Sif Muna is a god very popular with spellcasters because the abities are very reliable and useful. However, she is also unpopular with designers because the abilities are all bland (neither amnesia nor channeling nor book gifts are unique) and there is no theme to speak of. There are a number of proposals on how to improve the god. — dpeg 2011-09-19 21:09
Sif Muna removes the two basic problems of any spellcaster in the most simplistic manner: How to obtain spells, and how to get rid of them? The piety system being too plain (piety gain for training magical skills) is part if the problem.
The issue is old, not new: 2876082 by dpeg, 2811313 by brannock and 1962498 by nrook.
By gammafunk and dpeg. See also this forum thread — 2014-09-24 21:18
Keep as an active power, but add a small piety cost and increase the food cost. The amount of MP gained can go up a bit.
Rationale: channeling is an interesting active power, but is annoying to use after combat. The change wants to keep the former, and disincentivise the latter.
Sif helps with increasing the max MP cap. (By Hurkyl.)
(Passive Int increase has also been mentioned, but I like increased max MP better: stat increases already features in Zin and Cheibriados; you can get Int boosts from items, whereas overriding the max MP cap is a solitary, strong effect; this effect makes channeling more relevant in combat.)
Sif doesn't need another active ability for power concerns (the god is strong and works well) but there are reasons to add one nonetheless: providing choices (currently, Sif provides tools, but no new decisions), and providing opportunities to use piety. There are a number of ideas for an active, late-ish power. Nothing is settled at this time:
Some aspects of Sif get complained but are not the target of this:
This is for much later. The concept:
There is an obvious parameter here: how many books Sif will lend you at the same time. The above uses just one book, but it could easily be two or three.
Some consequences:
Now there is definitely demand for a general casting god. What follows is not a proposal for a Sif Muna overhaul, but a collection of ideas on how to modify Sif Muna, keeping that objective but making the whole affair cooler and more flavourful (instead of just nerfing, which would be pretty easy).
The book gifts leave something to be desired: you amass them and that's it.
However, neither of these lends itself to piety-cost free use as the current Channel Energy does. (Whether that's good or bad depends on how useful Invocations are supposed to be for Sif Muna.) There was the idea to have Sif use Spellcasting, similar to Nemelex using Evocations.
Sif Muna makes not much use of Invocation otherwise, so that makes a lot of sense. — t0d 2011-05-26 11:41
Instead of tweaking Sif, perhaps just go all out and make her a god designed specifically for pure casters; support spellcasting very heavily, but punish 'uncultured, boorish' physical attacks with penance. The following ideas are probably horribly unbalanced, but I'll throw them out there in case something good can be made of them:
Comments:
My preferrence: replace SA spell with an item; unread a book; Sif builds a RANDOMLY GENERATED(not a single guaranteed spell from Sif!) library, and you can read more as your piety increases. Sif Muna gifts books earlier than she now does but generally gifts much less. Sif Munites gain piety much more slowly than they are now, making Sif a more long term God even with reduced wrath effect. — ahyangyi 2010-02-23 14:12
I am actually not a fan of the added channeling ability. This makes Sif more of a spellcasting god, rather than a god of knowledge and magic. Vehumet is for spellcasting power, and even already has an ability which is extremely similar to channeling. I'd like to see Channeling replaced for Sif by adding 1 spell slot every 2 spellcasting levels, which when lost (by switching gods) automatically cause selective amnesia on the highest power spells first, which would generally not be the ones the player wants to lose. In my opinion, this fits much better with the knowledge theme of Sif, and makes all of those spellbooks a bit more meaningful. — tromboneandrew
I thought it would be a better idea to have the proposed Stealth God gift Enchantments/Translocation books, Jiyva gift Transmutation books, and then remove Sif Muna. This will give players the ability to gain any spell in the game via God worship but they actually have to make a choice more intersting than “Pick Sif and get all spells”. Enchantment/Translocation makes sense for a stealth god thematically (escape, infiltration, and nabbing items). Likewise Jiyva would encourage players to change their shape via Transmutation spellbooks. What do you think? – wesleyshaver
Sif muna could have the following abilities:
I like the amnesia thing–common scrolls for the plebians, and the existing ability unchanged for Sif Munites as an alternative (though borrowing changes the context enough that while mechanically it's the same thing, practically forgetting spells means something much different to her followers). I also like the borrowing idea. I'm a little confused why everyone keeps saying that the randart books should be permanent while the normal books are loans — shouldn't it be the other way around? Sif Muna is willing to part with her more common, mundane books for her loyal followers, but will only grant her own special tomes temporarily. Besides, it seems more fitting that the transient, borrowed spells should be the ones that are thrown together in randomized books while the permanent ones are the books you could already find if lucky. With the borrowing system in place, anything else like that shop-window like “browsing” seems redundant and unnecessary. I also really like the idea of binding one spell from one of your spellbooks to invocations instead of spellcasting, consuming piety instead of MP and relying on invocations rather than spellcasting and your EVP; it provides lots of interesting choices. Do you bind an emergency spell that you want to be able to access instantly without even needing to spend time on channeling, or a spell from a school that you didn't train in but want anyways (for fairness sake, it should use the EXP you've dumped into invocations but adjust it as if your race had the same invocations aptitude that it has in that school)? This should have the requirement that you can't cast the spell unless you have as many dots of piety as its spell level (and thus can't even put anything above level 6 in that slot–including necromutation, though extension is doable–though if you pick extension and use it a lot you'll run out of piety). Making assignment to this slot a one-time thing, like the enchantments certain gods put on weapons or Zin's mutation curing, seems sensible, though making it simply expensive to change is ok too. — Brickman 2010-09-20 06:38
Proposal by mumra.
This attempts to completely rework Sif based on the “Librarian” theme, as well as a number of opinions and suggestions I have seen.
The major problem with Sif lies in being somewhat boring and predictable; and lacking in flavour, especially compared to some newer gods. Sif's powers are all about reducing variance which is perhaps not entirely desirable in a game like Crawl. Additionally, none of the powers are particularly connected to a “librarian” theme except the book gifts.
My proposal involves removing all the existing powers (although if the replacements are considered too weak, one or two of them could be brought back in, notably Selective Amnesia and/or Miscast Protection since they are both marginally learning-related, which a librarian would surely approve of). Additionally I propose removing the existing piety gain mechanism (which simply encourages casters to do what they would anyway; i.e. train up their skills - and implies a theoretical situation where it's impossible to gain any more piety once your skills are maxed).
The “librarian” character taken to its conclusion gives us two basic themes in a reworked Sif:
Surely the #1 thing that all librarians hate most (even more so than books being returned late!) is people making noise in their library. This is a core theme of my proposal to give Sif a stronger “librarian” character; it also brings the god to a slightly different target market - suitable for stealthy and stabby characters rather than blasty (Vehumet) type characters.
Sif's main task for worshippers is to find and donate books to her library. This can be done by standing over a book and pressing the 'p' key.
This will award piety; but will also gradually grant access to Sif's complete library (including spells you may not have found).
I propose a library mechanic as follows:
Note: This provides a semi-randomised library that slowly builds up from lowest to highest level spells (still with a chance of getting higher-level ones). But it might still be a bit too predictable, and maybe there should be some further random variation in sometimes making higher-level spells available (and perhaps not all of the lower-level ones immediately). However, as I've proposed will be much easier to implement, maybe the available spells could be fuzzed later if this didn't work out. There will also be a nice bonus in that when you find a really high-level book that your character couldn't possibly use yet, you get to unlock some new lower-level spells that could actually be useful at the current time.
Piety | Ability |
---|---|
* | Donate book ('p') |
* | Access library |
** | Amnesia? |
*** | Miscast protection? |
**** | Animate Spellbook The “Tukima's Dance” of spellbooks; the book starts flying around and casting its spells at enemies (or buffing you, e.g. a book containing Haste). How Sif might react to an animated book casting noisy spells is undecided (perhaps an exception is made in this one case). If the book is one you've borrowed from Sif, you must make sure to retrieve it afterwards, or suffer late fees! |
***** | Silence other Smite-targets a low-radius and short duration silence field on “acceptable” monsters. Acceptable meaning anything on Sif's hit list of noisy/brash monsters (e.g. ogres, religious orcs, anything that's just shouted or cast a noisy conjurations). Has a cool-down and a piety cost so you can't simply shut down high level threats for anything more than a few turns. |
****** | Wordless casting Allows you to cast spells whilst silenced. Allows you to cast noisy conjurations without a piety hit. Also has cool-down and piety cost. Could be reworked as a passive ability, with a piety cost every time you use it (cost scales with the power of the spell cast). |
Note: the 5- and 6-star abilities are very powerful and fit very nicely with the “quiet” theme. I don't know if any further abilities (other than the spell library) are truly needed. Still, Animate Spellbook could be fun and of course some existing powers could be kept.
Conduct | Description |
---|---|
Donating books | Described above |
Be Quiet | Based on the spell noise function, a formula like (25 * min(0, (spell_noise - 5)) / (spell_level + 1)) would result in: 10 piety for level 9 Conjurations, 4 piety for level 9 Poison or Air, 0 piety for level 9 other; 8 piety for level 8 Conj; down to 4 piety for level 6 Conj, no piety loss for any spell level 5 or lower. Identified wands, cards, etc. would need similarly factoring. Melee noise, ally noise; these would all be a mild annoyance. Of course, it's still possible to use high-level spells occasionally, you just have to manage your piety (or use the 6* ability). However, you will gain piety for killing noisy monsters (not when they're silenced). Another simpler option would be to just give Sif an “excluded” list (similar to Vehumet's “supported” list), since as pointed out by elliptic on IRC, spell noise is handled by special casing for a large number of spells and can't be determined simply from spell data (this could do with look at anyway, perhaps). |
Preserve spellbooks | Same as current, destroying spellbooks is severely frowned upon. |
Timely return | Return borrowed books on time; described above. |
The “Be Quiet” conduct is very excessive here. 20 piety is *huge*. Piety maxes out at 200, although ****** is something like 160. In other words you're proposing a >10% piety loss just for casting a level 9 spell! Since level 9 spells are ones you'd want to cast frequently, this penalty means there's no point in casting these spells at all (the skill investment for them is simply too high to be worth the piety cost). You might as well give penance for them, or even excommunication. The “Wordless casting” power helps a bit, but it still works out to a piety cost for casting spells… likely not worth it.
With that said, I dislike the idea of having a piety cost for “noisy” actions. Sif muna should not give you spells and then heavily disapprove of them. It would be better if sif muna simply did not give these spells at all. But that also seems difficult to justify.
As it is, I think under this proposal the best strategy would be to abandon sif muna if you want to cast high level spells. Or, you could simply avoid sif in the first place if you want high level magic… but in that case, what's the point of a caster god? Right now, this sif proposal sounds like a god that gives you a bunch of spells, and then punishes you for using most of them.
I think you have good ideas here, though. This conduct is the only thing I have a serious issue with. — evilmike 2011-09-19 22:44
The numbers have been toned down, but let me just clarify: Firstly, this is intended to distinguish Sif a little more from the “big guns” spellcaster Vehumet … if all you want to do is cast Foo Storm, Vehumet should be the way to go. Secondly, don't underestimate the high piety silence abilities. This means in reality that whilst you can't use the high explosive spells as much, you can on the occasions when you use them do so without alerting the rest of the level, as well as being able to shut down other spellcasters … actually making those spells somewhat more useful and powerful than under normal circumstances … you just can't spam them as often. — mumra 2011-09-19 22:58
A god for pure casters whose main conduct is to not cast spells. Really. Let's stop at it.
Remember that Sif's piety gain is exactly the opposite – reward for casting spells. And before training changes went in, it was exactly that, just capped at available xp to cure abuse of sitting in a corner and casting repeatedly we had too much of before.
If anything, she should reward casting big spells above cantrips, not the other way around. — KiloByte 2011-09-19 23:07
I did open the proposal stating that I was suggesting a very different theme to Sif. If “pure caster” is an unchangeable aspect of Sif then fair enough, these changes are not appropriate (although perhaps the library mechanic still has potential). Still, if Sif needs adapting to be more interesting, then maybe a change of character could add more depth. Besides; the proposal does not stop you casting big spells; it just introduces a cost for it, and forces the player to come up with tactics other than “spam level 9 spell, channel and repeat”. Vehumet is the god that should reward casting big spells (and does). Sif is about depth and variety of knowledge, not necessarily specialisation or power. — mumra 2011-09-20 00:44
I think the proposal has a lot of potential. The silent casting power would just have to be cheap enough to be of tactical relevance. I like that you'd be casting the most noisy spells in short burts rather than spamming them all the time. Themewise, even the librarian will accept that outdoors there are calling for (noisy) action.
So on one hand, we want silent casting to be expensive enough to make you not spam it. On the other hand, we want to make it cheap enough to be used in all branch ends (say). I believe a value fitting these conditions can be found. Heck, I believe it could even be done with an approach completely bypassing Silent Casting. You'd have some piety hit for loud spells but much less than in the original proposal. The appeal of the Silent Casting idea is that it would have some tactical implications.
Regarding piety: Gain for casting means that all xp spent in Dodging and Stealth (to pick the two most important) is lost on piety. (Doesn't matter much in practice, though.) Piety for exploration plus sacrificing books with piety hits for noises sounds more interesting, at least to me.
On audience: If you're interested in characters who are not pure casters then additional uses of books are good. Dancing Books is a bit bland, but a good start. There could be a second power.
Regarding book sacrifices: I like that you can learn spells from the book before sacrificing it. This increases flexibility quite a lot, in my opinion. (This effect is the sole reason why Sif might want to keep Amnesia, in my opinion.) What about decreasing piety gain (for exploration) for all books seen but not sacrificed? (No matter whether the books is left untouched on the ground or carried or stashed away.) The librarian wants all books after all. This would put more emphasis on spell selection, you may not want to keep a copy of Annihilations in your stash (and also helps god switching abuse — the god should not take away spells you've learned from the library, by the way). — dpeg 2011-09-19 23:41
I've adjusted the piety loss formula to be a little more forgiving; I'm positive it can all be balanced thru testing in any case.
My intent was that the old piety-for-training would go; I didn't mean to indicate piety for exploration (I realise it sounded like that) - although that would be ok, it is going to be used by a number of other gods. If piety gain for stopping noise (i.e. by killing noisy monsters) isn't a good thing - and I realise there are issues with any piety-for-kills mechanic - then maybe something new is needed.
An interesting thing to note about this Sif is that she'd make a good late-game switch; when you've built up a nice pile of books but haven't quite found the spells you need, you could make the switch and donate all your books to get full piety and library access.
I didn't mean that spells would be taken away when you leave - just any books that you'd borrowed. This was to prevent someone spending all their piety on borrowing out books right before ditching Sif. On the other hand, maybe that wouldn't be such a concern at that stage in the game.
Regarding further uses for books and/or piety gain mechanisms; hopefully Wensley has some ideas :) The dancing books are certainly a bit gimmicky and don't hugely fit the theme. — mumra 2011-09-20 00:34
Piety for killing the noisy is okay as long as it is clear in advance who is classified as such. Waiting until a monster wakes to shout is probably not ideal. But while that is in principle okay, we don't want players to wait until a monster caster lets off a loud spell.
Piety on books alone will not carry the god. We could say that Sif likes kills of animals (nobody wants animals in his library). This would be enough to get early piety started.If that's not good enough, we're better off with book sacrifice and exploration. — dpeg 2011-09-21 21:36
Two more ideas from ##crawl-dev:
Adding a conduct to Sif definitely seems like the key to making her interesting, and silence is appropriately unique. However, the game's noise mechanics themselves are too bland to support this. Right now, there is but a tiny handful of noise-generating actions outside of spellcasting, and spells are rather uniform in noisiness by level. If noise can be made interesting, then this becomes an interesting conduct, and the proposal works really well. For example, Sif worshipers might want to go out of their way to learn Levitation so they can avoid the piety hit from splashing around in shallow water, or pick spells they might not normally specifically because they make much less noise than others of their level. — SquashMonster 2011-09-21 20:53
Well not really new, as a lot of the ideas have actually been around for a while, as this page proves. But this proposal (or set of proposals) is triggered by recent Tavern discussion. — DracheReborn 2014-05-22 10:41
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11017 https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12375
My takeaways from the discussion are 1) Sif's simplicity is valued by a lot of players 2) Sif's thing is encouraging learning spell skills, so anything that discourages that (i.e. wizardry or casting from Invo) is a no go. Arguably archmagi falls here too. 3) While no one really likes Sif's random gifting, it shouldn't be too similar to other gods (Veh or Kiku)
dpeg summarises it thus as potential areas for Sif improvement in the first thread:
For point 2, a patch went in recently (thanks to neil and reaver) that accounts for Sif miscast protection in the spell failure display. For point 3, New Nemelex moving to exploration for piety makes it less attractive to reuse that mechanic for Sif (it's already used by Ash too). Instead I'd point to the suggestion in the second thread, i.e. that Sif grants piety for magic skills already trained before joining (perhaps limit this to new worshippers and not people moving from another god, though maybe this isn't necessary. Zin for example has the same issue.) This should help with getting Sif abilities online faster, which is sometimes an issue with this god.
For point 1, book lending is a theme that a lot of people like and as a result there are many complicated proposals for book lending. IMO simplest is best, and the following explores several proposals in order of increasing complexity.
Sif gets a new ability at ****, called “Request a book” which costs a large amount of piety (maybe from half to 1 * of piety). This ability can be used as often as desired balanced by the large piety cost.
Comparison with old gifting: Book gifts are available slightly earlier now, but costs piety. As an active ability, there is more work (read: keypresses) involved up front, but once you have all the books you want, you can just ignore this ability for the rest of the game without getting showered with books. This is basically very similar to the old system.
Alternatively, make the **** ability “Borrow a book”. The difference with the first proposal is that only 1 gift book at a time is in the character's possession. The effect of this change is that characters will lose access to spells from earlier book gifts, so they'd be encouraged to learn potentially useful spells at an earlier point. Unfortunately this makes the mechanic closer to Veh. IMO there still is distinction with Veh, since the character has control over when access changes and has access to more gift spells at a time. The individual number of spells per book can be a factor of piety. Possible inventory issues with losing the loaned book, but I suppose Sif can just charge penance for a lost book (similar to destroying books).
Casting from books with Sif seems neat thematically, effectively giving characters more spell slots, but unfortunately creates tedious inventory management. This can be alleviated coupled with the “Borrow a book” idea - the character only has 1 divine gift book at a time, and can always cast spells from this book without memorising them. Memorisation works as before to make spells permanent. Amnesty gets a much higher piety cost to encourage casting from book. This distinguishes Sif's loaned spells a bit more from Veh's gifts and gives Sif a small tactical bonus.
It's unclear how much control is desirable, but with either “Request a book” or “Borrow a book”, Sif can provide menus giving a random choice of different categories which are themed to individual spell schools, e.g. choice of Sif's Charms Vol I or Sif's Fire Collection or Sif's Selection of Hexes. Again this seems to be a fairly old and popular idea, but it's a way to differentiate from Veh's more random gifting. At higher piety, Sif can provide more choices of categories each time.