Pandemonium Purger
Posts: 1283
Joined: Thursday, 16th April 2015, 22:39
Bloodgod/Cardgod/Tarotgod replacing Makhleb/Pakellas/Nemelex
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BloodGod - modelled after Makhleb, with his usual passive benefits. Abilities are different, but all still use hunger:
1* Minor Destruction [1hp] - Makhleb's usual.
2* Major Destruction [5hp] - Makhleb's usual, but no piety this time.
3* Controlled Destruction [5hp, piety] - like major destruction, but you choose the attack.
4* Wreck Havok [10hp, large piety] - a directionless invocation that may summon a demon like Greater Servant, but may also arc lightning,, or conjure lots of flames all around you, or cast shatter, or throw around a whole bunch of acid projectiles. You may be protected from these effects, as you may be protected from the summoned demon. It might also summon a swarm of lesser demons. Summons are likelier to be friendly with monsters in LOS, hostile if player is alone.
5* Query Havok [1hp, piety] - this invocation randomly changes and reveals the next havoc that Bloodgod has stored up for you.
The summoning of a lesser demon is gone. Makhleb is a god intensely focused on immediate destruction. Healing occurs only after you kill something, and is useful only if there are more monsters around (or you can't heal naturally). Only his summons can be used to prepare for combat, so that is anomalous. Lesser servants diminish Makhleb. He looks like a puny god when he lets you have mediocre demon companions. The new flavor would be of a god waiting to burst with destruction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TarotGod - a god of fate, modelled after tarot cards. Your five god abilities are slots, each of which gets separately filled with a 'tarot'. More information about a tarots is revealed with time until it expires. Empty slots get replenished with new, unidentified tarots. God likes you to use tarots as unidentified as possible, to the point of losing considerable piety for letting tarots expire (e.g. -5 piety) The tarots are just like current Nemelex stuff. To make this god most distinct, you could make all her tarots take effect instantly, allowing a superposition like Nemelex's Deal Four. This god would create a niche for people who like now-or-never decisions. Idea: 5* or 6* provokes Tarotgod to give you some game-changing tarots and some very hazardous tarots, so players would try to stay at moderate piety most of the time.
Possible turnover mechanic:
Tarots exist in states that have a strict hierarchy.
Every once in a while, god advances the state of each tarot forward independently by 1d3.
Upon reaching a tarot state, you gain knowledge from that state and all previous states.
State 0 | Unusable. The tarot slot is empty.
State 1 | Piety for using: 5 | Revealed info: no information (a mysterious, usable tarot)
State 2 | Piety for using: 4 | Revealed info: ornateness of tarot (eg legendary)
State 3 | Piety for using: 3 | Revealed info: tarot type, general category (eg war)
State 4 | Piety for using: 2 | Revealed info: tarot type, originating 'deck' (eg summoning)
State 5 | Piety for using: 1 | Revealed info: the tarot itself (eg swarm)
State 6 | Piety for using: 0 | Revealed info: power (eg third and best power category)
State 7 | Piety for using: -1 | Revealed info: exact effect (eg 7 red wasps)
State 8+ | Piety for using: -2 | Revealed info: none, but tarot is now decaying.
A decaying tarot expires within a few turns, wasting the tarot and creating an empty slot.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CardGod - The evocations god, a true trickster and artificer. Some points:
Piety - used for gift rate/quality and decays with time.
1st Piety Gain - God surreptitiously marks random monsters. He tends to so with high-level monsters and those who carry valuables. When those monsters die, they simply vanish instead of leaving anything - no corpse, no inventory, no inner-flame explosion - and even death curses are interrupted.
2nd Piety Gain - God tends to surreptitiously mark valuables that you have never seen before. He claims them the instant you find yourself on the same tile.
Passive piety gains 1 and 2 are accompanied by mischievous flavor text:
- Foo vanishes. "Yoink!"
Foo vanishes. "Hope you don't mind..."
Foo vanishes. "I like what I see."
Foo vanishes. "For me, really?"
God grants decks that are similar to Nemelex, but more specific and varied. Peeking is not allowed. You have real incentive to use the decks up. You could stash decks away before entering branches where they are useless. Something like the deck of escape is instead presented in several lesser decks - one for repelling enemies in various ways, one that helps you withstand an enemy onslaught, one for actually getting you out of the fight. The idea is that you know what a deck will do, in abstract, but every draw jolts your tactical orientation a little. These decks are supposed to compensate for the loot that Cardgod deprives you of. They work like some rods did a few versions back, but decks don't replenish, and I dislike the codename Rodgod.
Cardgod Deck Examples
A deck that basically casts level-2 charms spells.
A deck with 13 each of flame, fire, fireball, and conjure fire, plus a couple bolts of magma. Get it? Get it?
A deck with cards that temporarily brand your weapon with a random brand.
A deck that gives restorative effects.
A minor hex-deck that beam-targets a single random negative status.
A major hex-deck that is all self-centered mass-hexes.
A bolt deck with 6 bolts each of: fire, cold, lightning, draining, venom, silver.
A deck with sticky flame, static discharge, vampiric draining, and a melee version of force lance.
A deck that simulates shooting variously branded bolts with a crossbow, as if your crossbow skill was your evocations skill.
A deck full of Olgreb's Toxic Radiance, Poisonous Cloud, Cure Poison, and Ignite Poison.
A deck with corpse rot, animate dead, cigotuvi's embrace, and a custom spell that either replicates the toadstool effect of praying to Fedhas or destroys nearby corpses for HP/MP.
A gardening deck (g.e.c.k., u caught that?) whose cards let you place a tile of water, a tree, a translucent rock wall, or a metal wall.
Odd utility or strategy decks might be possible, but not to overlap with Tarotgod's function too much.
Active Cardgod Abilities - Optional
Lay claim to any monster (or floor tile?), making Cardgod promise to leave it for you.
Draw 3 cards in 1 turn with MP/piety cost.
Shuffle two decks together into one. Sometimes useful for saving inventory space when you have similar decks.
Snatch: a smite-targeting version of apportation, like portal projectile in reverse. (could also work as a card effect)
More Cardgod Possibilities - Optional
It's perfectly reasonable to have this god restrict or handicap your use of magic (like Pakellas).
Cardgod passively thwarts your enemies' attempts to use inventory items - wands or potions.
Decks have to be wielded from the hand, or benefit from it, or save MP when drawn from hand.
All/most/some decks have a predetermined combination of cards - but in a random order, and examining the deck in your inventory shows what cards remain in the deck without disclosing their order, e.g. a deck of offensive fire {this deck contains: 2 flame, 3 fireball, 1 bolt of magma}.
Drawing a card gives the player the chance to discard it instead, wasting the card.
Cardgod forbids the use of artefacts and piety gain is more standard.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------