exchange for a massive stabbing penalty
- reducing the noise caused by actions such as casting spells
- maybe granting a "stab"-like damage enhancement for certain close-range magical or evocations-based attacks

On a side note, for a diety like this, since certain combos like SpEn already do extremely well on stealth alone, a major consideration needs to be that the power scales properly such that it's beneficial for other combos yet doesn't turn SpEn in easy mode. Not that a specific implementation has been put forward.
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Post Friday, 3rd January 2014, 15:14

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Mumcon wrote:However, regarding this proposal (Seth), I would expect more stealth-related abilities for a stealth deity, and I don't find the "shadow" theme (as it's realized) strategically compelling.



I think the problem (which has been pointed out on this thread and the threat you linked too) is that a straight stealth/stabbing boost isn't really desirable. Although I see where you're going with it, your proposals (and most stealth proposals) are far too strong - perfect stealth?!, glow-less invisibility!? which I think is the main reason why they've been rejected. Stealth is unique in that it is highly useful and desirable to start with, but then tapers off dramatically once you get to late game - any god based stealth boosts are too hard to balance because they're too useful earlier, and useless later. Secondly, most stealth gods would become 'no-brainers' for stealth based characters and crawls philosophy is against that in a broad sense (obviously magic based chars wouldn't want to pick Trog, but it is open to a wide variety of other play styles).

That's why I feel that Mikee's proposal of a god that is useful for stealth players (more so than many others), but isn't a 'stealth god' is much better. All of the abilities granted would be useful to most characters, but would certainly help stealth characters more than most (Shadowport for stabbing as well as general tactical manoeuvring, Become Shadow for any one who wants non-magic based necromutation).
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Post Friday, 3rd January 2014, 17:56

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Mumcon wrote:Well, the current proposal seems to me like the sort of deity proposal I've seen before in GDD, where someone takes a theme that they find cool and comes up with some abilities connected to that theme.

It's actually the right way to come up with a good god design.

Not to derail the thread from a discussion of this particular proposal, but I would imagine a stealth-oriented god having abilities like
- actively invoking dramatically heightened stealth in exchange for a piety cost

A god of stealth which gives an ability which just boost stealth is incredibly boring and uninteresting. We already have Oka for straight and simple buff, we certainly don't want another one. And Oka's heroism boost stealth and stabbing already. It's actually a decent god for stabbers.
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Post Friday, 3rd January 2014, 21:09

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Bim wrote:That's why I feel that Mikee's proposal of a god that is useful for stealth players (more so than many others), but isn't a 'stealth god' is much better. All of the abilities granted would be useful to most characters, but would certainly help stealth characters more than most (Shadowport for stabbing as well as general tactical manoeuvring, Become Shadow for any one who wants non-magic based necromutation).

I appreciate the direct explanation. :) After I read these lines, I realized you were right. Since everyone else seemed so positive toward the proposal, I thought there was a chance I was totally off base, and it seems that was the case. I didn't read the abilities carefully enough.

I think the problem (which has been pointed out on this thread and the threat you linked too) is that a straight stealth/stabbing boost isn't really desirable. Although I see where you're going with it, your proposals (and most stealth proposals) are far too strong - perfect stealth?!, glow-less invisibility!? which I think is the main reason why they've been rejected.

What I listed were not actual ability proposals, just references to stealth-related mechanics to illustrate what I meant by expecting more abilities directly related to stealth. I do think that it would be hard to balance some of them without very massive penalties, so I understand why a proposal like Seth would seem very practical in comparison.

galehar wrote:A god of stealth which gives an ability which just boost stealth is incredibly boring and uninteresting.

You and Bim both mention that more stealth alone is boring or not desirable in an ability, but (*) Umbra is essentially just the passive version of this, so do you think that having to actively invoke it makes it boring? This is one point I'd be interested to see clarified...

mikee wrote:**** Shadow action (passive): You have your own shadow tile, which occasionally performs melee attacks or casts spells on the same target you attack.

Very possibly this is another case of me not being on the page as everyone else, but I'm wondering in what sort of situations this would tend to be useful for stealth-oriented players. What sort of spells would it use? Ones to disable or distract an enemy to facilitate the player's movement/escape? Something like constriction seems like it would be less useful as long as the shadow tile moves with the player. Also, having a shadow tile doesn't mean that the player can activate Shadowport at any time, right?
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Post Friday, 3rd January 2014, 21:52

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Mumcon wrote:Very possibly this is another case of me not being on the page as everyone else, but I'm wondering in what sort of situations this would tend to be useful for stealth-oriented players.


Wouldn't free hits be useful for pretty much anybody? A feature doesn't have to be specifically designed for a single playstyle to be useful to that playstyle.

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Post Friday, 3rd January 2014, 22:31

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

nicolae wrote:Wouldn't free hits be useful for pretty much anybody? A feature doesn't have to be specifically designed for a single playstyle to be useful to that playstyle.

Okay, I see what you mean. I just still don't understand why Seth would have that in contrast to any particular other god in Crawl.

Also, I'm starting to realize how much the fact that people refer to Seth as a stealth god yet not a 'stealth god' confused me leading up to my initial thread post. I really want to edit my initial post a little to clarify that I don't think this deity is lacking by not being directly about stealth, but that would probably make things disorganized, so just let it be known that I realize there's no need for Seth to be more about stealth in any way.

Seth seems like a defense/escape god more than a stealth god. That would be an apt description for the 3/5 of its abilities that aren't Shadow action (which I admittedly still don't fully understand) and Umbra. I now realize why mikee used the peculiar phrase "what could be seen as a 'stealth god'" but otherwise never thematically connected it to stealth.
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Post Sunday, 5th January 2014, 22:51

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Mumcon wrote:Seth seems like a defense/escape god more than a stealth god. That would be an apt description for the 3/5 of its abilities that aren't Shadow action (which I admittedly still don't fully understand) and Umbra. I now realize why mikee used the peculiar phrase "what could be seen as a 'stealth god'" but otherwise never thematically connected it to stealth.


Agreed, however escape and defence are what stealth characters need, and I think shadow is pretty thematically linked to stealth. Stealth is about concealment (staying in the shadows) and smoke has always been tied to this thematically (think smoke bombs).

This is the best god proposal I've seen in a long time both on balance and thematically - I really hope someone gets round to putting this in, as it'd fill a gap many people have been wanting filled.
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 02:27

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I might try my hand at coding this, but we need a new name first - we have at least one S god and possibly two depending on how you're counting (Sif Muna and TSO, though TSO is more of a 1 than an S IMO).

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 02:50

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I find it interesting the crawl pantheon is capped by the number of letters we have to work with.

Assuming we count TSO as occupying the letter T (edit: or assuming we acknowledge the existence of Trog. derp), similar yet valid names are: Deth, Geth, Heth, Ieth, Peth, Queth, Reth, Ueth, and Weth.

Deseth and Queth could both work as names, although I'm sure someone out there could do much better than my swapping in valid letters to see what happens.
Last edited by KennySheep on Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 03:13, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 03:07

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Isn't TSO 1 and Trog T?

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 03:35

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Could do a variation of dark since d is open. Darik?
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 03:38

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Maybe give him a new name to fit the letter restriction?
Seth sounds very modern anyways. :p

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 04:00

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

some12fat2move wrote:Could do a variation of dark since d is open. Darik?


I like this general idea, but a god who's name is phonetically similar to Derrick seems a little silly.

It's a shame TSO already exists, leaving the shadow god nameless and just calling him The Dark One would have been cool flavor-wise.

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 04:54

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Klown wrote:Maybe give him a new name to fit the letter restriction?
Seth sounds very modern anyways. :p


Seth was another name for Set, who according to Wikipedia was "a god of the desert, storms, disorder, violence and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion." In Genesis, Seth was the name of Adam and Eve's third son, after Cain slew Abel. So it's a very old-school name. Since Seth is an Egyptian name already, perhaps a name that sounds similar to Egyptian deities or pharaohs? E.g., Ptakhet, Ha-Shep, Djemak, Ramnum, Wakhipet, Gesh, Qotef, etc.
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 05:06

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

How about dariel? (Dar-ee-ul)

Dariel, the shadow walker?
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 07:19

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

How about Durga? (from the Hindu god)
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 09:47

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

KennySheep wrote:I find it interesting the crawl pantheon is capped by the number of letters we have to work with.
Assuming we count TSO as occupying the letter T

TSO is 1. Have you noticed at what number that puts the cap?
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 11:01

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

pratamawirya wrote:How about Durga? (from the Hindu god)


Why use the name of an existing deity?
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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 11:40

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 15:56

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

In a MUD I played for many years there was a god of luck named Rillia, seems a bit fitting.

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 18:03

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Does shadowport make noise or does it guarantee a stab on a sleeping monster in LOS?

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 20:24

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 20:51

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

johlstei wrote:Does shadowport make noise or does it guarantee a stab on a sleeping monster in LOS?


Shadowport takes a turn, so whether or not it makes a noise, it doesn't guarantee a stab on a sleeping monster in LOS. Every turn you spent in LOS of a monster, it checks against your stealth to see if it wakes up / notices you.

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Post Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 21:12

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I find the Shadowport ability a bit odd, tactics wise. It seems to encourage camping near doors/statues, or keeping a weak monster alive and having it follow you around so that you can stand in its shadow and use the ability.

It would probably work better if the "you have to stand in a shadow" condition were removed, although there would probably have to be some other requirement put in place instead.
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Post Wednesday, 8th January 2014, 06:02

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

No apostrophes or dashes please. They're incredibly inelegant and stereotypical.

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Post Wednesday, 8th January 2014, 10:53

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Leafsnail wrote:I find the Shadowport ability a bit odd, tactics wise. It seems to encourage camping near doors/statues, or keeping a weak monster alive and having it follow you around so that you can stand in its shadow and use the ability.

It would probably work better if the "you have to stand in a shadow" condition were removed, although there would probably have to be some other requirement put in place instead.


I think the way to get round this would be to have it random instead of near objects. As I mentioned, this would help in completely open levels (where stealth characters struggle) and would stop it being a sure fire strategy/camping. I'd suggest this take a few turns though, otherwise it'd just become blink with a bit of a constraint.

Name wise, I have to agree that no apostrophes, dashes or accents should be used, and that the name should be both longish (to stop it accidentally copying other things) and divorced from any real or fictional mythology.
2012 Winner of fewest proposed ideas implemented by devs.
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Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 8th January 2014, 17:51

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Brannock wrote:No apostrophes or dashes please. They're incredibly inelegant and stereotypical.


Definitely. Crawl has a bunch of quite originally named gods and creatures, let's get try and get a bit creative here. I would like to see some thoughtful and inspired thematic ideas here, not just "shadowy evil god type". Immediately I'm thinking of drawing imagery from asiatic / middle eastern folklore, such as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manananggal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onryo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazuzu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamashtu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_gho ... e_religion

The idea of a female god with a vague theme of worshippers as surrogate children is super creepy, for instance. "She seeks new children, upon whom are bestowed the gifts of twilight - but beware, severing the maternal bonds is not an action taken lightly.". It could be an opportunity for some creative penance / wrath mechanics.

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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 08:31

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

The gods of Crawl were made genderless a few versions ago, so you may want to adapt that ;)
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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 13:31

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Sure, you can easily de-gender it. The example was just a vague idea. My main point is, let's not have "Rak'To'Thul, The Dark One" or something equally tiresome.
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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 15:27

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Andira the Hidden
Nhomima the Shadoweaver
no one uses Tupi-Guarani in games, it is original at least.
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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 16:59

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I think the bikeshed should be blue with pink stripes.
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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 21:12

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

Clearly "Dither".

By the way, the simplest implementation of Shadowport I can think of is to make it akin to the current implementation of jump attack - from within a certain distance of the monster (perhaps piety-dependent), it moves you adjacent to that monster, making no noise of its own. To me that sounds quite powerful, so perhaps it could be restricted to monsters whose shadows are still enough to be moved to - i.e. enemies immobile in one fashion or another.

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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 22:45

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

sgrunt wrote:Clearly "Dither".

By the way, the simplest implementation of Shadowport I can think of is to make it akin to the current implementation of jump attack - from within a certain distance of the monster (perhaps piety-dependent), it moves you adjacent to that monster, making no noise of its own. To me that sounds quite powerful, so perhaps it could be restricted to monsters whose shadows are still enough to be moved to - i.e. enemies immobile in one fashion or another.


Sounds resonable, or mabe make it 2 turn controlled blink. You need to use one turn to channel the shadow. And other turn to jump in the shadow. If the enemy didn't notice you casting the shadow cloud (maybe force 2 or 3 stealth checks) If shadow cloud is next to monstert that is not aware of your presence you get to jump on top of the enemy. You should still have to see the enemy though. Maybe the shadow cloud should have same (or bit higher) stealth than you and if enemies notice the cloud you can't back stab. (though if this is done the ability's should be desribed as you sending your own shadow which place you can take)

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Post Thursday, 9th January 2014, 22:49

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

sgrunt wrote:Clearly "Dither".

By the way, the simplest implementation of Shadowport I can think of is to make it akin to the current implementation of jump attack - from within a certain distance of the monster (perhaps piety-dependent), it moves you adjacent to that monster, making no noise of its own. To me that sounds quite powerful, so perhaps it could be restricted to monsters whose shadows are still enough to be moved to - i.e. enemies immobile in one fashion or another.


Enemies that did not move last turn?
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Post Friday, 10th January 2014, 05:55

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

I'm most of the way through coding up this god (really needs a name - currently in my code base the name is "Dsomething"...)

Things that came up:
- We need ideas for wrath. I have something relatively straightforward for this at the moment, being one of: summoning hostile shadows (or, at higher XL, shadow demons and/or the occasional Shadow Fiend), summoning hostile shadow creatures (obviously), or putting the player to sleep(???).
- Right now, the shadow mimic ability doesn't use its own tile; when it triggers (currently 10% at 4* piety up to 50% at 200 piety), the game acts as though a monster standing where you are with HD equal to your XL and a mundane version of your weapon acts in the same way (melee attacks, ranged attacks, targeted spells). The spell version of it could use toning down, IMO, since if the spell's castable as a monster spell they get a full power version of it; I'm open to suggestions as to how that would work (possibly an HD reduction of the monster would suffice).
- Shadow Form should also grant rRot to protect the player from the miasma it gives off; it also needs more drawbacks. Two ideas that came to me as I was coding it are to halve the player's damage output as well (they're too insubstantial to harm much or be harmed themselves) and to subject the player to two spell anti-enhancement levels (like the lantern of shadows).

Oh, I could also use a tile for the altar and the two abilities. (I have an altar tile - see attached - but it's kind of underwhelming.) I also could use overflow altar vaults, but I should be able to come up with a few of those myself.

If all goes well, I would love to bother one of the server admins about an experimental branch for the new deity.
Attachments
dsomething.png
A shadowy altar of Dsomething.
dsomething.png (1.1 KiB) Viewed 18520 times

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Post Friday, 10th January 2014, 06:09

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

sgrunt wrote:I'm most of the way through coding up this god (really needs a name - currently in my code base the name is "Dsomething"...)

Things that came up:
- We need ideas for wrath. I have something relatively straightforward for this at the moment, being one of: summoning hostile shadows (or, at higher XL, shadow demons and/or the occasional Shadow Fiend), summoning hostile shadow creatures (obviously), or putting the player to sleep(???).


Giving you corona while in the presence of enemies and/or lowering your stealth passively ("Dsomething removes all shadows to hide in!") comes to mind.

E: Or give umbra to some enemies as you fight them maybe.
take it easy

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Post Friday, 10th January 2014, 06:17

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

sgrunt wrote:I'm most of the way through coding up this god (really needs a name - currently in my code base the name is "Dsomething"...)

Are you married to the initial D?

Really, anything that's something different than the generic sort of evil fantasy name with a bunch of K sounds and harsh consonant clusters would be great. (I thought of "Umnebreum" which is sort of "umbra", "nebulous", and "tenebrous" mashed together with an vaguely latinate -um on the end.)

Things that came up:
- We need ideas for wrath. I have something relatively straightforward for this at the moment, being one of: summoning hostile shadows (or, at higher XL, shadow demons and/or the occasional Shadow Fiend), summoning hostile shadow creatures (obviously), or putting the player to sleep(???).


Dsomething retracts the shadows around you, making you much easier to hit. Dsomething suppresses your SInv or reduced LOS if you have either. Hostile shadow tile, same as generated by the power but attacks you with whatever attacks you use. Enemies may be blunk towards you like a hostile Shadowport. Edit: Oh, I like that Corona idea, make it a perma-Corona while you're under wrath.

- Shadow Form should also grant rRot to protect the player from the miasma it gives off; it also needs more drawbacks. Two ideas that came to me as I was coding it are to halve the player's damage output as well (they're too insubstantial to harm much or be harmed themselves) and to subject the player to two spell anti-enhancement levels (like the lantern of shadows).


I like those both.
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