Lugonu

2804992 by dpeg.

Lugonu is a cool god but could be made more interesting. The plan is to keep the god broad and not to shoehorn players into something. This slight overhaul attempts to add flavour (altar corruption, and using Corruption for Lugonu) and diversification (corruption clock, piety from desecrating altars).

Piety
  • gained for kills outside of the Abyss
  • gained for banishing monsters
  • gained for desecrating altars (a lot!)
  • gained for killing other gods' followers/minions (even if summoned)
  • gained for killing other gods (large gain, currently only applies to Jiyva, but could be extended to random gods)
    • Ideally, non-Lugonites could also sometimes get a flavour message (about Lugonu rejoicing, or whatever) when Jiyva is erased from existence. — jpeg 2011-09-24 16:22
  • decays over time
Corrupting altars

Basic concept:

  • get some part of piety from desecrating altars to other gods (at first, only a small part, can increase later)
  • thereby incurring wrath of the other gods, and leading to choices about which altars to desecrate and in which order

This has been tried in a trunk branch by reaverb and a problem emerged:

  • going back time and again to the Temple and desecrating altars one by one (always when one wrath has been worked off) is tedious
  • there are too many altars around

However, I think the basic idea can be salvaged. Here are the lessons learned:

  • Wraths from desecration shouldn't start at very small levels but be noticeable right away.
  • For this, it is important that players cannot desecrate altars at low piety (this is to protect players from themselves).
  • Don't give one big chunk of piety for desecrating an altar but rather give a little piety for each wrath effect incurred (or perhaps continuous piety gain as long as wrath is effective — the goal is to make desecreation piety gain gradual instead of spiky).

Proposal:

  1. You can only desecrate altars after having proved yourself to be a worthy corrupter, i.e. by reaching **** piety and corrupting the Ecumenical Temple. This would desecrate all Temple altars but does not incur wrath yet. (It is not a personal act.)
    After this, whenever you follow Lugonu, you have the ability to desecrate altars you stand upon (i.e. no matter what your piety is, and even under wrath.)
  2. Desecrating individual altars (per the new ability) gives you piety you for the ensuing wrath effects. Because desecration comes later, we can start with more serious wrath! Also, wrath power increases for subsequent desecrations of altars of the same god (so that it becomes more attractive to offend new gods.)
    It is desirable if, say, the third desecration of a god altar produces very harsh wrath (but piety gain does not increase) — desecration should be rare and occasionally postponed or even not done, depending on circumstances. Ideally, desecrating all altars to all gods should be a very hard challenge.
  3. Reduce piety gain from killing after **** to make players go out and desecrate altars. (Another option is to cap piety from killing before *****.) The idea is that you gain access to Lugonu's famous life-saving ability (self-banish) only by offending the gods.

Note that the proposal about enabling desecration via Temple corruption has several desirable consequences:

  • Flavour: you announce war on the gods by a single, thematic action.
  • Interface: this mechanic takes all Temple altars out of the desecration system. As a by-product, generation of extra and overflow altars now has an effect on Lugonu piety access — how many and which altars you have available for desecration. I like this kind of global randomisation.

There are some ensuing, minor design questions:

  • Division of piety gain between killing, banishment and desecration.
  • Should corrupted altars count as desecrated? (For a start, I'd say no. This makes it easier for players, avoiding accidental wrath.)
  • Should other gods be willing to take on a character who has desecrated one of their altars?
Corruption clock

Once in a while (say about 1/15000 turns), Lugonu wants a corruption. If you failed to deliver, you will be reminded: “Your only task is to CORRUPT!” etc., leaving you about 2000 turns to perform Corruption (more dire warnings will be issued). If time is up, it's spontaneous corruption; if you lack piety, you're expelled. Of course, all corruptions made by the player count, even if Lugonu did not ask for them. So it can happen that a player never even sees Lugonu's demand.
This corruption clock is not a strong liability on the player: if playing normally, they can just corrupt any old dungeon level. But in reality, they should want to corrupt branch ends.

Abyssical altars

Remove (or make much rarer) altars to other gods in the Abyss. (Theme: Lugonu has been banished but she should be powerful enough to clear up her home. The other gods might try to set foot into her realm; this could be done with fancy altar vaults. Gameplay: Abyss grining should yield no piety.)

Theme

Lugonu is the fallen god, driven by a desire to remove any traces of the gods and of the overworld. She has been banished and needs agents to act outside of the Abyss. She grows stronger by collecting all sorts monsters in her zoo, the Abyss. (This also explains why abyssical monsters aren't neutral or friendly to each other or the player.) Agents can (a) help her cause by sending more monsters, storing up potential and (b) release the monsters through gates they create ('corruption'). Her hate towards the other gods far surpasses the quarrels between the divine establishment, it goes as far as altar desecration (which is unthinkable between TSO and Kiku, say).

Changes to abilities

These two would be nice to have but are less crucial:

  • Split the current Bend Space into Contract Space and Expand Space, for more tactical options.
  • Both entering and leaving the Abyss should be timed (this would in particular make the Enter Abyss cooler and less an instant life saver): in both cases, a grey portal should emerge, with a small area from the destination plane around it. After a few turns, the portal would be open. Monsters can follow!

For more ideas and flavour, see the old2041390. (But not all of it is good, especially my original proposal contained some pretty bad ideas.)

borsuk: I think it would be better if Corruption temporarily disabled all staircases, portals, and perhaps even shaft traps. Currently you can drop the nuke, and immediately leave the level. Wait outside and come back when all the monsters disappear. This limits xp lost to abyssal reatures, and is enough to open otherwise indestructible vaults. I think if player decides (err, I mean, is forced to) corrupt, he has to stay on the level, evade skeletal dragons, balrugs, liches, avoid any action that might offend neutral monsters… in general, keep the head down, and face the consequences.
Removing the piety cost of Corruption might have just that effect — players using Corruption on every level with challenging layout [Elf:7 moat, open levels) and leaving immediately. Surely having some walls will be much better than NO walls on a typical open level. An elegant solution would be, I think, just randomly moving staircases and shaft traps somewhere.
dpeg: Very good reasoning, I second the sealing. It is very easy to explain it thematically, too. (Be it that Lugonu has to seal all gates in order to make the corruption work, or her paranaio about cowardly agents etc.) Technically, plain sealing is an option (cannot use stairs, hatches shafts for foo turns); a more forgiving version would be to move those features around. And perhaps replace some by Abyss portals?
borsuk: Here's an additional idea: If a level has more than 1 altar and more than 1 altar ends up being corrupted and 'Lugonified', it offends more than 1 god, player gets retribution sequentially from each god. Or it could offend any god with altar on level, no matter if its altar ends up being corrupted.
dpeg: I don't think it's needed to prevent players only corrupting altars on the way home. The idea is that you get substantial amounts of piety for a corrupted altar which are simply good to have. We could, however, create special synergies between the post-orb Pan lords and offended gods. Yes, I would add altar corruptions to the notes etc. but there should be no other effects apart from the piety gain and the hate (in particular, no score). The idea of additional bonus piety for retribution sounds good. Would encourage players to do it early and often.
Incomp: I had an idea for Lugonu I figured I may as well throw out there. (Sorry for any formatting errors, I'm new to this) I thought maybe Lugonu could have a passive corruption ability, either parallel to the active one or replacing it. It would be on a smaller scale, growing in effect with piety. The idea is that, so much as a Jiyva worshiper is “becoming” a slime, a Lugonite “becomes” a manifestation of corruption. Therefore, the world would be distorted by the worshiper's very presence. A low piety worshiper wouldn't do much except maybe recolor the nearby floor, occasionally rearrange/spawn/destroy walls, that sort of thing. As piety grows, the worshiper would begin manifesting effects like bending space or causing serious dungeon rearrangement that may actually effect the gameplay. At high piety, the player is a walking planar breach and his/her very presence causes neutral abyssal monsters to spawn nearby, altars to Lugonify, the whole corruption deal except passively and slower to occur. I think this fits better with the whole nature of corruption– to me corruption is a slow decline, not a sudden jump. This also fits with the idea that a player shouldn't be able to run from the corruption “nuke;” They ARE the nuke.
dpeg: I like this idea. There are old plans that gods should have passive flavour effects (to make them feel less like slot machines). Passive corruption should be something like this. I believe that almost all of the effects should be cosmetic (we don't want players to wait next to a wall, hoping for corruption-digging, for example). If gameplay effects are rare enough, they can be used, of course.
MrMisterMonkey: Rather than simply making gameplay effects rarer, how about a possibility of triggering them upon killing a monster (cosmetic corruption effects would still occur outside of combat), possibly then additionally leaving some translocational energy or chunks and blood scattered around a la banishment and disintegration, respectively? Building upon this, Lugonu could always consume enemies as they die (to rebuild them in the Abyss), giving the scattered chunks a gameplay purpose to compensate for lack of corpses. This would probably result in players luring monsters to areas where they'd benefit from corruption effects; I can't tell if this is good or bad.
Incomp: Some more junk for this idea: within your “aura of corruption,” a monster could take small damage constantly, as its form is ripped apart by the swirling nastiness around it. Furthermore, if a monster dies to these effects, or perhaps dies while under these effects, or maybe even takes a HD based amount of damage from said effect, its form becomes twisted into an abomination, tentacled monstrosity, or other gribbly.
OG17: I'm not a fan of the abominations. If they're friendly, it'd give the god a minion-based playstyle it doesn't need. If they're neutral, they'd just get in the way. If they're hostile, it'd discourage melee combat altogether. Also, an always-on damaging aura would eliminate the possibility of stealthy/stabbing play, wouldn't it? (As would making the player the focal point of chaosville, of course.)
Incomp: Hmm. I see your point with the abomination/gribbly thing aspect of the aura, and I'm forced to agree. As for discouraging stealth, well, how common is a melee-focused Sif Muna worshipper? Maybe that wasn't a fair comparison, but a god should, in my humble opinion, have playstyles it caters and does not cater to. Besides, stealth isn't terribly reliable anyway.
Straydusk: Some cleaned up ideas from the closed Mantis thread at https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=1602 : Remove the spell Banishment from the Translocations school (found in the Book of the Warp) and make it Lugonu exclusive. The good gods proscribe banishment as an evil magic, and the existence of Banishment as a spell makes the logical combo of a Warper worshipping Lugonu redundant due to the ensuing overlap in abilities. Conceptually, banishment to the abyss is Lugonu's unique forte, sending the afflicted to “her” domain. The spell Teleport Other has a similar flavour to this but seems more appropriate for a run-of-the-mill Warper unaffiliated with Lugonu. I like the relationship shared between the Translocations school and the Abyss regarding miscast effects, but the fact that translocation there results from an error in casting a spell implies that it is not desirable per se. Also, the fact that one cannot cast Banishment on onesself to go to the Abyss seems contradictory (though makes perfect sense gameplay-wise due to the ease of abuse), which is not the case given the Lugonu invocation as she also allows for that ability in time. In other words, it is weird for a Warper to be able to banish others but not him/herself conceptually, though I understand why this is the case in implementation. Making this change would theoretically diminish the overall value of the Translocations school, but this would be nevertheless partially offset by the continued universal usefulness of what still remains within the school; people are unlikely to drop it because of this one change. Another, vaguer idea on my part was to either make all Lugonu abilities dependent on one's Translocations skill rather than their Invocations, or make them purely based on piety (as is currently the case with Trog). Either of these may seem excessively radical at first, but all of “her” abilities are basically spatial translocations in nature, and that school of magic is intricately wedded to/appreciated by “her,” again given the fact that miscasts send you to the Abyss and in consideration of the similarities between Dispersal and Bend Space. As Lugonu is a fallen god not found within the temple, and indeed, is very hostile to the gods found therein and looking to corrupt their altars, the game's mythology could use her absence there to justify a lack of needing to invoke her–she hears your pleas through other, spatial means. Alternatively, invocations cannot reach her within the Abyss due to the unique properties of that place, or she does not even appreciate invocations because of their link with the existing pantheon (as in, she does not want you to train invocations because of their potential applicability to the other gods whom she hates). This could end up making Lugonu more appealing to all players (a present concern), as most people have at least a few points in Translocations anyway and would appreciate not having to train Invocations, and she is already an unorthodox deity who does not seek worship or prayer in the same way as do the other gods.
Adamo: Lugonu is the god that was banished and is especially hated by other gods. That would be cool if her follower might destroy other gods atars` if they found one (= changing them to Lugonu`s altar). Destroying each and every other altar in Ecumenical Temple would generally close the way to change the religion, but Lugonu would like it and sometimes grant a follower for doing so. That could be done be simply praying on the altars of other gods (action “p” results in changing non-Lugonu altar to Lugonu altar). So, if a Lugonu follower finds, say, Zin altar, he has two possibilities: 1) stay with Lugonu`s religion and destroy the altar by “praying” on it (which would destroy the altar and this action may be granted by Lugonu), 2) change the religion by first Renounce Religion and then praying on Zin`s altar (praying w/o first renouncing would destroy it).
What do you think of destroying other god`s altars (than Lugonu) idea?
The idea is great but if you read this page again, you will see that it is already proposed :)
We have to wait with altar desecration until god wraths can be finetuned. Currently, many gods have wraths which are simply too harsh. — dpeg 2010-10-14 23:01
I'm not seeing much incentive to desecrate altars. Piety doesn't seem like a big enough reward to me when you can already get piety by simply killing monsters outside of the abyss–not a significant enough reward to counter the God wrath you incur, anyway. My suggestion is to 'lock' max piety at one or two pips until you desecrate more altars–one pip per altar, so that desecration is essentially something that Lugonu demands. Another problem with the desecration mechanic as currently proposed is that there's no real incentive to desecrate altars once you've reach 6 pips–essentially getting got wrath for nothing. I think that Lugonu should continue to give rewards to players who continue to desecrate altars. My first thought is for god gifts that directly oppose what the god whose altar you just desecrated (e.g. corrupting a Chei altar has a high chance of giving you a weapon of speed, Trog–a powerful magic book or item of wizardry). I understand that the devteam already considers god gifts to be problematic. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I'm guessing it's because with Okawaru and Trog it tends to turn into a “just one more gift” piety scumming scenario. This could be mitigated with Lugonu by, say, only giving the player one gift per God, so that it's a finite amount of gifts. I only suggest item gifts because I can't think of anything else that would actually encourage players to take on additional god wrath after they have very high piety with Lugonu. — seth 2011-03-17 01:05
Incentive is just a matter of numbers… we can easily make it so that killing is barely enough to keep your piety from going down. Forcing altar desecration can also be instated with a rule, as you suggest. I am just saying that it's not only way. You will have to produce all the time because Lugonu does demand Corruption! And this power will cost piety as now (it's a very task for Lugonu). As explained in the main text, with Lugonu there would be an additional clock (to the food clock): the piety/corruption clock. Lugonu needs piety-expensive corruptions from time to time.
I believe that god gifts are generally a bad idea. We want to get rid of them, not add more. — dpeg 2011-03-17 02:01
purge: I think that awarding piety for banishment outside of using the invocation is a good idea because it promotes the use of distortion weapons on Lugonites.

Here are some comments from the old FR:

  • Idea: corporeal monsters caught in a corruptive blast acquire some (purely cosmetic) mutation which shows up in their description, have the modified name “a corrupted <foo>”, and start losing health at a slow rate. If the monster dies from its condition (but not from any other source), its corpse hatches into a friendly ugly blob of protoplasmic flesh (there are a number of candidate monsters, I think). Lugonu thinks this is hilarious.
    Could be added to Corruption as a possible effect, or made a standalone ability if desired.
  • An interesting idea from 2776814: “How about an area effect made for groups that makes all creatures that are similar to the target hostile towards one another. Basically, you could turn that band of orcs on one another, but this would not really work on lone creatures or mixed groups.”
    This would be thematic and interesting until the end, although the specific mechanics are not fully clear (probably need a new monster flag, 'insane').

Current Lugonu comments

I think banishment should scale more with invocations, on a similar level to elyvilon's pacification (able to banish fiends at 27). Pacification is basically the same thing but it also gives you 50% XP, also compare to slimify which is an instant kill on anything living/undead if you land a hit on them.

Corruption doesn't seem to scale much with invo either, I tried corrupting tomb:1 with 27 and didn't manage to break through a 2 wall thick wall of stone, plain shatter would have been much more effective.

Anyway I like Lugonu and think she's even more useful now she accepts demon kills. Just leaving some comments. — st 2011-10-08 15:26
Logged in as: Anonymous (VIEWER)
dcss/brainstorm/god/lugonu.txt · Last modified: 2015-02-28 14:52 by dpeg
 
Recent changes RSS feed Donate Powered by PHP Valid XHTML 1.0 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki