God: Goshiro the Blind

[Klown]

Goshiro wished to be the God of War during ancient times, but Okawaru challenged him for such a title. Okawaru defeated him, his sword taking out Goshiro's right eye. He wandered on with an eye patch. Finding himself preferring blade over magic, he challenged Trog for his antimagic position. Trog defeated him, taking out Goshiro's left eye with an arrow shot from his bow. Goshiro stopped challenging other Gods, choosing his own style. In vengeance, he wished his blindness on others. But he couldn't see them, so he could only do so through worshipper's invocations by granting them the power. Not being able to read, he gives away scrolls to those who worship him. Such gifts have brought upon him the nickname "God of Scrolls", though he believes in his non-scroll abilities as well. He loves fast kills, as he regrets not going for quick kills against Okawaru and Trog. He'll reduce your LOS to help avoid getting many centaur arrows to the knee, or worse, to the eye. It also aids in quick kills as enemies are that much closer once you notice them.


Appreciates: Killing any enemies within ten turns of them entering your LOS.
Deprecates: Abandoning him. Forgetting him; piety falls over time, 1 per 600 turns.

Piety Level
- : Novice Reader : No new abilities.
* : Swordsman of Faith : Grants a passive 2% chance to critical hit on each melee attack, critical hits double the damage after the initial damage roll.
** : Swordsman of Scrolls : Begins passively gifting random scrolls at a slow pace.
*** : Eyeless Enigma : Passively will always protect scrolls from destruction. Passively decreases your LOS by 1.
**** : Unsighted : Mass Blindness: 4 MP, Piety, Hunger. Temporarily blind all enemies in your LOS.
***** : Shade : Passively decreases your LOS by 1 again. (So 2 overall)
****** : Eternal Shadow : Passively boosts critical hit chance to 4%.

Spoiler: show

Melee oriented, but can be used effectively by many types of characters.

[Velikolepni]

Should Goshiro also gift "strategical" scrolls like enchant armour, enchant weapon and brand weapon, or just "tactical" ones like blink, vulnerability, holy word and so on?

[Klown]

All of them, randomly.

[Maynot]

Just imagine exploring a level with this diety and a shadow walker demonspawn. LoS < 3.

Instead of gifting scrolls, he should allow you to detect creatures and eventually have 100% knowledge of all creatures within 8 tiles of you but outside of LoS. Invisible creatures will still be semi-invisible.

[tasonir]

Critical hit isn't a stat that's currently in the game, so I think you want to describe that a bit better. Define it as a bonus (flat or percent?) damage on your next strike or spell. More details would be helpful.

I really like the speed kill conduct, all the gods who are "kill stuff for piety" are getting boring. That said, just reducing your LOS and gifting scrolls doesn't seem like a very powerful god. Could probably use a few more abilities. Also, how about once per game when you reach 200 piety, you automatically get an acquirement scroll? Maybe also make it so that you can't fail to read scrolls due to blurry vision mutation?

[Tiktacy]

Critical hit isn't a stat that's currently in the game, so I think you want to describe that a bit better. Define it as a bonus (flat or percent?) damage on your next strike or spell. More details would be helpful.

I really like the speed kill conduct, all the gods who are "kill stuff for piety" are getting boring. That said, just reducing your LOS and gifting scrolls doesn't seem like a very powerful god. Could probably use a few more abilities. Also, how about once per game when you reach 200 piety, you automatically get an acquirement scroll? Maybe also make it so that you can't fail to read scrolls due to blurry vision mutation?

God ability ideas:

• Blindness(passive): you cannot identify creatures identity, you need to stand over or adjacent to items to identify what they are.
• Blind sight(passive): Creatures appear as though you had antennas rather than eyes.
• Meditation(ability): reveal the position of all creatures on the map(this does not map anything but the position of the creature from the moment you use it).
• Future sight(ability): all spells and melee/ranged attacks are 100% accurate.
• Master Student: at max piety(200), you will receive a fixed weapon(or gloves) that is of incredible quality. This will only happen once per game and requires a level of at least 18 in a single weapon skill. The weapon is always chosen based on your highest weapon skill(gloves if unarmed).

[dpeg]

Theme is awesome and definitely rich enough to carry a god. Piety gain rule is nice as well, it is much simpler than other ideas in that direction (for example my own).

I dislike gifting scrolls. Gifts are clumsy in general, and trying to grind out another scroll of acquirement or branding or enchant armour does not look like fun to me. There are ways to salvage this, for example by restricting what scrolls you can get, and also how.

Having precisely one active power is probably not ideal.

Reducing LOS makes it easier to get quick kills for those who have to walk (melee) but it comes at a time when characters have lots of piety already. (Giving in to temptation and making the number of allowed turns/kill dependent on piety is presumably a bad idea, though.)

[Tiktacy]

Theme is awesome and definitely rich enough to carry a god. Piety gain rule is nice as well, it is much simpler than other ideas in that direction (for example my own).

I dislike gifting scrolls. Gifts are clumsy in general, and trying to grind out another scroll of acquirement or branding or enchant armour does not look like fun to me. There are ways to salvage this, for example by restricting what scrolls you can get, and also how.

Having precisely one active power is probably not ideal.

Reducing LOS makes it easier to get quick kills for those who have to walk (melee) but it comes at a time when characters have lots of piety already. (Giving in to temptation and making the number of allowed turns/kill dependent on piety is presumably a bad idea, though.)

What do you think about gifting fixed items? I mean, maybe he could gift scrolls for completing certain tasks?

Like for example:

let's say you get out of a near death experience, he would award you a scroll of teleport.
Let's say you kill a super powerful unique at a super low level, he would gift a scroll of acquirement.
Let's say you you kill a whole bunch of demons, he gives you a scroll of torment.
Let's say you complete an ending vault and pick up a rune, he gifts you an item based on the branch(like a phial for completing the shaols, or a 12 stack of ambrosia for completing spider).

So basically, he would kind of be like a quest god. (Keep in mind, those are all just examples, the I game application would likely look much different)

[Klown]

Theme is awesome and definitely rich enough to carry a god. Piety gain rule is nice as well, it is much simpler than other ideas in that direction (for example my own).

I dislike gifting scrolls. Gifts are clumsy in general, and trying to grind out another scroll of acquirement or branding or enchant armour does not look like fun to me. There are ways to salvage this, for example by restricting what scrolls you can get, and also how.

Having precisely one active power is probably not ideal.

Reducing LOS makes it easier to get quick kills for those who have to walk (melee) but it comes at a time when characters have lots of piety already. (Giving in to temptation and making the number of allowed turns/kill dependent on piety is presumably a bad idea, though.)

How about a chance to be gifted a scroll every time you enter a new level as long as you have **? Your chance to get a scroll rising with piety. It'd encourage exploring farther.
Maybe push the LOS reduction down to ** ?

[Leafsnail]

Critical hit sounds pretty boring - would it actually ever change your tactics at all? I kindof like LoS reduction as a god ability but to be honest I think it would work better with Dith.

[nagdon]

I was also thinking about a god with a fast killing conduct, but I think giving piety if the monster is killed quickly after it spots the player would be more interesting (of course if the monster is killed before spotting the player the player still gains piety). Note that this can be achieved in multiple ways, including stealth and simply fireballing everything at the edge of the FOV, and still punishes kiting.

My ability suggestions:
- : no ability
* : Borrowed eyes (passive): After being blinded, Goshiro learned to use the vision of others in battle, and he shares this power with his followers. Seeing the battle with many sets of eyes grants the followers better accuracy with weapons or spells and better chance to evade attacks. (Mechanically, for example + (constant1 * number of creatures in FOV) accuracy and + (constant2 * number of creatures in FOV) evasion, maybe with some stepdown applied; probably summoned monsters don't count to avoid butterfly spamming).
** : Perfection (active, cost: 1MP, noise, breath, instant): The follower shouts a short prayer to Goshiro, enpowering the next attack (with a weapon or a spell). This enpowered attack always hits the target (or all targets for example in the case of axes, lightning bolts etc.) and instantly kills it if it deals damage equal to at least half of the target's maximal health (alternatively the instant kill ratio may depend on Invoc/piety). If not used, the enpowered attack is lost when the breath delay naturally ends.
*** : Scrolls of battle (passive): Goshiro starts gifting scrolls to the follower from the following list: immolation, fear, holy word, torment, vulnerability, silence (+maybe recharging, summoning, fog, teleportation, blinking).
**** : Stolen eyes (active, cost: 5 MP, moderate piety): Goshiro blinds the foes of the follower by completely controlling their eyes. This increased control also doubles the effects of Borrowed eyes.
***** : Natural perfection (passive): The effects of Perfection (guaranteed hit, instant kill on high damage) have a chance (for example Invoc(0..27)%) to happen on any attack.
****** : Scrolls of preparation (active): When you pray at an altar of Goshiro and show a new rune of Zot, you may select and gain a scroll from a list (so you gain one scroll for each rune). The list initially contains recharging and enchant armour; after the first usage enchant weapon III is added to the list, after the second usage brand weapon is added to the list and after the third usage acquirement is added to the list.

[IronJelly]

I was also thinking about a god with a fast killing conduct, but I think giving piety if the monster is killed quickly after it spots the player would be more interesting (of course if the monster is killed before spotting the player the player still gains piety). Note that this can be achieved in multiple ways, including stealth and simply fireballing everything at the edge of the FOV, and still punishes kiting.

My ability suggestions:
- : no ability
* : Borrowed eyes (passive): After being blinded, Goshiro learned to use the vision of others in battle, and he shares this power with his followers. Seeing the battle with many sets of eyes grants the followers better accuracy with weapons or spells and better chance to evade attacks. (Mechanically, for example + (constant1 * number of creatures in FOV) accuracy and + (constant2 * number of creatures in FOV) evasion, maybe with some stepdown applied; probably summoned monsters don't count to avoid butterfly spamming).
** : Perfection (active, cost: 1MP, noise, breath, instant): The follower shouts a short prayer to Goshiro, enpowering the next attack (with a weapon or a spell). This enpowered attack always hits the target (or all targets for example in the case of axes, lightning bolts etc.) and instantly kills it if it deals damage equal to at least half of the target's maximal health (alternatively the instant kill ratio may depend on Invoc/piety). If not used, the enpowered attack is lost when the breath delay naturally ends.
*** : Scrolls of battle (passive): Goshiro starts gifting scrolls to the follower from the following list: immolation, fear, holy word, torment, vulnerability, silence (+maybe recharging, summoning, fog, teleportation, blinking).
**** : Stolen eyes (active, cost: 5 MP, moderate piety): Goshiro blinds the foes of the follower by completely controlling their eyes. This increased control also doubles the effects of Borrowed eyes.
***** : Natural perfection (passive): The effects of Perfection (guaranteed hit, instant kill on high damage) have a chance (for example Invoc(0..27)%) to happen on any attack.
****** : Scrolls of preparation (active): When you pray at an altar of Goshiro and show a new rune of Zot, you may select and gain a scroll from a list (so you gain one scroll for each rune). The list initially contains recharging and enchant armour; after the first usage enchant weapon III is added to the list, after the second usage brand weapon is added to the list and after the third usage acquirement is added to the list.

As good as your idea sounds, that's too early for an instant-kill effect, I think. It sounds like it may be too powerful. I would work Invocations into the Borrowed Eyes passive, and start it off quite slow, letting it "mature" and become a really nice boost as your skill improves. Rather than summoned enemies not counting (we already have a lot of builds that can be shut down by the right spam-summoning uniques), I would only count hostile and aware enemies. This does mean that blinding them via Stolen Eyes lowers the effectiveness of the passive, which i think is a good idea. Obviously it no longer boosts Borrowed Eyes in this case.

I think not on the Natural Perfection passive in general. Can you imagine any build having a 27% chance of insta-kill? just walk up to a Pan Lord or Hell boss and hit them an average of 2 to 4 times to be rid of them? Just can't see it. Unless I am not understanding what you propose. If you still meant that 27% chance was only if the attack also did more than half the enemy's maxHP worth of damage, then maybe this would be better, as it just means you are more likely to kill popcorn, since you aren't going to likely be doing 50% of unique's health in one hit. in that case, it's not a great five star ability, since by the time you reach 5 stars with a non-starting God, popcorn should be easy enough anyway.

That last ability is too powerful too I think. Someone doing a 15 rune game would gain a minimum of 12 scrolls of aquirement! there have been 15 rune games without even one. Aquirement is sometimes more useful than going to your stash, so it's not like the trek to the altar is going to limit this much. You can't really make the scroll selection random either, as by high level it would be bad to make the trek to the altar, and gain from your God a scroll of enchant weapon that won't do anything for your artefact weapon.

[nagdon]

Thanks for the feedback!

As good as your idea sounds, that's too early for an instant-kill effect, I think. It sounds like it may be too powerful.

Maybe making the Perfection instantkill limit scale with piety & invocations would be a good idea (for example at low piety/invoc it instakills on 90%+ maxhp hits), so initially the automatic hit is the main effect and the instantkill chance only becomes meaningful later (when Borrowed eyes gives enough accuracy to make automatic hit somewhat redundant).

I would work Invocations into the Borrowed Eyes passive, and start it off quite slow, letting it "mature" and become a really nice boost as your skill improves. Rather than summoned enemies not counting (we already have a lot of builds that can be shut down by the right spam-summoning uniques), I would only count hostile and aware enemies. This does mean that blinding them via Stolen Eyes lowers the effectiveness of the passive, which i think is a good idea. Obviously it no longer boosts Borrowed Eyes in this case.

Probably a good idea.

I think not on the Natural Perfection passive in general. Can you imagine any build having a 27% chance of insta-kill? just walk up to a Pan Lord or Hell boss and hit them an average of 2 to 4 times to be rid of them? Just can't see it. Unless I am not understanding what you propose. If you still meant that 27% chance was only if the attack also did more than half the enemy's maxHP worth of damage, then maybe this would be better, as it just means you are more likely to kill popcorn, since you aren't going to likely be doing 50% of unique's health in one hit. in that case, it's not a great five star ability, since by the time you reach 5 stars with a non-starting God, popcorn should be easy enough anyway.

Of course the Natural Perfection power has the "deal half maxHP damage" requirement, I know that it'd be silly otherwise. As the god likes killing things quickly, killing popcorn quickly isn't a completely useless thing, and the significant chance for automatic hit may be helpful against strong high-EV opponents.

That last ability is too powerful too I think. Someone doing a 15 rune game would gain a minimum of 12 scrolls of aquirement! there have been 15 rune games without even one. Aquirement is sometimes more useful than going to your stash, so it's not like the trek to the altar is going to limit this much. You can't really make the scroll selection random either, as by high level it would be bad to make the trek to the altar, and gain from your God a scroll of enchant weapon that won't do anything for your artefact weapon.

I don't have much experience with extended and I have relatively bad experiences with acquirement (both with finding relatively lots of scrolls and getting crap from them). My other idea was simply giving a single acquirement scroll once after reaching ****** piety (like the final gifts of several other gods), but I felt that it'd be too weak. Maybe creating a scroll pool containing 3 instances of recharging, enchant armour, enchant weapon III, brand weapon and acquirement and handing out a random one after each rune would be more balanced.

[Ajonos]

I like the piety gain rule conceptually, but it seems to not really work with the melee focus the god wants to have. Melee characters are the least likely to be able to take someone out fast because they have to close the gap.

Also, how does the piety gain work if you break the line-of-sight, for instance, by pillar dancing? What if you leave the level entirely for a while and come back later? And how would it work for invisible enemies if you can't see invisible?

I really would like to see a scroll-gifting god though =)

[nagdon]

I like the piety gain rule conceptually, but it seems to not really work with the melee focus the god wants to have. Melee characters are the least likely to be able to take someone out fast because they have to close the gap.

The meele focus is not an essential component of the god (and most suggested abilities aren't meele-centric), I think the quick kill piety gain is an interesting concept and being not perfect for meele isn't a serious problem (although the piety gain function suggested below somewhat mitigates the problem). Also note that this god discourages kiting and not-meele strategies sometimes rely heavily on kiting.

Also, how does the piety gain work if you break the line-of-sight, for instance, by pillar dancing? What if you leave the level entirely for a while and come back later? And how would it work for invisible enemies if you can't see invisible?

Piety gain should be a function of (current time - time when the monster spotted the player first), otherwise pillar dancing/leaving los after poisoning etc. would be optimal (and this is undesirable). Even leaving the level shouldn't reset the timer (note that if for example you're shafted/banished you only lose piety for the monsters you're currently fighting, as others probably didn't spot you yet). Even an invisible enemy spotting you should start its timer, although maybe the god should give either SInv (probably not a good idea as it's already given by Ashenzari) or just a warning message (something like "You feel watched.", but not the ghost moth message) when the timer starts for an invisible enemy.

------------------------------------

Piety gain modification proposal
The previous proposal suggested a fixed piety gain window (10 turns), I was thinking about this and I think giving piety for most kills and smoothly scaling piety gain by kill speed (severely penalizing slow kills) would be better. (Counting turns remaining for paiety gain may become annoying, and a sharp arbitrary time limit seems to be artifical.) Also an enemy-independent time limit means that you'll gain lots of piety from slaying hordes of orcs/rats, and almost no piety for finally defeating a dragon. Okawaru does the opposite of this and paying constant attention to weak foes in battles could be an interesting conduct (for example maybe it's optimal to kill the plain orcs in an orc band before fighting/retreating from the warrior/knight), but I think giving more piety for more dangerous/harder to kill enemies would be a good idea (so piety gain is proportional to for example monster maxHP or monster difficulty (reusing the get_fuzzied_monster_difficulty() function of Okawaru).

I think something like (average) piety gain = constant * difficulty / MAX(T, T_min) would be a relatively good formula (where difficulty is a function measuring monster difficulty: either maxHP, maxHP scaled by player strength or (some variation of) Okawaru's difficulty function, T is the number of turns between the monster spotting you and you killing him and T_min is a fixed value, for example 7 (allowing meele players to reach targets without too heavy piety gain decrease)). Probably extremely small gains/chances (for example T>100) should be simply cut off as they're negligable. This would emphasize quick killing (killing something in 10 turns instead of 15 means +50% piety gain), but doesn't differentiate for example 1 and 5 turn kills (I think it is better this way, otherwise stabbing may become too poweful).

[and into]

Rather than critical strike at max piety, I would be interested in a passive buff that starts early, scales up with piety, and grows in power based on how well you "focus" your kills. In other words, as you strike the same enemy multiple times with a melee attack, without using other abilities in between, the passive buff has a greater chance to trigger. Something like a boost to EV and a slaying bonus, which once triggered, will continue so long as you keep engaging enemies in melee. ("As you focus on fighting, your technique improves.")

You could link that up with how Goshiro does piety gain: have it so that every time you commit to attacking an enemy, you must kill it within X turns to get piety. The number X could scale up with piety, so that the stronger you are (and the more piety you have) the more quickly Goshiro expects you to make the kill. This would tie in well with the "lower LOS" aspect of the god, and seems like it would into an overarching theme—Goshiro wants his proteges to pick their battles wisely, but once committed to the fight, one should bring it to an end as gracefully and swiftly as possible. However, if you do get in over your head, you have the mass blindness ability and scrolls to help get you out of trouble.

[King_jelly]

Man, there's been a slew of awesome god ideas lately! I love this one! But I prefer the other posters ideas about abilities....

borrowed eyes and causing blindness to enemies in LOS sounds like fun and its flavorful. It's also interesting as there's very little sources available to the player to cause blindness...

someone please code this ASAP

[tompliss]

** : Perfection (active, cost: 1MP, noise, breath, instant): The follower shouts a short prayer to Goshiro, enpowering the next attack (with a weapon or a spell). This enpowered attack always hits the target (or all targets for example in the case of axes, lightning bolts etc.)

You may want to tweak this, because of how some spells/rods work. Especially because of rod of Inaccuracy.

[Roderic]

Seeing how this god is related to vision I would like some ability to peek on corners or through doors without being physically detected, like an activated assymetric LOS system.

[and into]

Seeing how this god is related to vision I would like some ability to peek on corners or through doors without being physically detected, like an activated assymetric LOS system.

Since you would want to use it at every corner, how about:

When you reach a corner or open a door, you automatically use your ninja-y skills to sneak a quick, undetectable glance to scope out your surroundings. You can't fire or hit anything, but you do see what is around the corner or out in the periphery of the room (when opening a door). This happens without your input and just gives you more knowledge (but in a different way and to different effect than Ash).