God Proposal: The Clockwork Prince

[archaeo]

Last month, I proposed the golem species. To conclude my "robots and evo" run of proposals (and afterwards I'll shut up), here's a version of the idea that seeks to redeem EP and Temperature while creating a playstyle focused on using the game's evocable items. I thought about shelving this until after the 0.14 branch, but, hell, no time like the present for a proposal I have no hope of ever coding.

The Clockwork Prince

appreciates: killing living beings (small piety), bonuses for using evocables (small piety) and killing with evocables (big piety).
deprecates: forgetting him and casting transmutations (he wants you to be a robot, not a lich).

Constantly searching for talented scholars and warriors to join its court, the Clockwork Prince (occupying the P space) offers worshippers the chance to shuck their meat bodies and join its robotic peerage. Worshiping the Prince causes your life force to be replaced with energy, and as it progressively replaces more of your body, you gain new abilities. Adherents can quiver wands to fire from EP, expel excess temperature in a burst of steam, and go into an overclocked (and overheated) mode allowing for limitless device usage. At 6*, the Prince grants you the opportunity to mangle your body in exchange for an extremely powerful evocable ability.

  Code:

Upon joining - "The Abacus Apprentice"
+++ your HP/MP meters are replaced with EP/Temperature and hunger is removed ("The hand of the Clockwork Prince swoops down from the heavens to pluck out your heart and replace it with a battery!"). You immediately gain immunity to MP draining attacks and are forbidden use of channeling and berserking (and whatever other Dj tricks I'm forgetting).
+ Spells cost 2 EP for every 1 MP and cause Temperature gain equivalent to hunger costs.
+ As temp goes up, speed and regen goes down, and -wiz is gradually added until, at max temp, spellcasting is impossible and you act as if under the slow status. Temp goes down more quickly when no enemies are in LOS.

*..... - "The Automated Knight"
+++ "The hand of the Clockwork Prince swoops down from the heavens to replace your arm with a mechanical simulacrum."
++ Ability: Wand Arm. For a temporary max EP cost, quiver a wand that can be (f)ired with EP instead of charges. Cost: Max EP ranging from 5%-25%, 4-6 piety. For this and all other abilities, evocations skill reduces failure chance.
+ EP costs: based around related spell, but closer to 1:1 EP:MP ratio. Evo-based temp costs, piety-based bonus to damage.
+ Wands mulch when changing or removing wands. You regain all lost Max EP.
+ The "big three" wands (tele, haste, HW) refuse to bond ("This wand would completely fry your batteries!").

**.... - "The Golem Baron"

***... - "The Viscount of Iron"
+++ "The hand of the Clockwork Prince swoops down from the heavens to replace your stomach with a steam engine."
++ Ability: Exhaust. Acts as piety-powered fan of gales and creates a cloud of scalding steam, bringing temp to zero. Steam cloud size and area of effect dependent on temp. Sets exh and costs 8-10 piety.

****.. - "The Titanium Earl"

*****. - "The Marquis of Mithril"
+++ "The hand of the Clockwork Prince swoops down from the heavens to replace your brain with a clockwork computer."
++ Ability: Device Storm. Sets temp to maximum, but allows unlimited use of any evocable item. Lasts an evo-dependent number of turns. Temp remains at max for several turns after device storm ends, indicated by an Overclocked status light. Costs 10-15 piety.

****** - "The Clockwork Duke"
+++ "The Clockwork Prince suggests you seek out new ways to perfect yourself."
++ At TCP altar, you are given a choice of a single body part to craft into an evoker; said evokers only appear in the e(v)oke menu, not in the inventory, and are ineligible for Device Storm. While they recharge faster than elemental evokers, they also come with high temperature costs. The muts conferred cannot be undone.
+ eyes: gain blurry vision 1. Evoke Diamond Eyes for a smite targeted energy explosion that can blind targets.
+ skin: gain deformed body. Evoke Adamantium Skin for an energy aura that dramatically raises AC and EV while causing damage to adjacent enemies.
+ feet: gain slow movement 1.  Evoke Fireboots for two powerful semi-controlled blinks in a row.
+ skull: gain frailty 1. Evoke Jade Skull to summon 4-6 jade golems, XXX style.
+ lungs: gain screaming 1. Evoke Mithril Tongue for a Glaciate-targeted energy breath that can temporarily silence an enemy.

+++++ Wrath: Upon abandoning TCP or being excommunicated, you immediately return to your human state at near starving. When wrath is called, TCP will swoop down and steal a body part, conferring a bad mutation and, at higher XL, performing one of the 6* evocation powers at you (i.e. surrounded by jade golems,blinked toward enemies, silenced, blinded, etc.).

[Klown]

Steampunkkkkkkkkkk

[and into]

I like it! (I was mulling over my own idea for an EP-based god but I think yours is better.)

I would lose the "bigger piety for kill from evocables" as that might lead to scummy behavior. Nemelex already has "use evocables get piety" anyway. I do think it is fine having the Prince use evocations rather than invocations, even if there is a bit of overlap there, I think there's enough room in Crawl for two gods with that quirk, given that they differ in all other respects.

Those are just initial impressions, I'll think about the abilities more and try to offer better feedback a bit later.

[Siegurt]

And he looks like this:

Spoiler: show

[nagdon]

Great idea, I would like to see it in the game!

I especially like the Temperature clock replacing the food clock, slowing, lower regen and -Wiz is a good limitation on overusing hunger-dependent abilities. This would be a great way to bring back EP without some djinn-related problems.

I have a few minor problems, especially with piety handling:

• killing with evocables for piety gain seems to be bad, as it rewards lasthitting with evocables; it may be replaced by "deal damage by evocables", but then it overlaps with using evocables
• generally, if the god gives bonuses to evocables, it is probably unneccessary to reward using them with piety gain (and it's already done by Nemelex)
• the transmutation ban overlaps with Zin, this may or may not be a problem. Probably things like ignite poison shouldn't be banned, while banning form spells is probably a good idea.

The "select from list of [bad mutation+ability to gain] pairs" is an interesting mechanism in the last ability. Maybe all abilities except the EP system could be incorporated into this system. The bad mutations gained this way should be unremovable (like Ds mutations) while following this god, and simply leaving the player with a ruined body (the bad mutations are now removable like regular ones but aren't automatically removed) could be the main effect of the wrath of this god. These body modification choices could be randomly gifted in a system similar to Vehumet gifting. Of course this god could have new, unique bad mutations as costs.

[Hirsch I]

the "Kill things with evocables" can mean "give X% damage with evocables on a killed monster"

[dpeg]

[Disclaimer: I assume this is a serious proposal.]

Lots of interesting things going on, but asking for specific methods of killing, and also Hirsch's version, are problematic. [There are some cases where it can be done, but those are rare.} If you really mean it, then impose a conduct. If you only mean it somewhat ("for flavour"), then apply the bonus piety only if no other damage methods have been used on a dead monster but your preferred one.

I like quivering wands as much as the next guy, but when you say "paid with maxEP", do you really mean it? There's always a version that would work: firing quivered wands may use up a charge, chance to depend in piety and/or Invocations.

Linking the temperature system to presence of monsters could have unwanted effects: don't want to encourage players to lead a rat through the dungeon.

Computers are too anachronistic for my taste.

[Leafsnail]

Having a high temperature is entirely a negative thing, as far as I can tell. You wouldn't want to keep it up.

[archaeo]

Disclaimer: I assume this is a serious proposal.

Did I post this in CYC without noticing, or is it really so laughable?

Lots of interesting things going on, but asking for specific methods of killing, and also Hirsch's version, are problematic.

A new mechanic for gaining piety would be most welcome.

I like quivering wands as much as the next guy, but when you say "paid with maxEP", do you really mean it?

Maybe this wasn't entirely clear, but it's a max EP cost only as long as you have a bound wand. I quiver a wand of magic darts (via the ability menu), I lose 5% of my max EP, and can cast it indefinitely from EP. If I just remove it, the wand gets mulched and I get my EP back. If I replace it with a wand of digging, I lose more like 25% of max EP.

Computers are too anachronistic for my taste.

Then flavor it as an abacus. I'm always mystified by talk of "anachronisms" in Crawl, a fantasy world we're making up together, but this little nugget of flavor definitely can be adjusted to suit the proper technological level of Crawl.

[dpeg]

archeo: Your use of computers, and the picture made me a little unsure. Good to hear it is serious!

Some ideas for piety: killing is obviously okay. Using evocables is already problematic. (If it can be scummed, it will be scummed.) What I think could work:
* Training Evocations (that's admittedly very crude).
* Using evocables *only* to kill a monster. (Bonus piety in addition to ordinary piety for kill.)

[Leafsnail]

I don't really like the idea of having evocables boost your piety at all, due to the fact that this god's abilities give you infinite evocable uses. That seems like it would encourage you to just blast everything non-threatening with your merged wand, which doesn't seem like interesting gameplay to me.

Piety on kills sounds fine to me, as does evocations training.

[bcadren]

Device storm, especially at high levels would rival the power of Lugonu's corrupt. This isn't necessarily bad, but I'd move it higher on the piety scale because of that. Also now that Dig (Spell) is being removed I'd put Wand of Digging away from can be joined group.

THAT SAID.
On a less practical perspective, I don't know if Steampunk theme really fits in the high-fantasy setting of crawl.

[Velikolepni]

On a less practical perspective, I don't know if Steampunk theme really fits in the high-fantasy setting of crawl.

It could be reflavored as an alchemical/golem kind of god.

[Leafsnail]

Device Storm has a pretty heavy drawback though (slow+can't cast spells+little to no regen) that outlasts the ability. It would certainly be good, but it doesn't sound overpowered and it would probably be pretty fun.

[spudwalt]

Hmm, looks interesting! I'd definitely try this guy out if he ever gets coded.

[Lasty]

I think it might be difficult to fully track when evokables do damage. You've have to (at least) credit all damage caused by summons and clouds generated by an evokable to the evokable, and I'm guessing that's not trivial.

I'm not sure this overall ability design works as listed:

* Wand Arm just allows you to spam a certain wand for EP (usually bolt of cold/fire) which is basically the same as knowing the related spell, except better (bonus damage from piety, 1:1 EP cost)
* EP is just guardian spirit unless you cast spells, but casting spells is discouraged because Wand Arm replicates the effect but better and with fewer options (which is less interesting).
* Temperature doesn't do much except further penalize anyone who tried to do much casting, but EP already does this, and spells are already made largely unnecessary due to Wand Arm and other evoke powers.
* Vent Exhaust is quite similar to fan of gales, and you're already encouraged to use evokables, meaning you're already encouraged to use fan of gales.
* Fire boots are pretty bad if they have an exhaust timer, but completely OP if they don't.

Aside from that I think there are interesting ideas here, in particular the final ability to gain a bad mutation and a powerful evoke power.