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Dungeon Master
Posts: 202
Joined: Thursday, 5th December 2013, 05:01
Demigods and their stats
Demigods are seen as bland by a significant portion of players. Prior proposals to "revamp" Dg often involve giving them divine abilities, followers, eating altars, or a Demonspawn-esque mutation system. None of those proposals were deemed acceptable. The consistent pattern I notice in all those proposals is that they all reject the basic premise of the current Demigod, try to find a design more suitable to the proposer's idea of what "Demigod" is supposed to be, and slap on a totally new mechanic to a race that already has an established design space. Frankly, I a. don't care what a species is named and b. I think the current design of Demigod is perfectly acceptable. Rename them "Golem" or something if it makes you happier, a construct is going to be way more physically formidable than humanoids, and they don't have the sentience to worship the Gods, or whatever justification you want to use. It's irrelevant to their role in the game.
More than any other race, Demigods are a race of total self-reliance. They don't worship the Gods, instead using their large stat bonuses to squeeze every last bit out of the tools discovered in the Dungeon. They can't fall back on Disaster Area or Greater Destruction or Divine Vigor or Cleansing Blast or Brothers in Arms: they have to work through their inventory full of wands, evocables, and consumables for emergency situations and spells/gear to cover the rest. I find this a fun change-up compared to typical play and I don't find Demigods to be bland. I do think they could be made more distinct though, especially from each other as most Demigods gravitate towards hybridization especially in the postgame.
But, what specifically already makes Demigods unique in Crawl? Huge stat bonuses and no divine worship. Make them more distinctive by building upon that.
- Full control over all XL-derived stat gain allocation instead of random distribution on XL%2 (13 increases) and controlled distribution at XL%3 (9 increases). Total of 22 targeted stat distributions. Allow Demigods to truly be masters of their own destiny: they can become exceptionally strong, intelligent, or agile by specializing in a single particular stat, or they can take advantage of their overall large stat bonuses and become balanced in all stats as they would under the old system. This would help further distinguish one particular Demigod character from another, especially when many Demigod characters tend towards hybridization.
- innate Sustain Abilities. The divine bodies of Demigods are resistant to decay and degeneration. Thanks to the relative lack of stat damage in the game, this probably has the most relevance for spellcasters, protecting them against penalties from Summon Horrible Things, crystal balls, Wucad Mu.