Species idea: Epocrasian (reverse demigod)

[Steel Neuron]

Here is a species idea I've been mulling over. I think something fun can come out of this species approach, although I'm not sure about the possible implications, so I'll be looking forward to your comments.

Gameplay justification: Frail invocations specialist.

The Epocrasian is a challenge species with low overall aptitudes and reduced HP, compensating all of this with an unprecedented focus on Invocations. The way they fill this specialized niche is by reducing the use of a long term resource (Piety). Divine abilities that aren't meant to be spammed become viable as a standard attack, and the species plan would be built entirely around the god abilities rather than complemented by them.

To face the particularly difficult early game, they also get a tool to navigate around threats, by entering a reduced LOS + detect monsters state at will.

Theme

Epocrasians are bizarre long limbed, pale skinned humanoids. Their round, melancholic black eyes seem permanently fixated in the past. They are frail and inept at all forms of physical combat, but able to move silently despite their tall build. While they are skilled at hexes and translocations, their true talent lies in maintaining close communication with their deity. Epocrasians are unrivaled in their ability to listen their god's commands and communicate their wishes to them, quickly becoming favored followers and exceptional miracle workers.

Aptitudes

• Offense: -1 Fighting, -2 Weapon Skills, -2 UC.
• Defense: +0 Dodging, -3 Armour, -2 Shields, +3 Stealth.
• Magic: +4 Invocations, +1 Evocations, +1 Spellcasting, +1 Hexes, +1 Translocations, +0 Charms, -1 everything else.

Innate abilities

• High Int, low Dex and very low Str progression.
• Frail 2: -20% HP.
• Theosophist: The first 3 piety points in any invocation cost are converted to MP (So a skill costing 2 MP and 6 piety would cost 5 MP and 3 piety instead). Non-piety costs such as MP, draining or gold are reduced by 30%.
• Meditation: Epocrasians can close their eyes and enter a meditative state at will, causing their physical bodies to fade from reality, becoming almost undetectable, and relying on their mind's eye to detect nearby threats. When meditating, they gain slow 1, monster detection 3, and their LOS is severely reduced (down to 2).

Why I'd play an Epocrasian
The reason why I think this species could be fun is because there is a heap of well designed, fun god abilities that could be the cornerstone of a build, rather than something to fall back on for particularly difficult scenarios. Giving unrestricted access to low piety cost abilities (and reducing the cost of the rest) needs an equally powerful counterbalance, hence the poor stats across the board. Finally, I think Meditation can be an interesting way to balance the harsh early game by allowing the player to bypass difficult threats on the way to Temple, with the potential for a less linear experience in the beginning.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Do you know lacertilians experimental species? "Experimental race with perma-faith and no wrath for changing gods".
Perma-faith is much weaker than what you suggest and still it was very strong (probably too strong).

[Steel Neuron]

Do you know lacertilians experimental species? "Experimental race with perma-faith and no wrath for changing gods".
Perma-faith is much weaker than what you suggest and still it was very strong (probably too strong).

Hm. I may have really underestimated the strength of that effect.

How about we kept the Piety->MP conversion but gave it very low Invo and slow piety gain? This way the spammability remains but it would take longer for the game plan to get out of control.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Is piety decreased by decay only? Then you might have almost permanent Heroism/Finesse, permanent Scrying or hoards of Brothers in Arms or avoid fighting all Zot 5 monsters via multiple Sanctuary, especially with staff of energy. I think some abilities will be broken this way.

[Steel Neuron]

Is piety decreased by decay only? Then you might have almost permanent Heroism/Finesse, permanent Scrying or hoards of Brothers in Arms or avoid fighting all Zot 5 monsters via multiple Sanctuary, especially with staff of energy. I think some abilities will be broken this way.

How about this then:

Theosophist: Flat -3 piety reduction to all piety costs, converted into MP cost instead. This makes skills that were okay-ish to be spammed to be fully spammable, and others a bit less harsh on your piety.

I modified the OP to reflect this, since it's probably a much more reasonable option.

[milski]

Why would you ever turn off meditation? It's the strongest part of the species (and also tedious).

Additionally I don't know if detection actually works past your theoretical LoS if your vision was unobstructed.

[Steel Neuron]

Why would you ever turn off meditation? It's the strongest part of the species (and also tedious).

Additionally I don't know if detection actually works past your theoretical LoS if your vision was unobstructed.

I can see it being strong, but what would make it particularly tedious? The slow map exploration? It could be higher LOS if that makes it better (LOS 3, for example).

You'd probably want to turn it off due to Slow 1, unless you're worshipping Chei I imagine.

In any case, Meditation isn't my strongest idea on the proposal. It could be exchanged for anything that bridges the particularly horrible early game. Another possibility that I had in mind is Cause Fear at will, with some drain as a cost.

[kuniqs]

Lately there is some rage-virus of shitty aptitude races and race proposals. Is the world insane, or I?

I mean, does every one of you like playing shitty Demigods, but with a god? (hi duvessa)

[milski]

Why would you ever turn off meditation? It's the strongest part of the species (and also tedious).

Additionally I don't know if detection actually works past your theoretical LoS if your vision was unobstructed.

I can see it being strong, but what would make it particularly tedious? The slow map exploration? It could be higher LOS if that makes it better (LOS 3, for example).

You'd probably want to turn it off due to Slow 1, unless you're worshipping Chei I imagine.

In any case, Meditation isn't my strongest idea on the proposal. It could be exchanged for anything that bridges the particularly horrible early game. Another possibility that I had in mind is Cause Fear at will, with some drain as a cost.

Tedious, because slow autoexplore. Strong, because LoS reduction is incredibly good, although maybe 2 LoS is actually low enough it could cause problems instead of just making you immune to ranged attacks.

[Sar]

Slow autoexplore? Do you think a Chei character takes twice more real time autoexploring or something? I don't get it. Do you mean that you'll have to switch it on/off often?

[milski]

Slow autoexplore? Do you think a Chei character takes twice more real time autoexploring or something? I don't get it. Do you mean that you'll have to switch it on/off often?

If your vision range is 2 tiles you have to step on more tiles to autoexplore fully.

[Sar]

Oooh. That makes sense.

[Vajrapani]

[*]Theosophist: The first 3 piety points in any invocation cost are converted to MP (So a skill costing 2 MP and 6 piety would cost 5 MP and 3 piety instead). Non-piety costs such as MP, draining or gold are reduced by 30%.

Is that really going to make the ability like as spammable as you want? Going from 6 -> 3 piety only gives you 1 more cast than you would normally get, and for an ability like finesse or something, you would typically regain the piety sunk into by the time you get to the next tough fight, and it can't stack either so it makes that ability near irrelevant. You could probably spam something like heroism, but is that really going to change anything when the combat aptitudes are so ass that a stronger race would be at those skill levels without relying on a god ability?

[Steel Neuron]

[*]Theosophist: The first 3 piety points in any invocation cost are converted to MP (So a skill costing 2 MP and 6 piety would cost 5 MP and 3 piety instead). Non-piety costs such as MP, draining or gold are reduced by 30%.

Is that really going to make the ability like as spammable as you want? Going from 6 -> 3 piety only gives you 1 more cast than you would normally get, and for an ability like finesse or something, you would typically regain the piety sunk into by the time you get to the next tough fight, and it can't stack either so it makes that ability near irrelevant. You could probably spam something like heroism, but is that really going to change anything when the combat aptitudes are so ass that a stronger race would be at those skill levels without relying on a god ability?

I'm not exactly sure about the number. It would be somewhere between 3 and 7; the idea is making the low piety abilities spammable while not completely breaking the lower-frequency ones. 3 might be a bit on the low side

[jwoodward48ss]

[*]Theosophist: The first 3 piety points in any invocation cost are converted to MP (So a skill costing 2 MP and 6 piety would cost 5 MP and 3 piety instead). Non-piety costs such as MP, draining or gold are reduced by 30%.

Is that really going to make the ability like as spammable as you want? Going from 6 -> 3 piety only gives you 1 more cast than you would normally get, and for an ability like finesse or something, you would typically regain the piety sunk into by the time you get to the next tough fight, and it can't stack either so it makes that ability near irrelevant. You could probably spam something like heroism, but is that really going to change anything when the combat aptitudes are so ass that a stronger race would be at those skill levels without relying on a god ability?

Well perhaps Oka isn't a good god for these people... something like Makhleb, Qazlal, etc. could be better. Or Ely for the SPAMMABLE HEALING that is now completely spammable, plus spammable Heal Other, plus nearly-free Purification etc. Or Nemelex for DEAL THE CARDS... although you wouldn't get any more cards than normal.

How would this species interact with Gozag?

[scorpionwarrior]

I was hoping this topic was about a low-stat high-apt species, which sounds potentially interesting.

[duane]

Why not just give them a permanent amulet of faith (or even +33% or +50%) and thin skeletal structure (+Dex/Stealth)? They've got a great stealth aptitude, so the narrow line of sight seems unnecessary. What they could use is a built in mapping ability (which I'd love), or just passive mapping in a pinch. Then they could sneak to the temple easily. Faith and thin skeletal structure are already in the game, so they're obviously not overpowered -- you wouldn't have to reduce their general aptitudes as much that way.

[lethediver]

Way to make this race idea cooler / more triggering to GDD elitists:

Weak race that can worship two gods

[tasonir]

2 gods is the won't do list. I would also make meditation be equal to darkness, -2 to LOS, rather than setting LOS to 2. -2 to LOS is already powerful enough for a level 5 spell, having 2 total LOS is insane. Polearms would do full LOS targeting. I know the race isn't set up to use heavy polearms well, but with that kind of targeting ability I think they'd end up being pretty good at it in the long run. Doing a zigg with these guys would be insane.

I think it's an interesting concept but it'd be a nightmare to balance because god abilities with significant piety costs were designed to not be spammable because they're strong - making them spammable might trivialize a lot of the game. Slouch kills nearly everything in the game, if you cut it's piety cost down, combined with the piety from killing things, what stops you from using it on 80% of monsters all game long? Qazlal's upheaval would probably be the best example of this though, as it would be just about free and you wouldn't need anything else - Beogh smite would also be broken, if you allowed this race to worship Beogh...

[duane]

After experimenting with them for a while, my main problem is that they have a deity-centric power, but their aptitudes pretty much ensure that they'll never be used with some of the deities, which seems to defeat the point. I'm not sure how you'd balance it any other way though.