Felid Innate Proposal: God Wandering

[edgefigaro]

God Wandering

Each time a felid is reborn they are given a one-time per death option to abandon their current god at no penance. This free abandonment option is lost as soon as the character spends spends an aut, and the game would continue as it currently does.
Abandonment voids existing penances and god's wrath, as well as durable summons.
Does not unbanish luguno banishment, or unmutate various god malmutates.

Alternately, just have felid death cancel any outstanding penance. You'd abandon as normal and try to survive wrath, but if you get killed, your old god is mollified.

Flavor
Cat's different lives follow different gods.

Why Do This?
I think this would make felid more fun to play, and give a unique, novelty a feature that stays in-theme. I think god wandering felids may be crawly and more fun than current felids. It is a straight buff. I don't know if it significant enough to need balance, though smite resistance certainly would:

Source Proposal:
Smite Resistance

Felids take 60% Smite Damage.

Alternatively:
Having them trade a slightly decreased piety growth (not as bad as -Faith) for taking less damage from F$%@ING smite and other religious attacks would make them much more reasonable.

This idea from bcarden originally gave me the idea for god wandering aspect.

[elmdor]

This is an interesting proposal. Seems like certain Felid builds could find it pretty useful for ditching gods like Xom, Nem or Sif, and retaining their gifts of useful muts, evokables and books.

I have some questions about the implementation though. You've called this a straight buff to felids, but there are downsides to it too. When I lose a life as a felid, my main priority is gaining back the XL I just lost. My biggest concern is avoiding getting stuck even further behind the game's power curve. So to me, the moment after losing an XL seems like one of the worst possible times to switch gods. On top of the XL I just lost, I'd be losing all my god abilities and piety. I also might have to start pumping new skills to work with my new god (Evo for Nemelex; Invo for Dith), or else abandon the skill ranks in a god I no longer use (Invo after switching to Vehumet...)

I am also curious how this proposal would treat switching gods where the altar you want is not nearby, or where you want to keep the current god a little longer. Would you be allowed to move to a different level to convert? What if you run into monsters on the way and gain XP and piety with your current god? If it's OK to gain a little XP on the way to an altar, how much is okay? Not saying there has to be a cutoff, but if not, the flavor is hurt. Doesn't make too sense for my Level 4 kitty of Nemelex to die, resurrect at XL 3, keep playing without dying till level 15, and switch to Dithmenos without wrath "because cats' different lives follow different gods."

[edgefigaro]

Upon respawn, you have a one-time per death the option of abandoning your god. If you don't abandon immediately, you lose the option of abandonment without penance as soon as you spend an aut. (edited into main post)

When I lose a life as a felid, my main priority is gaining back the XL I just lost. My biggest concern is avoiding getting stuck even further behind the game's power curve.

These are certainly mistakes. Encouraging a player who just died to not panic, take a step back, evaluate things, possibly make some changes and not try to overcome what just killed them is better play. Felids aren't about power curve the same way other chars are.

[elmdor]

These are certainly mistakes. Encouraging a player who just died to not panic, take a step back, evaluate things, possibly make some changes and not try to overcome what just killed them is better play.

Of course it's better to not panic, step back and evaluate the situation. This is exactly what I would do if I died as a Felid. If I'm having trouble in Lair, I'll try Orc, etc. Doesn't change the fact that Felids become more vulnerable after resurrection and ditching their god would tend to make them more so.

Felids aren't about power curve the same way other chars are.

Their situation is unique. Felids can fall into a trap of gaining an XL, dying, gaining the same XL back, and dying again... in the process, they clear levels of chaff, with little to show for it. Then they must descend to more difficult unexplored areas to earn more XP. They may end up facing branch ends several XLs short of where they'd be if they hadn't died in the first place.

In my modest experience (one Fe win) the best way to get a Felid through tough situations like this is to play cautiously, reevaluate your jewelry, and double down on the skills that are doing the most damage for you, rather than trying to shoot for another build altogether.

[XuaXua]

Rebuilding that piety after each death is going to be a pain in the ass.

[edgefigaro]

Rebuilding that piety after each death is going to be a pain in the ass.

You are not forced to abandon or lose piety. You are just given the option to do so at no penance.

[njvack]

Alternately, just have felid death cancel any outstanding penance. You'd abandon as normal and try to survive wrath, but if you get killed, your old god is mollified.

[edgefigaro]

Alternately, just have felid death cancel any outstanding penance. You'd abandon as normal and try to survive wrath, but if you get killed, your old god is mollified.

This is another way to accomplish the same thing, and I like this idea too. Edited into OP.

[Pollen_Golem]

This is another way to accomplish the same thing, and I like this idea too. Edited into OP.

I'm not sure you read njvack carefully enough. He said that whether or not you've just died,

You'd abandon as normal and try to survive wrath

So for felids, abandoning gods is safer because even if the wrath kills you, it will only kill you once (wrath counters set to 0 at resurrection)

[edgefigaro]

The mechanic is slightly different and it messes with edge cases, but the core idea is the same. For example, mollification on death of jiv would prompt you to immediately suicide upon abandonment. However, a one-time prompt to abandon jiv would be more along the lines of going forward until death and then swapping around. Either way it is a way to implement Felids being able to change gods with their lives, which is the idea, much more so than the detail of how it is done.

The difference between the two proposals break along the lines of "which is easier to implement (njvack's)" and "which implementation has more bizarre behavior/incentives associated with it (would need to list all the gods and how they react and look for potential problems)" rather than conceptual differences between the ideas.

Beyond either of these two points, the main point of the thread is the idea that Felids can use (mechanic) to switch gods via death. I assert that this idea is fun, not broken, not horrible to implement, good for felids, and perhaps good for crawl.

[Pollen_Golem]

I don't get it. You believe having more bizarre behavior/incentives is a good thing?

mollification on death of jiv would prompt you to immediately suicide upon abandonment.

wut? Why? Prompt, as in the natural player response to "mollification on death of jiv" or prompt, as in the option you'd code for felids to choose at this, erm, event?

edit: no reason to drag jiv into this

[edgefigaro]

Jiv wrath mutates you into a gelatinous mess. If you were a felid with lives to spare wanting to abandon jiv under njvacks, you would want to abandon and immediately die and not suck up malmutates as you try to outlast jiv wrath.

I would want less bizarre behavior, not more. Were I evaluating the two proposals against each other, this would be a metric to compare the two. I'm not proposing that the two need to be compared at the moment. I'm asking about the viability and desirability of the felids having a easy godswitching mechanic. If that is not wanted to be implemented by someone (and I certainly don't have the know how nor the time to learn atm), then the rest of this downthread conversation is getting way ahead of ourselves.

A better proposal than this would have the coding done and ready for testing.

[Pollen_Golem]

A felid, worshiping Jiv, planning to switch gods without killing the royal jelly... you have a point, that really is an edge case.

[njvack]

I'm asking about the viability and desirability of the felids having a easy godswitching mechanic.

My gut tells me that it'd be pretty easy to implement, and that it wouldn't be crazy imbalanced. Felids in particular can't scum for most gear.

But I dunno. Somehow I don't say to myself "boy does this ability excite me!" Mostly I don't abandon gods because piety with the god I have is better than the piety I could eventually earn with another god.

I guess maybe I would consider ditching Sif (who I would basically never abandon otherwise) after getting a bunch of books, or maybe Vehumet... but I would more likely not take Sif in the first place, and keep the Vehumet piety, so there's that.

[edgefigaro]

Functionally, it makes earlier altars even more valueable. Finding Chei, trog, nemelex, fedhas on d2 would all be fabulous. Kiku is another easy early join hoping to get your first two books and then bounce. Gozag may be useful after orc. Jiv is instant 6 piety on a char that ignores most items. I'd do more xom starts too.

There are alot of cool moves you can make if you can switch gods.

[Siegurt]

Hm, it doesn't excite me (or especially interest me) at all, but 'you lose god wrath when you die' *does* feel consistent with the other things that happen when you die (you lose all status effects and have hunger set to satisfied)

To put it another way, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if that's the way it had been implemented when felids first came out.

[Sivar]

Would being forced to abandon your current god upon death but skipping wrath and retaining x% of your piety total for the next god you worshiped be overpowered for all exciting values of x?

There are corner cases where it wouldn't work at all (* -> Ru) but it could be interesting combined with -Faith.

e: You could actually handle Ru by immediately offering enough sacrifices to reach the given piety level instead of awarding the piety directly.

[edgefigaro]

Ru doesn't have wrath anyway. Maintaining piety doesn't sense thematically.

[Sivar]

Ru doesn't have wrath anyway. Maintaining piety doesn't sense thematically.

I was talking about the case of maintaining piety when switching to Ru, and if it were determined to be a good idea for gameplay I'm sure one of the creative people here could come up with a flavorful justification.

[njvack]

I think it's OK if death leaves you with your new god's piety.

I also think it would be OK if it cleared all mutations, including Ru's sacrifices (maybe only if you'd abandoned Ru, or maybe death under Ru would zero piety and sacrifices both).

[Pollen_Golem]

I also think it would be OK if it cleared all mutations

This can be both good and bad for players, so it's interesting, and it solves the jiv edge case above.

maybe death under Ru would zero piety and sacrifices both

I don't like the idea of losing any piety upon death.
Ru could, say, let you take a different set of sacrifices, one right after the other, up to your previous piety level.
Ru's sacrifices being non-permanent would be a unique case, but then again, Felid resurrection is unique.

[edgefigaro]

I have problems with maintaining piety. If a cat can start makleb or dith and switch to TSO and maintain (any) piety that seems absurd.

Conceptually, I have problems putting a cat innate above god behavior, which is what god switching while maintaining piety does.

The more I think about it, the more I favor gods simply being mollified upon death. Nothing more. It is straightforward, really easy to understand, all the bad idea edge cases (abandoning ru) continue to be bad ideas. It is also feels cat like and crawly. The reason I am so attached to the idea is that it feels crawly, or, as Sigurt put it, "I wouldn't have been at all surprised if that's the way it had been implemented when felids first came out."

I think it would be an excellent detail to be in the game. With only the demonstrated passing interest, I think I'll have to put this in the game myself if I want to see it (and I do). Maybe I'll find time to work at it in June. I'm swampy busy with work right now.

[reaver]

I don't think this is a good idea:

A) It is very difficult to incentivize switching gods, even if you don't deduct piety players create builds around their gods and there would be costs to switching (For example a FeFE would not want to switch to Dith)

B) If it is possible to incentivize switching gods, this would probably push Felids to using a single set of "Best gods" rather than picking whatever happens to be found early in the Dungeon. Crawl heavily incentivizes choosing whatever god you find early. Being able to pick gods past the early game would remove these incentivizes.

C) If these problems are solved, switching gods more often doesn't strike me as every interesting. Players already experience all the gods in the game, they just experience them one by one in different games. Re-distributing the gameplay so every game experiences every god some of the time instead of every game having a single god all the way through doesn't strike me as a worthwhile goal.

[archaeo]

C) If these problems are solved, switching gods more often doesn't strike me as every interesting. Players already experience all the gods in the game, they just experience them one by one in different games. Re-distributing the gameplay so every game experiences every god some of the time instead of every game having a single god all the way through doesn't strike me as a worthwhile goal.

I bet you could make some kind of trickster god that "steals" a random set of powers from the other gods; it's not really so different from the old Random God proposal. I doubt it'd ever be competitive with the "real" gods, but it might be an interesting design space to explore, the DS of gods, if you will.

Otherwise, I agree. This proposal seems like it's a solution in search of a problem.

[Rast]

If you want just a straight-up buff to felids, allow them to switch gods without wrath.

[IronJelly]

Flavor idea.

As a familiar, the felid isn't as autonomous as some other species. Due to this, a felid can switch gods much easier than other races by transferring some of the pennance to its patron witch.

As such, a felids god penance is shortened significantly, maybe down to nothing for gods that would enjoy the witch's apparently random suffering (eg, xom), as the ever unseen patron is forced to endure.

The good gods frown upon passing the buck in this way, and making your patron suffer however, so while a felid can switch to non good gods more easily, they lose the option to freely change between the good gods as other species do.