God: Qazlal Stormbringer

[sgrunt]

This idea arose from a few different god design-related things that have caught my attention over the past few weeks, most notably n1000's Thorn God proposal which reminded me that we don't have much in the way of defensive gods right now. This led me to the cornerstone 1* passive ability, and I asked myself what sort of a deity would be likely to grant something like that; this eventually evolved into the design it is now. I'm not overly attached to all of the details as they are written right now, but I think this will at least lead somewhere usable.

EDIT: I've made some adjustments based on preliminary feedback; changes are bolded.

Qazlal Stormbringer (revised)

A violent god of nature, Qazlal takes joy in unleashing the forces of nature against the unsuspecting. Followers are gradually surrounded by a never-ending storm, protecting them from harm and dealing terrible harm to those who would wish to harm the follower, and eventually gain the ability to more directly incite natural harm against their foes.

Likes: invoking the elemental forces - i.e. killing enemies.

Dislikes: inactivity. (nb: corpse-violating magic has been removed from here pending better ideas)

0: Cloud Immunity (passive): You are immune to your own clouds.

*: Storm Shield (passive): Gain a bonus to SH; the bonus increases with piety, and at 4* piety also gains RMsl (thanks reaver). (The violent weather conditions surrounding you occasionally repel attacks.) Single tile flame/freezing/storm clouds occasionally spawn near you, with the possible range gradually increasing with increasing piety. This is loud, and the noise increases with piety up until having effectively a fireball go off at your location constantly at 6* piety.

**: Upheaval (active, MP/piety): Cause a local natural disturbance; possibilities include storm clouds, eruptions of magma (convert a few tiles to lava and blast things nearby for magma damage), earthquakes (localised Shatter-type effect), blizzards (ice damage + flash freeze), etc. The area of effect is confined to a small area, enough to hit one or two targets (see Disaster Area below).

***: Elemental Force (active, MP/piety): Turn elemental clouds around you into elementals, with friendliness depending on the origin of the cloud.

****: Elemental Adaptation (passive): Taking fire/cold/electrical damage sometimes grants you a pip of resistance to that type of damage for a few turns, with chance and duration increasing with damage/piety; these protections are mutually exclusive. Physical attacks count as an "earth" type and grant AC+3. (Thanks mikee.)[/b]

*****: Disaster Area (active, MP/piety): Blasts the area around you with disastrous natural effects - a more powerful and wide-area version of Upheaval.

******: As a one-time ability, praying at an altar offers you a choice of rF+, rC+, rElec, or AC+3 good for as long as the player continues to worship Qazlal.

(Side note: your stealth is basically zero once you hit * piety - storm clouds are LOUD. More of a drawback than currently exists would be desirable, though having those clouds near you all the time might suffice so long as they don't get too aggravating.)

[twelwe]

I support Upheaval only because of lava orc synergy. Elemental Affnity sounds like the Dragonskin cloak effect, is that correct?

[Cheibrodos]

I'm skeptical about storm shield's passive effect: How long would these single-tile clouds last? If you were exploring down a corridor and one appeared in front of you, would you have to stop exploring and wait for it to dissipate? I'm also worried it would encourage players to walk around until a lucky cloud spawned that would kill the thing that was chasing them. The effect would be harder to use to your advantage as the range increased with piety, which is strange as well.

[reaver]

we don't have much in the way of defensive gods right now.

I'm pretty sure that isn't a coincidence. I think defensive gods are inherently harder to design well than offensive ones. It's much easier to build a deep system with an offensive focus.

Likes: invoking the elemental forces (using flame/freeze/electrocution weapons - possibly blunt vorpal weapons? - and elemental enhancer staves, casting fire/ice/air/earth magic); destroying the undead (see below).

Err, casting spells? So a MuIE takes this god and goes into a corner to cast Freeze until they reach full piety? Might want to turn that to "Training Elemental magic skills"

*: Storm Shield (passive): Gain a bonus to EV; the bonus increases with piety. (The violent weather conditions surrounding you occasionally repel attacks.) Single tile flame/freezing/storm clouds occasionally spawn near you, with the possible range gradually increasing with increasing piety.

Clouds Idea is fine, but I'm much less sure about the bonus to EV thing. How often have you change your skilling decisions and/or tactics due to finding a +EV ring on an early character? If you want a straight swap I would change it to passive Repel/Deflect Missiles (like the Amulet of Air), which is more dramatic in changing monster threat evaluations.

**: Upheaval (active, MP/piety): Cause a local natural disturbance; possibilities include storm clouds, eruptions of magma (convert a few tiles to lava and blast things nearby for magma damage), earthquakes (localised Shatter-type effect), blizzards (ice damage + flash freeze), etc. The area of effect is confined to a small area, enough to hit one or two targets (see Disaster Area below).

So - Minor Destruction? The AoE and secondary effects are a good distinction, but would need to be more dramatic to have a large effect.

***: Elemental Barrier (passive): Taking damage occasionally causes your attacker to take fire/cold/electrical damage; chances increase with piety. (Possibly this could be more than just damage; a static discharge effect on damage a la shock serpents could be interesting.)

Like Spines and Minotaur horns? Static discharge looks nice, but I think this would need an effect for each element to not just be the Horns mutation.

****: Elemental Affinity (passive): You gain stochastic rF/rC/rElec, with a piety-dependent chance of being considered as having one level more of the relevant resistance than you do when taking damage.

This is a good defensive buff, but doesn't really change how somebody plays. I'd just run around with resists, maybe change my ring swap decisions once or twice a game. Maybe if it gave a full resist package but reduced HP by around 20%

*****: Disaster Area (active, MP/piety): Blasts the area around you with disastrous natural effects - a more powerful and wide-area version of Upheaval.

This better combines the "Random bolt" and "AoE" concepts, I like this ability but I do not think there's room for both it and Upheaval.

******: Permanently electrocution-brand a weapon once. (This could be extended to flame/freezing brands, but who would want to pick those?)

Kiku's Pain brand is basically this ability except better designed. In addition to encouraging fast weapons due to being a flat damage increase, Kiku also has you decide how this effects your Necro training and whether a Necronomican is better. I would look elsewhere for a capstone.

I don't think any of these abilities are "bad". However, I think they are generally a little bland. It is easy to draw comparisons to other mechanics in the game, unlike things such as bleed smoke, heals on kills, curse mini-game, or corrupt which have very unique effects. I don't think it would be wrong for a god to have one or two of theses abilities, but a god also needs some "spice" these abilities don't really provide. There aren't any great conducts or mindbending mini-games in this proposal, which are necessary for a god to work.

[moocowmoocow]

I like the idea of an elemental god. It would be neat if you could switch between elemental affinities. Tie fire, ice and air to str, int and dex respectively... you gain a pip of resistance and modest boost to that stat while in that form. Switching forms costs piety but you get a temporary boost upon switching, like maybe HP + slaying for fire, swiftness + deflect missiles for air. Since the brand weapon mechanic already used by two gods, maybe gain auxiliary elemental attack?

[khalil]

I really like this god idea, as not only does it fill a niche no other god does, it does so with flavor. (Compared to the Okie or Sif approach, in which a defensive god would appreciate you wearing heavy armor and gift heavy armor.)

Since the brand weapon mechanic already used by two gods, maybe gain auxiliary elemental attack?

Three. TSO, Lucy, and Kiku.

[moocowmoocow]

Forgot about old Lucy.

[mikee]

****: Elemental Affinity (passive): You gain stochastic rF/rC/rElec, with a piety-dependent chance of being considered as having one level more of the relevant resistance than you do when taking damage.

The only feedback I have right now is on this ability. It seems to be good to ask in what ways an ability would change gameplay, and I'm not sure stochastic elemental resistance would change mine. I couldn't see myself, for instance, being more willing to fight nikola because of a chance I would have relec in the fight; on the other hand, deterministic resistances would be silly, like the old chei passive. What if it were stochastic in a different way? Suggestion:

****: Elemental Adaptation (passive) Taking damage of a certain type (element?) has a chance of granting a shield against that type of damage, decaying over a few turns. Both the chance of the shield being created and the amount of damage it prevents should probably be based on the damage the player initially took, so that no one is kiting orc wizards around until they get hit by throw flame.

This passive triggering would probably have the benefit of changing player tactics in a fight while also protecting the character against unlucky streaks of a monster fireballing them twice in a row or whatever.

[Quazifuji]

I like this idea overall. I think elemental magic is a cool theme for a god, and randomly spawning clouds is a cool passive.

Is there potential for this god to have an interaction with the elemental skills? He does already reward them indirectly, since the most reliable sources of piety are elemental spells and staves, but I'm wondering if there's a possibility of abilities that scale with elemental skills instead of invocations similar to how Kiku scales with Necromancy. There could be interesting potential for which skills you have trained to affect the different elemental effects you get. Granted, that turns the god more into a spellcaster god than a general-purpose god like he seems to be designed as (although, as I said, the piety already encourages being an elemental spellcaster). I'm also not sure how you'd balance it with training multiple elements. The god could be a cool opportunity to reward training multiple elemental skills, something that's usually considered redundant, but you wouldn't want it to be an absurd XP sync or a tedious min-maxing exercise.

Dislikes: inactivity; abominations against nature (casting corpse-violating necromancy per Fedhas).

Does this fit here? It makes sense for Fedhas because Fedhas is all about decay and the natural circle of life and death. This god seems much more about destruction. He's got a connection to nature, but I'm not sure if it makes sense for him to be super concerned about the treatment of corpses like Fedhas is.

******: Permanently electrocution-brand a weapon once. (This could be extended to flame/freezing brands, but who would want to pick those?)

Would it be possible to pick a new brand that deals a random element each proc? I don't like the idea of this god's capstone just being a single-element thing, and as you noted letting players pick an element is basically the same as giving elec brand except that it sometimes tricks uninformed players into making a bad decision.

Although, as others have already said, the concet of a god gifting a weapon brand at full piety isn't new, and I'm not sure if it's the best fit for this god. In particular, it goes against this god rewarding the use of elemental staves. Characters who heavily use elemental magic and melee with a staff will build piety fastest with this god, and it seems odd that they're the least rewarded for hitting ******. The easy solution is to go the Kiku route and give a choice between a spellbook and a brand (book of tempests is the natural fit from the existing books), but that's still an already done design space, and giving a set of high level elemental spells when you max out piety is already done by Vehumet.

This god already has an assortment of active effects and a strong ***** active, so I'm not sure how else to fill the ****** slot (if something even needs to go there), but I'm not sure if a brand gift is the best way to go. At the very least, it should be more interesting than an electric brand and there should be an alternative option for elemental staff users.

I'm skeptical about storm shield's passive effect: How long would these single-tile clouds last? If you were exploring down a corridor and one appeared in front of you, would you have to stop exploring and wait for it to dissipate? I'm also worried it would encourage players to walk around until a lucky cloud spawned that would kill the thing that was chasing them.

I agree with these concerns. One possible solution to the exploration interruption issue would be to restrict clouds to only appearing with monsters in LOS (you could even make the number of clouds generated scale with tension). The clouds could still get in the way at times, but at least they wouldn't interrupt exploration when there's no combat. Not sure how to stop this from kill enemies while you run away from them, though. There does seem to be the risk of Qazlal worshippers, especially fast ones, just dancing down while they way for their clouds to kill things.

The effect would be harder to use to your advantage as the range increased with piety, which is strange as well.

If it had a static chance of spawning a given number of clouds and only the range increased with piety, then this is true, but that doesn't have to be the case. One possibility, for example, would be to give each individual square a chance of spawning a cloud each step, and have the chance decrease with range and the max range increase with piety. So that way, spawning a cloud across the room doesn't mean not spawning a cloud right next to you. You'd get just as many clouds against the enemies next to you at high piety (maybe more if the odds increased with piety), but you wouldn't be completely filling the room all the time.

[sgrunt]

I've made a few adjustments based on the feedback so far; back to the top with you to see them. Thanks for all the suggestions made so far!

[wheals]

I'm still not sure about that piety gain mechanic; it stills seems like it might be too scummy. I'd suggest instead "Kill monsters with fire/ice/etc. magic and weapons," requiring a certain percentage of the kill to be by the type of damage; reaping brand does something like this to prevent weapon swapping to get the final hit in, IIRC.

[sgrunt]

I'm still not sure about that piety gain mechanic; it stills seems like it might be too scummy. I'd suggest instead "Kill monsters with fire/ice/etc. magic and weapons," requiring a certain percentage of the kill to be by the type of damage; reaping brand does something like this to prevent weapon swapping to get the final hit in, IIRC.

I had no idea this mechanic existed for reaping, but it does. I'll change that over.

[1010011010]

The ice/fire brands aren't god brands and would be lackluster as a gift. Elec brand is good, but doesn't represent the whole god. Also Branding weapons at the alter is too often played, we should explore alternatives with perhaps more interesting game dynamics.

This god should gift potentially any one of these brands, Maybe simple ice and fire brands should be upgraded when gifted by the god. Flash freeze and Sticky flame could work.

As for an alternative means of delivering the brand; the God can ask you if you want to "infused your weapon with nature" after you gain so much xp/piety with said weapon. Your held weapon then becomes an artifact with one brand and two resistances (other buffs?). un-wielding the weapon returns it to normal.

[sgrunt]

brands

Brands are no longer a part of this proposal.

[Tiktacy]

I'm going to be really blunt, this sounds really boring. God of the elements has so much potential, but this idea seems very bear bones and dry.

Storm shield is pretty boring, not much interaction going on their. I guess you could argue that certain clouds could assist in strategic placement of enemies, but it could also work against you in bottlenecking. Upheaval does sound interesting, but that sort of just sounds like Makhlebs destructive magic in a fancier more flavorful form.

Elemental barrier is... Unique, I guess. The psuodo spines effect sounds kinda cool to me. Elemental adaptation is pretty boring though, Not much interaction going on with it that I can tell. Disaster area is basically like greater destruction from what I can tell, so while being a cool idea, doesn't sound particularly unique(but a little similarity isn't too bad). The final ability is... Really boring, like, I don't see myself ever thinking "wow, I'm so excited to decrease the damage done by cold spells."

I think you are sort of on to something with the upheaval and disaster area abilities, but i Besides that I see no interesting or unique gameplay being introduced here. It needs more than just a few flavorful abilities to be a god worth playing IMO. I think some explanation on the point of the god would be good too, as I could be missing something. I'm sorry if I sounded a little harsh btw, just trying to be really straightforward with my opinion is all.

I think the idea of griggy the thorned is MUCH more interesting. I suggest either fleshing out more interaction or looking more into griggy and then coming back to this afterwards.

[and into]

I like it. Some thoughts/recommendations:

Storm shield sounds good. The cloud spawns should spawn during fights only, perhaps likelihood linked to blocking or repelling attacks via storm shield. The cloud spawning is what would make the ability interesting tactically and thus should be a central feature. So I would say Qazlal should help protect you against the clouds he generates. (Maybe not immunity, but no item dest and reduced damage for you.) At high piety you could then make cloud spawning the major tactical feature of the god, both passively through storm shield and actively through upheaval and disaster.

Other than that, the resistance pick at max piety is a good capstone and elemental adaptation sounds good.

The only effect that perhaps seems less interesting to me is elemental barrier. Perhaps a better direction would be an active ability ("Raging Storm" or some such) that temporarily makes your storm shield more offense-oriented. Piety and MP cost, you lose your SH from storm shield and no longer spawn clouds for duration, plus you suffer a bit of elemental damage each turn, but deal good damage to adjacent enemies each turn for duration. Does more damage the more enemies are around you, but piety cost also goes a bit higher then. Give it a short cool down after which your storm shield is restored.

[TeshiAlair]

I think to make the retaliation effect more interesting, it could be a smite-targeted cloud on whatever hit you. So, a centaur shoots you with a flaming arrow, now theres a fire cloud in their pack.

[sgrunt]

For those of you not overly distracted by the tournament, I'm in the process of implementing this. If a better *** idea comes forward, I'll probably use that, but for now it is Elemental Barrier more or less as written.

Storm Shield is always active, but clouds are set up to try to spawn in such a fashion that it doesn't block autoexplore; in practice this means it mostly happens in open areas.

There are some provisions for divine retribution in there as well; more ideas would be welcome.

[Tiktacy]

For those of you not overly distracted by the tournament, I'm in the process of implementing this. If a better *** idea comes forward, I'll probably use that, but for now it is Elemental Barrier more or less as written.

Storm Shield is always active, but clouds are set up to try to spawn in such a fashion that it doesn't block autoexplore; in practice this means it mostly happens in open areas.

There are some provisions for divine retribution in there as well; more ideas would be welcome.

Natures summoning: Creates a creature who hold a natural affinity with the element you are most attuned to. This ally will never disappear unless it is killed or you have more than 4 at one time. Cost is 20% of piety, the power is based on the amount of piety used and the players invocations.

Examples: being well attuned to ice may grant you an ice beast, a similicrum, a frost giant, a water elemental, or an ice dragon. Being well attuned to earth may grant golems, treants, or steel dragons. And so on.

[sgrunt]

Natures summoning

I can't picture this working - your storm clouds basically preclude having any significant degree of ally play without some degree of work to have them avoid clouds. I suppose it's possible, just tricky.

[Tiktacy]

Natures summoning

I can't picture this working - your storm clouds basically preclude having any significant degree of ally play without some degree of work to have them avoid clouds. I suppose it's possible, just tricky.

Maybe you can make the storm clouds only affect non-allied creatures? If you would ever want people to be able to use summons, that is something that might be worth considering anyway.

[Bloax]

The god could dislike you destroying clouds (like fire/icebolting ice/fire clouds), just for a little flavour.
It might also be a better idea that you gain piety through killing things - but you gain (substantially) more by killing them with elemental damage.
Because elemental brands aren't the easiest to come by (early on), and killing things with that +1 hand axe of freezing instead of your +5 battleaxe just to get some piety would be silly.

I like the idea so far though.

[sgrunt]

Here's an alternate version of the god which grants Elemental Servants as a 3* ability - you're gifted up to four servants, one for each element, sort of similar to Yred's undead servants (complete with recall). It could probably use some further refinement re cloud interaction, and something to distinguish it from the other ally gods.

EDIT: Another implementation with a different 3* ability which just came to mind: Elemental Force, wherein a proportion of your storm clouds (1/100 at 3* piety up to 1/20 at 6* piety) are short-lived elementals instead (duration being the same as Summon Hydra hydras). This seems more plausible as an ability than either of the other two candidates so far.

[dpeg]

Piety gain: killing with prescribed methods is always problematic. You can try to cut on kill-abuse (work down monster with preferred method X, then deliver the killing blow with god-demanded method Y) by checking how much HP method Y deducted. But it's still a clumsy mechanic!
If you want to do this right, the conceptual way ---in my opinion--- is to simply put a conduct: all non-elemental forms of damage are considered evil. Note that it's a transparent mechanic: bad weapons/spells/wands are coloured.
If doing this, players should get immediate access to a elemental-branded weapon upon worship (either as a gift, or as an immediate branding power etc.)

Storm Shield: This is good! We could make travel/exploration easy by saying that the player can walk through (i.e. swap positions with) storm clouds. (This might be too strong; could counteract by clouds generally placed in their natural habitat: open space.)

Elemental Adaptation is great. I assume that the temporary resistances would be listed on the screen, and in two colours (to indicate when it's going out again)?

Upheaval, Elemental Barrier, Disaster Area are all alright, although they don't strike me as outstanding (no problem with that: not all things can be ).

One-off power for permanent resistance: this is of course nice for the player, but perhaps we can come up with something more interesting.

Elemental Force is a really good idea. This is supposedly an active ability which will turn (some? all?) clouds into elementals, right?

Some more random ideas:
When I saw the label "elemental barrier", I immediately thought of ring of flames. Granted, that's already a spell, but having elemtental versions of this could be very interesting, in my opinion. So I suggest an active ability: Elemental Ring, where the element could be determined randomly, or from the player's ***** element choice, or still otherwise.

Since the trademark power (and visual key) is running around with storm clouds, I suggest to expand on their use with god powers. Elemental Force already does this, which is why it's so great. But another active ability in that vein could be:
Impending Storm: active power, increases size and strenght of existing storm clouds.

[and into]

Perhaps a bit over-defensive, but I've split off the naming/bikeshedding posts into a new thread in GDD. If you want to discuss names for this proposed god, go there.

Please use this thread for substantial feedback about sgrunt's god proposal—mechanics, new ideas for abilities, piety gain, etc.

No disrespect to bisonbisonbison and roctavian intended, whose posts were not distracting or bad; however, several other god threads have been really badly derailed by long discussions of naming, and I think sgrunt still wants more meaningful feedback before we get around to titles, so I split off those posts to nip that possibility in the bud.

Thank you.

[JARG]

I really like the elemental theme! Especially the clouds/storms. If you're willing to include Elemental Earth I have an idea... (liquefaction and shatter both would be good ways to introduce a seismic event imo)

***** Cataclysm: Qazlal protects(or not! whatever is more fun) you in (transparent?) walls that rise from the ground in preparation for the impending cataclysm. Walls rise up from the ground's upheaval, only to shatter. The ground itself cracks leaving shafts, lava, or water. After the cataclysm passes, the walls around you liquify as you witness the destruction left in it's wake. Similar to Corrupt, but without the allies, Cataclysm would create a line through the level, representing a fault line.

Wrath could include liquifaction just under the player.
Water is a cool element as well but it's already kind of represented by Fedhas.


Cloud spawning: love it. However I'd suggest that it has some alternate mechanics. Rather than spawn randomly, if it spawned in a pattern such a hurricane(Coriolis effect), the player could try to land it on enemies with creative positioning. //However, increasing the radius at which it might spawn creates more possiblities for the RNG...
Alternatively, it could spawn them smite targeted at enemies occasionally(as per % chance based on piety, or some other criteria). The idea of: "The storm god smote your enemy!" An inbuilt downside of such a powerful passive could be that it'd only grant partial experience as if an ally killed them.

Elemental force sounds really fun, scaling based on how many clouds there happen to be.
Impending storm seems cool too, especially if it's over a duration such that new clouds that spawn would have a build up then explode into a raging storm.

In regards to something more interesting than permanent resistance... How about this: ****** (Passive?) Superconductor: Like a Faraday Cage, electricity and/or other elemental energies flow around you. Elemental damage on you is subject to a SH check on your Storm Shield, if you pass, damage is prevented and you instead get a buff("Charged") or the damage spawns a cloud on the enemy offender. (the buff is better vs immune enemies, but I don't know what the buffs would be... levitation,switfness, might/slaying, restoring mana, etc?)

[crate]

and at high piety also gains RMsl/DMsl (probably ***/***** respectively; thanks reaver)

so it should be well-known by now how much I hate rmsl/dmsl as spells, but I like them as a god-provided defensive buff. If this gets implemented can the spells be removed?

[tasonir]

repel/defect missiles are a lot better now that it's base on charges than duration, imho. Still something you cast fairly often, but that's fine by me. I think other buffs should try to work this way, like regeneration for example.

[sgrunt]

It seems the major concern that basically everyone has pointed out about this is that piety gain based on elemental kills is problematic and possibly scummy as written. For the moment, here's an implementation with plain piety-on-(collateral-)kills pending a better method of piety gain. There are a couple of extra goodies in there (thanks to roctavian for the altar tile!), but it's otherwise the same as the version with Elemental Force.

The original post now reflects this version of the god if you want an idea of how it's implemented.

[Quazifuji]

I like dpeg's idea of turning elemental force into an active. Getting random temporary pets is interesting but it sounds like it might sometimes just be annoying or useless or hard to take advantage of. Being able to turn all (or some) of your clouds into pets as an active could be a cool and useful ability, though. Granted, summoning a bunch of temporary minions as a god power is already done by Makhleb, and summoning a bunch of elementals is already done by the evokers, while random pet summoning is more unique. But I'm questioning how fun/useful random pets would be.

[sgrunt]

Now with Elemental Force as an active ability.

I also nudged the name (rip "the"; thanks to roctavian for the suggestion).

[johlstei]

That sounds like a really fun ability to use with freezing cloud.

[nicolae]

hell yeah stormgod

Likes: invoking the elemental forces - i.e. killing enemies.

Dislikes: inactivity. (nb: corpse-violating magic has been removed from here pending better ideas)

It really is kind of a pain thinking up conducts and piety rules for gods that weren't designed around them... What sorts of things might a god of natural disasters hate? If only Crawl had trailer parks.
What about this: Qazlal appreciates widespread disaster, so followers gain more piety for killing multiple monsters at once, or at least within a small window of time, more than you would get from just their individual piety contributions. This would encourage players to build piety by dealing with crowds instead of picking off monsters one by one, and the defensive bonuses would help them do so. Possibly, at high piety levels, Qazlal doesn't even notice if you kill a monster singly. (I feel like this or something like it has been suggested for other gods in the past, though I can't remember which ones, nor what sorts of criticism the idea got then.)

**: Upheaval (active, MP/piety): Cause a local natural disturbance; possibilities include storm clouds, eruptions of magma (convert a few tiles to lava and blast things nearby for magma damage), earthquakes (localised Shatter-type effect), blizzards (ice damage + flash freeze), etc. The area of effect is confined to a small area, enough to hit one or two targets (see Disaster Area below).

Idea for a form of Upheaval: Microburst, does damage and pushes enemies away from yourself/a given location (depending on how it's targeted).

Edit: I'm playing around with the experimental Qazlal. Is it intentional that you can trigger elemental adaptation by walking into your own clouds?

Edit 2: Speaking of the clouds, do they feel kind of spammy to anyone else? They don't really feel like a coherent storm or event, just a bunch of random clouds. What if the type of cloud you generate changes over time, so that for twenty turns or so you generate only thunderclouds, then it starts shifting to flaming clouds for a little bit, then to freezing, etc., so it feels like you're surrounded by a series of natural disasters occuring one after the other constantly rather than a weird mishmash.

[sgrunt]

A couple of adjustments I just made (you could be playing with this god on the gods branch of cbro right now, for the record): you can displace your own clouds, and clouds don't generate on firewood (this should solve some of the residual autoexplore / spamminess issues).

[ackack]

A couple of adjustments I just made (you could be playing with this god on the gods branch of cbro right now, for the record): you can displace your own clouds, and clouds don't generate on firewood (this should solve some of the residual autoexplore / spamminess issues).

The displacing your own clouds is essential as currently formulated.

Based on my impressions of about an hour of play up through most of Lair, this god seems very strong. The purely defensive aspects (you appear to get something like a regular shield worth of SH by 6*, rmsl/dmsl, the resistances) are already quite good. Add to this the cloud bomb that you become at high piety and it's pretty nuts. I haven't even dipped into the invocations yet.

On that note, I think keeping cloud spawns as an invocation might be better. It seems to me that passive cloud spawning encourages things like find a pack of yaks and then Benny Hill around the level until they've been randomly bombed enough times. That would get old fast.

[khalil]

One thing: I feel that allies should also displace your clouds, as having half your zombies die by walking through your clouds really sucks.

[archaeo]

I enjoyed playing around with this god and I think it has the potential to be really cool. But the current cloud spam really is quite distracting; in tiles, it adds a whole new level of busyness to maps, and I found myself overlooking monsters sometimes because they got lost among all the clouds.

I'm not sure what the answer to this issue is. I kind of like the idea of a perma-quasi-tornado or ring of fire effect, but I bet that would be too cheesy. An invocable cloud effect doesn't seem like the answer either. I rather enjoy the idea of becoming a moving bank of storm clouds, but I'm not sure how that'd translate mechanically.

[nicolae]

I enjoyed playing around with this god and I think it has the potential to be really cool. But the current cloud spam really is quite distracting; in tiles, it adds a whole new level of busyness to maps, and I found myself overlooking monsters sometimes because they got lost among all the clouds.

I'm not sure what the answer to this issue is. I kind of like the idea of a perma-quasi-tornado or ring of fire effect, but I bet that would be too cheesy. An invocable cloud effect doesn't seem like the answer either. I rather enjoy the idea of becoming a moving bank of storm clouds, but I'm not sure how that'd translate mechanically.

Hmmm... what about: Clouds only generate 1 or 2 tiles away from you, and you have to stay in one place for a few turns for the effect to catch up to you and spread out (to the limits of your piety-based storm radius), so while you're moving there's not as much spam.

Or: Clouds only ever generate 1 or 2 tiles away from you, and with increasing piety, the density of clouds increases and not their radius.

[sgrunt]

Clouds only ever generate 1 or 2 tiles away from you, and with increasing piety, the density of clouds increases and not their radius.

This seems close enough to my original ideas that I think I'm going to give it a try; except for the small radius, this is already how it works anyway.

EDIT: Now playable online.

[Bloax]

I've mentioned it in IRC, but I do think the density of clouds in this smaller radius is far too low - even at 6*, which is disappointing seeing as it was quite the chaotic lightshow of clouds before this limit.

[nicolae]

I've mentioned it in IRC, but I do think the density of clouds in this smaller radius is far too low - even at 6*, which is disappointing seeing as it was quite the chaotic lightshow of clouds before this limit.

I think that if the density of clouds near you gets too dense, monsters simply won't step adjacent to you at all, which is probably way too good a divine bonus.

[sgrunt]

Also, getting rid of the dazzling and confusing light show is part of the point of the exercise.

In other news, you now generate as much noise as you'd expect to make up for less thunder clouds.

[wizzzargh]

God seems to interact well with ranged combat- retreating into your own clouds either makes enemies suffer to fight you, or eat a lot more hits

on the other hand, I'm not sure if the cloud displacement is working as intended when you get placed into an enemy cloud- though I could've played better here, it seems possible to become trapped by your own death clouds in certain situations

Screen shot 2014-05-03 at 1.48.22 PM.png (329.61 KiB) Viewed 25572 times

[sgrunt]

You can only displace a cloud when you are not standing in a cloud.

You were standing in catlobe breath, and you were warned about entering the cloud...

[wizzzargh]

Yeah, I know I was a dumbass, but I'm just wondering if it's working as intended if a player can be hit with a cloud of miasma or whatever, but be unable to move out of it because they're surrounded by thunderclouds?

[Abominae]

Are 'Sparse Dust Clouds' intended to do nothing? They cause no damage, are not displaced by the PC, and seem to have zero effect at the moment.

[nicolae]

Are 'Sparse Dust Clouds' intended to do nothing? They cause no damage, are not displaced by the PC, and seem to have zero effect at the moment.

I assume they're there so you have a source of earth elementals when you use Elemental Force.

[Wahaha]

In the early game the clouds let you walk away from anything by blocking off corridors, even if the monster is adjacent. This is the most useful part of the ability.
Polearms are excellent because you can walk away until a monster is blocked by a cloud, and hit the monster safely. To kill some monsters like hydras I kited them in circles until they died from cloud damage and polearm poking.
Playing tiles, I didn't find the clouds distracting or confusing or anything.
Got trampled into my own cloud, not a bad thing, just mentioning it.

Disaster area was really bad. I used it 4 or 5 times against a group of enemies and it rarely hit anything. It hit something two or three times total. It was in an open area. Maybe it's better in a smaller area. Was a complete waste of piety and turns in my case though.

Constant loud noise is a big drawback and I like it.

[Bloax]

Disaster area is barely useful outside of ziggurats, yeah - mostly because it rarely hits things around you as much as it hits things towards the edge of your vision.
Which is why I'm thinking that it could perhaps radiate outwards from your position in some way - in addition to big random explosions.

[Mattchew]

Qazlal is fun.

I started a char playing Gozag and switched to Qaz, what a difference. *Gold* was neat at first, and then got boring. Constant mayhem, on the other hand, is still pretty cool.

Qaz may be overpowered. I blasted through Lair and Orc far easier than I do normally. I did have an amulet of faith and all sorts of other good luck on the character, so I am not sure just how OP Qaz is, but certainly one of the stronger gods.

I did get pushed back into a cloud by an elephant and nearly died from a thunderbolt. I think this is fine, but a bit of a surprise. Wizzargh got a bigger one. Is there a line in the god description hinting at this sort of thing? If not, maybe there should be.

(Clouds now aren't doing as much of my work for me as they did. If nerfs are applied, perhaps the full elemental storm effect could come online slower. I hope it stays mayhem at the high levels, though.)

Mostly agree with other commenters. Upheaval is SO GOOD. Maybe too good. Elemental call is good. Disaster area is not so good, since it doesn't actually hit whatever it was that prompted you to use it. Perhaps good if you have an entire screen full of enemies that all need destroyed, but that's not a scenario I like to hang around in. I'll try it on Vaults 5. Depths, maybe, sometimes. Being noisy as hell is an appropriate drawback and is fun, at least until it kills me.

This one should be a keeper.