Phlegotethis: Food Conduct God

[roctavian]

In the Make Food Interesting thread, I mentioned that the most appropriate way to make the food clock more critical/interesting in Crawl is optionally -- an extra conduct for a god or a species or something, not something that every character has to deal with. A few months back, I had a few ideas about a god that would work for this kind of conduct, but I ultimately didn't pursue it very far. I couldn't think of good powers, and I'm not too crazy about the status affliction that I came up with.

With that said, here's what I had before. Any new ideas would be welcome!

Phlegotethis, the Host

Abstract: This is the god of parasites and those followers who would willingly house them. The holiness of a worshiper is evident in the number or size of parasites housed within his or her body; these parasites make passive attacks that improve as the player gains piety. Phlegotethis also rewards the largesse of a worshiper who nurtures many parasites with divine health.

Altar: has a cornucopia of spoiled food, rife with squirming worms. Alternately, a large glass altar full of worms. The first one is more food-related, the second is a nice abstract that works thematically.

Backstories: There are a couple I've thought of.
---- Elyvilon takes pity on a poor starving creature, embraces it and nurtures it back to health. After some time, Ely discovers the creature has absorbed some of his/her own godhood, and administers to creatures who exploit other life. Elyvilon tears the parasitic god out, throws it away, it eventually grows to become Phlegotethis.
---- Phlegotethis begins as the guardian spirit of a pack of hunter animals, but they become infected with parasites that cause them to suffer and diminish. The parasites begin to worship Phlegotethis, who gradualy transforms to become a god of parasites.

Conduct: Upon joining this god, there is a description of the player swallowing something like a tapeworm. This bestows a permanent "Nausea" status, though in light gray (like perma-flight) rather than brown. This nausea never prevents the player from eating permafood, and does not reduce the nutrition gained from doing so. However, the player can never eat raw chunks in this state.

The only way to increase piety is to feed internal parasites. This is done through an (a)bility that consumes nutrition, rather than through sacrificing permafood directly. This way, carnivores and herbivores won't be able to get around the spirit of this conduct, which is sharing your own food supply. Higher invocations skill would award more piety for nutrition consumption, but it shouldn't improve dramatically.

Piety decays at a rate somewhat slower than player hunger, but faster than other gods. It should decay faster when the player is at a higher piety level, and slower when low. I would like to see players hovering around 3 or 4 piety stars normally, and even be able to explore some floors and branches at 5 or 6, but the latter case should be harder to sustain.

Powers by piety level:

(......) "playername the Verminous Vassal"
   Perma-nausea, rSick, protection from fainting while Starving, (a)bility for increasing piety.

rSick is included at this level because it would – flavor-wise – explain why the player can eat food in a state of nausea and never become sick. It also feels like an appropriate god bonus. Protection from fainting is to encourage players to spend nutrition, and to spend more time in a starving state.

(*.....) "playername the Worm-Wearer"
    Parasite attacks, returning parasite.

Beginning at this first piety star, there would be a chance that the parasite within the player would strike out at nearby enemies. As piety increases, these attacks would happen more frequently (explained as the presence of more parasites within the player's body). These parasites wouldn't take up tiles like summoned creatures, but rather would "leap" sort of like projectiles and inflict a status effect ("parasite" or "infested" or something along those lines). As a status effect, the parasite would make weak attacks on whatever enemy it is on. It would also be able to jump to new targets (leaving one body and entering another, not multiplying), and would disappear after a little while.

The player will be able to reap certain gains by killing enemies who are infected with the "parasite" status effect. This would be described as the parasite returning to the player's body and bringing strength from the defeated enemy. There would initially be just a small percentage chance of a bonus, and with a small magnitude of effect, but at higher levels of piety (or with greater invocation skill?) the player should experience this effect more frequently.

In this manner, players can gain temporary HP above their maximum, though it should be limited (asymptotically, not a hard cap). I don't know what would be appropriate -- 15% to 30% above max is what I'm thinking. This HP, as well as extra STR/INT/DEX, would decay over no more than a few hundred rounds. This is also what mechanically relates to rRot above.

This is potentially the "signature" ability of this god proposal. I think it could work well mechanically and thematically -- restoring HP slowly after the fact consumes nutrition, so gaining it ahead of time should involve a significant nutrition cost as well. As the player can't control which enemies suffer from the status effect, it would add an interesting dimension of "should I attack this more threatening enemy, or should I attack the one that I could gain some HP from?" The other choice with this god is, "shall I spend more food to get more passive attacks?" and I don't know how much or how little to emphasize it. Perhaps that aspect isn't even needed, and instead this ability just passively inflicts parasitism on enemies in view?

dpeg pointed out that it could be fairly similar to Makhleb's HP on kills, and I think he's got a good point with that. Thoughts? Any other ideas that anyone thinks could be good?

Optional afterthought: Each time a parasite leaves the player's body, piety decreases a little bit. If the player kills the monster before the parasite runs out, the spent piety could be restored. This could be tedious to deal with and might not contribute much, but it would open things up for a later high-piety-level mechanic.

(**....) "playername the Symbiote"
sustAb

sustAb, (and rRot below) are mostly thematic choices. I think they sit well alongside the "returning parasite" power above.

(***...) "Patron of Parasites"
rRot

rRot I thought of because of some time I spent doing volunteer medical work, as maggots have a tendency to consume necrotic tissue and you'll often find that people with maggots have cleaner/less rotted wounds. (Of course, it would be folly to think that maggotsprevent necrosis, but Phlegotethis has divine maggots).

(****..) "Inquilinist"

(*****.) "Colony of Creatures"

(******) "Divine Host"

Overall, the "parasite attack" and "returning parasite" abilities would scale through all piety levels, forming the brunt of this god's offering.

At full piety, I'd love to have something dramatic that really puts the cherry on top -- probably an actual (a)bility rather than a passive effect. A malign gateway-type effect centered on the player, except the long squirming things coming out are parasitic tapeworms rather than tentacles. Instantly pulling all parasites on screen back to the player, having them burst violently from their hosts. An ability which makes every parasite on screen split into two and attack additional enemies. An ability that makes all parasites on screen jump to a single enemy, harming it significantly and harming all the individual hosts a bit.

Wrath: I have no idea. I liked what you said before about the choice to abandon this god and save yourself from starvation -- thus I think I'd like to keep "lose nutrition" out of the wraths list. Probably random nausea, sickness, rotting, and statrotting? Or parasites that show up on enemies and jump to you? More of those malign-gateway-styled tapeworms that I can't stop thinking of now?

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS:

* Germ shield
Looks like a recoloured Flame Ring; affects susceptible enemies at range 2 (i.e. when they touch the ring); provides damage when they enter the ring.

* Throw Pus
Theme: you grab into your infested bowels and throw them at the enemy. Costs some HP, but is effective at spreading the disease. Miasma cloud?

[njvack]

Haven't read past rNausea -- nausea is gone in 0.13. (Hooray!)

[twelwe]

nausea was so bad people came up with gods to get around it

[roctavian]

I'm aware that nausea is gone and thank god, but in that case it is simply "this god prevents players from eating chunks as a conduct"

Edit: there is no form of rNausea mentioned in the OP incidentally, you misunderstood the post. The point was not to get around an awkward hunger mechanic but rather to put a harsher long term limitation on the amount of food available in the game.

[mumra]

I'm aware that nausea is gone and thank god, but in that case it is simply "this god prevents players from eating chunks as a conduct"

Edit: there is no form of rNausea mentioned in the OP incidentally, you misunderstood the post. The point was not to get around an awkward hunger mechanic but rather to put a harsher long term limitation on the amount of food available in the game.

You should also check out yesterday's ##crawl-dev chat about removing chunk eating entirely

(Albeit not something I think is likely to ever happen, but the same was said for victory dancing long ago...)

[njvack]

You should also check out yesterday's ##crawl-dev chat about removing chunk eating entirely

That would be awesome, where do I sign up

[cerebovssquire]

you grab into your infested bowels and throw them at the enemy

I guess the bright side is that I won't be dreaming of giant insects anymore...

[Bloax]

/
Now to read this.

Edit: Well, it's interesting. Though unless there's a substantial difference in parasite efficiency between the higher piety levels, it seems kind of pointless to not float around ~3-4 stars.

If there was an ability to infest some targets that would passively damage and heal you might be an idea though.

[roctavian]

Well, the main problem is that this proposal needs powers above about 3-4 stars, since it's not complete. Also, I think the parasite idea isn't really a good one at this point, because it feels like there's enough status effects already. Finally, the flavor is dubious at best.

Anyways, the chunks thing isn't an important part of the idea. The above god proposal isn't serious, but it's an example of what a nutrition-based god could be like. The main ideas that this proposal hinges on are:

Rapidly-decaying piety: Generally piety is built up on the "strategic" level over thousands of turns, and doesn't tend to drop more than one or two stars at a time. I think it would be interesting to have piety that can be built up to six stars over perhaps a few dozen turns, and that would deplete over perhaps a few hundred.

Burning nutrition for piety: There's an excess of food in the game, and I think players should have the chance to gamble with that. Few people want hunger to be a more important part of the game, but I think the few who come up with crazy hunger/food mechanics are recognizing that there's a big resource that could be used more.

So the question is, what would be a good set of benefits for using nutrition as a tactical resource?
(I know the knee-jerk answer is "high-level conjurations" but I mean what else could we think of?)

[roctavian]

you grab into your infested bowels and throw them at the enemy

I guess the bright side is that I won't be dreaming of giant insects anymore...

For what it's worth, that was dpeg's idea, not mine.

[ebarrett]

Well, at least it's not spider rape.

[khalil]

Idea for a high piety power:
Spawn vermin. All corpses and chunks in the area spawn maggots which attack nearby creatures. If the maggots kill something, than maggots spawn from its corpse as well.
Wrath: You've still got the maggots in you, now they rot your hp, harm your stats, damage you, and other things expected from a tapeworm trying to kill you.
Also, how would this work for:
A: Trolls
B: Mummies.
For trolls not eating chunks is a death sentence, and mummies get free usage of any ability that requires nutrition, so they'd get max piety immediately after joining. That's probably a bit op.
Still, great concept, and I hope it makes it into the game!
EDIT:
Just got another idea, didn't want to double post:
Throw maggots: You throw a bunch of maggots at an enemy, which essentially poisons them. When they die, there's an explosion of maggots. It's basically a smaller scale version of spawn vermin.
EDITEDIT:
Come to think of it, just ban mummies.
Also, lichform is punishable via loosing all your piety, as fluffwise it kills the maggots, and crunchwise it allows for the same abuse as being a mummy.
EDITEDITEDIT
Power 3: spawn swarm.
A bunch of the previously mentioned maggots are summoned, centered around you. This ability would cost piety.
EDITEDITEDITEDIT
Oooh! Another power idea:
Parasitic control: You know how some parasites screw with their host's mind? this is like that. Ray attack, costs piety, charms one monster, power scales with piety.

[dpeg]

As I already said in private communication, I think that the theme and the gameplay backbone of the proposal is promising. Thanks for bringing it up here, roctavian. A bit sad to see the sniffy reactions of the green squad, but we'll go on anyway.

It's been mentioned already, but the piety rule is not about the food clock: the idea is that permafood becomes a resource which allows for quick piety spikes, but you wouldn't be able to sustain very high piety all the time. That's cool because it is novel -- remains to see how interesting this is to play: if you use up rations for branch ends, and that's all, it'd be a bit lackluster. So I hope that there would be also incentive to use up food tactically, like you can do with fruits for Fedhas. (mumra: in particular, this god can work as long as players have to eat permafood, which is probably forever.)

Some more notes: Mummies and vampires may have to be excluded from worship.

Regarding HP gain from killing infected enemies: I like it, and using extension beyond maxHP would make it different enough from what's already there, in my opinion.

An eye-catching, signature ***** active power is nice to have, and the tentacle-like worms would definitely qualify (fx and gameplay). However, I think that the god as proposed is a bit too passive early on (that is, before ***): you gain a small bonus for fighting in close quarters, and a little bit of HP etc. However, there is nothing to help you in tactical situations, which is a crucial part of any god's appeal. For Phlegothetis, I'd advise against an early summon, as that's quite common (Fedhas, Makhleb, Yredelemnul).

An idea for an early-ish tactical power: can make a really fresh corpse rotten and turn into short-lived miasma cloud. (Really fresh = a few turns old, so no carrying, no luring.) The flavour should clear: the god is speeding up decomposition, in order to get the worms crawling.

Another one: instead of a conjuration (which the bowel throwing would be), I like the idea of a contagious effect better. In other words, it'd work only for adjacent monsters. However, the parasites they acquire from your active effort is stronger, and it can pass on to others (like burning sheep). We may or may not be happy with the player standing in a tunnel, touch-infecting the rat in front, and waiting for the disease to reach the ogre at the end of the queue.
If we aren't, here's a rough (and perhaps shoddy) idea for something more elaborate: as in roctavian's proposal, the parasites passively reach out all the time (it's not stated explicitly, but I presume they also do this when you walk by enemies, i.e. unrelated to attacks). Let's say there are three (undisclosed) types of parasites: if a monster catches all three of them, it collapses (think of something bad like curare). By using the active ability, you could contract a parasite type the monster does not yet have, bringing it closer to collapse.

[khalil]

So I hope that there would be also incentive to use up food tactically, like you can do with fruits for Fedhas.

That gives me an idea. An ability that replaces permafood with maggoty <foo>, which can be thrown later to deliver the touch attack plague you mentioned.

[Bim]

I love the idea - it's one of the best god proposals I've read in a while and seems quite balanced but I do agree it needs an early on tactical power as it seems far too passive without the benefits of Ash or Sif. However, I do love the idea of a sort of 'passively damaging' god/play style, which gradually weakens/takes down the health of many enemies at once.

I think the contagious effect is fantastic and would be great thematically - I feel the best way around the corridoring is to have the effect not directly hp damaging - a weakness effect or a stunning/making them miss a turn or two (as they're too sick) could be good, although it could also take off a bit of health as well without breaking the balance too much. I worry about Dpeg's proposal for the three parasites causing collapse (I know it was rough) as that seems as though it might get a bit tedious/convoluted but I can imagine it could work well if simplified.

Lastly, great to see a melee focussed god which isn't 'MOAR WEAPONS AND AMMO'.

[khalil]

Lastly, great to see a melee focussed god which isn't 'MOAR WEAPONS AND AMMO'.

Same. If this gets in, I might just start playing melee just to try it out.

[Velikolepni]

I like the idea, but does it really need to have such a harsh code of conduct and have a rapidly decaying piety on top?

[roctavian]

Yes, because the idea isn't to roll around with max piety at all times, but instead to burn a lot of nutrition for piety in emergencies or other significant fights. As others have noted, players might end up just hoarding their food for branch ends et al and only use high-piety powers then -- which is undesirable -- consequently it'd take some tweaking to determine how fast players should be able to increase their piety, how long it should last before decaying, and how much nutrition it would really take to hit the various power breakpoints. I do think there's a point where the powers are attractive enough but the cost is neither too strict nor too lenient, that the choice to use abilities will be interesting. I don't have a lot of time this week to add more to the discussion but I'll make a longer post with some more ideas/discussion soon.

[Bim]

I'd prefer abilities using up a lot of piety rather than it decaying quickly over time. I feel having to constantly top it up/worry about it decaying could get a bit tedious and may indeed lend itself to hoarding for branch ends.

[njvack]

As I already said in private communication, I think that the theme and the gameplay backbone of the proposal is promising. Thanks for bringing it up here, roctavian. A bit sad to see the sniffy reactions of the green squad, but we'll go on anyway.

Too little sleep and god proposal thread fatigue led me to post without reading carefully; I apologize.

I genuinely would welcome the end of chunk eating, though.

This said, the idea of food as a resource and a god with a quickly-changing piety clock are intriguing. I agree with roctavian; the piety issues are balance-able.

[khalil]

Too little sleep and god proposal thread fatigue led me to post without reading carefully; I apologize.

Given that most god suggestions make my ideas look like the best thing since best things, it's understandable.

[roctavian]

Okay! So, conduct set aside for the moment, what sort of powers could be interesting and useful for a god that asks for a nutrition investment like this?

To start with, I would avoid the following:

1) Ranged damage that behave like typical conjurations -- using up nutrition to blast at a distance is exactly what conjurations do, and also what Makhleb does, and we don't need a third flavor of this. Damage at range is still open, it should just be different.

2) Summons of any form -- as flavorful as any "call some grubs into being"-styled ability would be, too many gods use summons already.

3) Simple Buffing -- again, other gods have covered this enough. By simple, I mean numerical bonuses to skills or damage or stats or the like.

Originally I wanted to stay away from active abilities, until perhaps the highest levels of piety, for the simplicity of having just one active ability: "use up nutrition for piety," after which all the bonuses would be passive effects, like the parasites from the original post. The problem with this approach is the lack of an "oh shit" button which can leverage the player out of bad situations -- berserking, heroism, bend space, et cetera.

The importance of this ability is two-fold. A useful ability will make the god attractive, but a useful ability that scales well with piety would make the prospect of using up nutrition attractive in a variety of situations. If the god has a low-level "oh shit" power and a high level "go nova" power, it would invariably only be useful in branch-end-style challenges. So a power should be able to scale well.

Returning for a moment to the original proposal:

    Parasite attacks, returning parasite.

Beginning at this first piety star, there would be a chance that the parasite within the player would strike out at nearby enemies. As piety increases, these attacks would happen more frequently (explained as the presence of more parasites within the player's body) ...

(killing monsters affected by parasites) In this manner, players can gain temporary HP above their maximum, though it should be limited (asymptotically, not a hard cap). I don't know what would be appropriate -- 15% to 30% above max is what I'm thinking. This HP, as well as extra STR/INT/DEX, would decay over no more than a few hundred rounds. This is also what mechanically relates to rRot above.

This is potentially the "signature" ability of this god proposal. I think it could work well mechanically and thematically -- restoring HP slowly after the fact consumes nutrition, so gaining it ahead of time should involve a significant nutrition cost as well. As the player can't control which enemies suffer from the status effect, it would add an interesting dimension of "should I attack this more threatening enemy, or should I attack the one that I could gain some HP from?" The other choice with this god is, "shall I spend more food to get more passive attacks?"

I originally supposed a "parasite" status effect, but I'm not so sure about it now. Instead, at one piety star, I think the player should gain a worm that behaves like a kraken tentacle/eldritch tentacle that attacks on its own as a passive ability. As an active one, the player can transfer it to an enemy's body, which should hamper said enemy's movement or damage, and should make that enemy the origin point for the worm attacks on other creatures. When that creature dies, the worm returns to the player's body.

At higher levels of piety, more worms can be supported passively, which also means more enemies can be infested. As a starting point suggestion, perhaps one worm per piety star? As a capstone ability, the god allows you to suddenly create a whole set of six temporary worms in a single enemy, dealing a lot of damage and not counting toward the player's normal total -- these, however, go away when the targeted enemy is killed.

I still like the idea of going above maxHP, and thought of another idea: worms passively eat corpses and add to the player's max HP, depending on the HD of the corpse and capping depending on piety, scaling up to a cap of +15% or +20% maxHP at six stars of piety. This shouldn't lead to degenerate behavior if the worms are aggressive enough at eating corpses. It isn't perfect, because I'd still like a dependable way for this god to offer higher maxHP at times that aren't post-fight, which makes the ability just like Mahkleb's. This isn't an essential idea and could be cut from the rest of the proposal if it doesn't work.

Thoughts?

[khalil]

Woudn't the corpses thing be useless in undead branches, lair, and other such places?
There'd probably have to be some non-corpsey powers for use in the extended game.

[roctavian]

The corpse thing is pretty minor, and that feature could be removed for other reasons as well (too similar in practice to Makhleb health-on-kills).