Ishtara the god of tactics(revised)


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Snake Sneak

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Post Friday, 10th June 2011, 23:53

Ishtara the god of tactics(revised)

The god expects his worshipers to get the upper hand on any enemy, showing clear superiority on them, the god prefers the followers to humiliate his foes, leaving them disarmed, weak and broken.

* Toying with the enemy - Passive ability, each attack reduces a foes ev by 1 even if you miss when using blades, spears and whips. Each attack reduces a foes ac by 1 even if you miss when using maces, axes and staffs. small blades and long blaes get a bonus of 1 to the ev reduction. The reduction is increased to 2 at 15 weapon skill and 3 at 27 weapon skill. (As the battle goes on you learn the foes movements and know when to attack for maximum effect.)
** Crippling the enemy- Passive ability, Each hit has a 25% chance to cast slow for three turns on the target when using blades, spears and axes and whips, each hit has a 25% chance to cast confuse for one turn when using maces and staffs.
***Leap of the gods- move two spaces, allows passing through enemies (allows skipping enemies in corridors and getting out of situations when you are surrounded.) Cost: 2 mana 2 piety.
****Ishtara's Charge - move in a straight line towards a single enemy, attack all creatures in the way, the target creature takes bonus damage equal to the amount of squares moved. Spears get 3 bonus damage (added to base damage) to the target creature.(acts as a beam attack) Cost 4 mana 4 piety
******Ishtara's Whirlwind/Dance? - active for three turns or until the player takes an action which isn't movement or leap, attacks all enemies adjustant to the player after movement. Axes get +5 to hit.
Cost: 6 mana 5 piety

The god dislikes the use of conjuration spells or conjuration wands and you enter penance if you use any (wands once they are identified).
The god dislikes when you fight with a third or less of your hps, you lose 2 piety per turn when in such a situation and don't gain piety.
The god likes when you kill enemies, you gain 1 piety per kill
The god likes when you use hexes, you gain 1 extra piety for kills of any enemy with a status effect.
The god likes the use of potions that give positive status effects, you gain 1 piety per use. (might, speed, berserk rage, agility, etc.)
The god likes when you kill new enemies, you get a bonus of 2 piety if it's the first time you kill an enemy of a certain type.
The god likes when you kill an unique enemy, you gain a bonus of 4 piety.
Last edited by tazoz on Saturday, 11th June 2011, 12:43, edited 18 times in total.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 04:22

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics

Disliking conjuration sounds cool, but way too many active abilities....

Mines Malingerer

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 05:05

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics

I don't see why that should be bad, tactics are about options.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 05:14

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics

More active abilities = more complicated gameplay.

Passive god-given abilities are more flavorful, anyway.

Dungeon Master

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 09:06

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics

I believe that pratamawirya is on the right track, although it depends. Trog has four active abilities, of which two ooze flavour (berserk rage and burn books) and the other two (Trog's Hand and Brothers) are not so bad either. The point is that you don't want powers you might use for every, or every other, attack. Using god powers should be special.

Example: Elyvilon's pacification can be used _instead_ of almost any attack (exceptions are just the mindless). But it is a substitute for an attack. This is much better than using a power which enhances the actual attack. Such things should be better left to spells (like Sure Blade).
Next, you can try to make players not spam the powers via the piety, MP, or food costs. But in contrast to spells, it is much more opaque to a player what you actually get and pay (we've learned some lessons about this when finetuning Elyvilon's pacification power costs.)

Vestibule Violator

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 09:25

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics

I don't think this would play well at all. Way too many active abilities, many of which are also not very interesting in my opinion. Also some of the abilities you propose may be scheduled to be implemented as passive weapon abilities. I don't know the plan regarding that, but it has been discussed quite a bit on the wiki.

A note about piety cost: greater servant costs something like 5 piety. It's probably the most powerful god ability in the game. So these are definitely overpriced.

The only way I think a god like this could work is if one of the attacking ability effects was added to all of your attacks, for free. So for example every time you hit the enemy you lower its AC. Switching to a different effect could cost piety, but not much (only to discourage tediously switching effects all the time). Of course the chances for some of the effects would have to be lowered or be made resistible by HD (slow, disarm and especially confusion). Also I don't think dependency on used weapon is a good idea. After all the god is granting you that ability. Leap, Charge and Whirlwind are fine as active abilities, but leap and charge should be fairly cheap to use.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 09:29

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics

Galefury wrote:Also I don't think dependency on used weapon is a good idea.

I actually kinda like that, it makes weapon selection more interesting.

But yeah, too many active abilities. I think it's weird if you suddenly can perform ten combat actions instead of just one or two, after worshipping a certain god.

Snake Sneak

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 11:09

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics(revised)

I tried to take everyones advice to heart when revising the idea.

I reduced the amount of abilities to five, with three flavorful active abilities.

The two passive abilities enchance the characters melee abilities in ways that suit a god of tactics, making the enemy more vulnerable the longer the battle goes on.

I reduced the cost of the active abilities to levels that seem appropriate, they might need further tweaking.

I left the idea of different effects depending on the weapon, but simplified it.

A one turn confuse is still quite powerful but doesn't make it overpowered even when used against Pan lords etc as it only happens 1/4 of the time, I like the idea that once you start hitting something his chances to survive are reduced drastically.


There is interesting synergy between the abilities, as the ac and ev reduction happens to all surounding creatures when using whirlwind or to creatures in a straight line when using charge and some might be slowed or confused.

Whirlwind doesn't depend on weapon speed so is best with large high damage weapons, charge depends on weapon speed only on the attack on the target, so is still good with heavy weapons but the bonus damage is better with lighter weapons. The on attack abilities are better with lighter weapons.

You shuldn't be able to pass through the target creature when using charge.

I'm not sure about the piety gain if there is a hex on the enemy, this might lead to annoying tactics to gain piety, but as you naturally hex opponents using crippling blow, it seemed ok.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 11th June 2011, 15:30

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics(revised)

I don't really favor associating combat maneuvers as the divine blessing of a deity. Fighters are currently kind of boring, since they don't have any abilities you can activate until you reach the Temple or find some rare loot. I'd rather they figure out how to charge or use dirty tricks on their own, rather than restricting this whole section of the design space to a single deity and insuring that it can never be used anywhere else because there would already be a god for that.

I also think a key difference between this and the activated abilities of existing deities is that existing abilities are very much an occasional thing. You don't mash Berserk in combat or use it repeatedly; you use it once and then you fight normally. The only abilities that you might feel like spamming are things like Slouch or Pain Mirror, and those cost enough piety to make spamming impossible.

Spider Stomper

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Post Sunday, 12th June 2011, 18:24

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics(revised)

I'm with KoboldLord in that I'd much rather have maneuvers or "tactics" implemented as a skill available to everyone rather than something granted by a god. Knowledge of how to charge or disable an opponent with a weapon is quite specialized knowledge, but it makes no sense for it to be granted by a god. After maneuvers are implemented, it might make sense to have a god that helps out with them, though personally I feel like that would be more of Okawaru's thing than any other god.

Vestibule Violator

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Post Sunday, 12th June 2011, 23:22

Re: Ishtara the god of tactics(revised)

KoboldLord wrote:I also think a key difference between this and the activated abilities of existing deities is that existing abilities are very much an occasional thing. You don't mash Berserk in combat or use it repeatedly; you use it once and then you fight normally. The only abilities that you might feel like spamming are things like Slouch or Pain Mirror, and those cost enough piety to make spamming impossible.

Makhleb's lesser destruction is the perfect counterexample to what you are saying. I also think it's the only one though.

I agree with your other point, I would rather see weapon maneuvers as natural fighter abilities instead of god abilities.

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