u/Weekly-Meeting-868

(I know that this may be a bad take, but I liked that idea so I decided to post it)

The reason I'd like to have a summoner-god added is simple-it's kind of unfair that Conj and conj-like spells get a god for them(Vehumet), while summoning only get a few rather sub-optimal choices:Sif Muna, who is a magic god in general and doesn't give bonuses to summoning specifically, and TSO, who forbids you to use plenty of summoning spells. That's why I decided to create a concept for a summoning god.

1. Name-Convoc(shortened from Convocato, which means "summon" on latin. Convocato doesn't have the exact same meaning as in "summoning allies with a spell", but good enough.)

2. Penance(decided to do it first so the bonuses don't seem too overpowered):

Convoc dislikes it when you use destructive magic(destructive magic is all magic that Vehumet supports) to damage an enemy.

Convoc strongly dislikes it when you kill enemies with anything except your allies(allies from non-spell sources are allowed). Damaging enemies is fine, but the killing blow must be from your allies.

If penance goes above 20, you're immediately excommunicated.

Convoc does not appreciate desertion!(50 penance)

Convoc's wrath(each wrath has an equal chance):

1. Each ally you have has a chance to turn hostile. Allies closer to you are prioritised(Only happens when you have atleast 1 ally), the percentage of allies turned hostile is (Penance+(XL*(current HP%*1.5).
2. Your enemies have a chance to gain one of the following spells:corrupt(50%), shadow creatures(30%), plane rend(20%). The amount of enemies who gain these spells is equal to (XL/6). Cannot be used if player's XL is below 11. If player's HP is dropped below 30% and they're still worshipping Convoc, the enemies who these spells were given to become unable to cast them until the player's HP goes above 75%.
3. Your enemies begin passively summoning one of the following:death scarabs(60% chance); random slimes(the pool is the same as The Royal Jelly's when it is damaged)(30% chance, twice the time between spawns); the same effect as a summoning scroll, but summoning hostile and durably summoned creatures(10% chance, triple the time between spawns). The spawns don't happen outside of your LOS. The amount of creatures summoned this way can not be more that 10 at once(if 10 is reached, summoning stops). If the creature falls below 20%, a spawn immediately triggers. The time between spawns(basic) is 30 - XL*1.5, no less than 1. The amount of enemies who begin summoning is randomized between 1 and 6, but the passive summoning cooldowns are then decreased by (6-number of summoning enemies). If you're still worshipping Convoc, the enemies spawned this way have a chance to be immediately dismissed when you're dropped to low Hp(below 20%). This chance is piety/300.

Every wrath will only decrease the penance counter by 1. Even when the wrath ends, if you're not worshipping Convoc, you'll be unable to re-join it.

3. Piety gain

Convoc likes it when your allies kill enemies. Convoc especially likes it when an enemy is killed purely by your allies(without any damage dealt by you yourself) AND the allies were summoned with a spell

4. Abilities: Convoc uses summonings skill instead of invocations

Passive: *..... : Whenever your summon dies, there is a chance that you get MP equal to (summon's max HP/20). The chance is (Piety/3 + Summonings skill*1.5)%

Your summons gain an HP regeneration bonus equal to the sum of your HP and MP regeneration.

Whenever you drink a potion(not dangerous/q!), your summons also gain its effects, for the duration equal to yours.

If an ally's will is lower than yours, it is weighted towards yours, up to (Piety/4 + summonings*2) will.

Active:

Reality anchor:applies the "reality anchor" effect to all temporary allies. While the ability is active, your ally's remaining time will not decrease, and abjurations casted on the ally only have a quarter of their effect. Duration(individual for each ally):(Ally's max duration/5 + summonings*2 + piety/16) DecaAut.(piety--)

**....:

Passive:

Whenever your ally kills an enemy, the ally gains HD bonus equal to (Killed monster's HD/10 + piety/32), random slaying bonus from +1 to +5, a random brand to their attacks with a 1/5 chance per kill(if they have a brand, 1/10 chance of getting an additional), and a heal equal to (slain enemy's HD*1.25).

Active:

Focus switch:each enemy in LOS has to pass a will check(enchantment power=summonings*5 + piety), otherwise their focus will switch to your allies instead of you(they will ignore you to attack your allies). Duration is equal to (Summonings/2) DecaAut (piety-)

***...

Passive:

Your allies gain bonuses as if they had both Halo(but only increased ally accuracy) and Umbra(but only decreased enemy accuracy)

Active:

Abjuration:abjures all enemy-summoned units in your LOS(no line of fire required). Duration decrease:(Piety/4*(Summonings/20) DecaAut.(Piety---)

****..

Passive:

Your allies, when summoned, gain 1 random bonus. The pool: Haste(20%), Might(20%), berserk(15%), focus(+15 to-hit)(15%), passive summoning(the one described in the penance section, but summons friendlies and no longer stopped when you're at low HP)(10%), active summoning(a random spell described in penance section is given to the summon, once again summoning friendlies and not stopping when you're at low HP)(10%). Elemental resistance(2 stacks of each element resistance)(5%); 1 more(rerolls, giving the ally 2 of these bonuses instead)(5%). The chance to roll for these bonuses is equal to (Piety/2.5+Summonings)%

Active:

Mass cure:clears all allies from any debuffs they had and prevents them from getting any more debuffs for (summonings/2) turns, heals them by (Summonings*1.5) HP.(piety----)

*****.

Passive:

Casting summoning spells only takes half of the time it would've taken normally(if a spell would take 1 DecaAut to cast, it will take 5 Aut instead). If you miscast, Convoc will give you 1x wiz for your next cast of the spell, until you succeed in casting it. Then, all wiz gained is removed. Also, Convoc gives you 1x archmage to all your summoning and summoning-like(infestation, animate dead, etc) spells.

Active:

Discharge:immediately casts every summoning and summoning-like spell you have, with halved MP cost for each spell. Then, casts reality anchor(piety------)

******

Passive:

Your allies, when adjacent or near-adjacent to you, will gain +1 range to their spells(if the range is already 7 or 8, they'll gain +10 to-hit instead), +10 AC, and they'll only lose duration with half the normal speed. If they're at longer distance from you, they instead gain +20% damage to their spells, +10 to-hit, and they'll gain haste(stacks with normal haste) once their remaining duration is below 30%.

Active:

Damage bound:Can target up to 3 allies. whenever you take damage, 50% of it is dealt to the target ally/allies instead, but it is dealt to the ally in 1.5 proportion to the damage they would've actually taken. If your HP is already 1, all damage dealt to you will be dealt to the target ally/allies(preventing your death), but the damage dealt to the allies this way will be tripled. If you were dropped to 1 HP during the spell's effect, it will get 1d4 turns cooldown. You cannot recast the ability while there are still allies under the abilities effect

5. Gifts:

For each 25 piety you gain(even when at max piety), you are given 2 random summoning spells. The spell level will be equal to (piety(not number value, but the * symbols displayed as piety amount. For example, at ***... piety, piety will be counted as "3") +1d4). If it would give a level 10 spell(which doesn't exist), it gives a level 9 spell instead. When you have all spells for the appropriate spell levels, it will give spells of lower level. (for example, if you have all level 7, 8 and 9 at ****** piety, it will give level 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 spells, in that order)

Currently, summoner builds and summoning abilities in general have a problem: enemies will simply ignore your summons and go to you, even if your summons are adjacent to them, unless the summons are blocking the path to you. Even if it can be explained with human-intelligence opponents(they may know that killing the summoner kills the summons), there is no explanation for why do mindless and animal-intelligence enemies do that, and why do they do that even when you're invisible(and the enemy doesn't have SInv) and your allies are not invisible. It makes summoner runs much less enjoyable IMO, so I have thought of an enemy AI rework. The idea is simple: mindless and animal-intelligence enemies will attack/cast abilities on the closest hostile unit instead of focusing on you specifically, human-intelligence enemies will do the same but prefer to attack/cast abilities on you when you're in range. Enemies should work the same way as now with entities which exist purely as a way of dealing damage(Fulminant prism, hellfire mortar) and fire vortices from fire storm. It would make summoner builds much more satisfying, and somewhat more powerful.

I might've just solved the mystery of Zot's actual identity. I also have proof of my theory.

1. On the Orb run, mostly demons, and sometime pandemonium lords are spawned. There are barely any holy enemies that can spawn on the orb run. And, if the orb's defenders are mainly demons, don't you think Zot has some... close links to them?

2. The chance for a sourceless malevolence in hell(hell branch 2-7) is the same as in Zot branch(3-5) itself. If we assume that sourceless malevolence is something tied to/controlled by Zot, it becomes clearer that Zot is close to hell indeed.

3. In hell, Zot timer is shared for each level, meaning Zot is able to pursue us through levels, unlike any other place(even Zot branch itself). It would mean that... Zot is closer to hell branches than even to Zot branch.

4. Hell, even hell's vestibule is surprisingly well guarded in comparison to other branch entrances:Pandemonium enemies are scattered, first levels of branches may have an ambush on entrance but don't have much defences otherwise, even Tomb:1 or Zot:1 doesn't have much enemies in comparison to hell's vestibule. So, why would a place be guarded better than the perceived center of the dungeon... unless Zot branch is not actually what Zot wants to defend the most?

And, from this theory grows another:what if Zot branch(possibly other branches, possibly every single one except hell itself) and Zot orb is actually a distraction from hell, and Zot, to some extent, wants the orb stolen? Here's the thing:despite Zot controlling pandemonium lords to some extent(since they can spawn on the orb run), Zot never placed one as an orb's guard. In addition, boundless tesseracts are placed just around 2 corners from the entrance to Zot:5's Hall of Zot, despite them being able to spawn enemies at player location from anywhere, so therefore placing them near the orb itself would make them a better defence. So why doesn't Zot do that? It's because it's a power test:if an adventurer can defeat Zot's defences, they can be a danger to Zot's actual main domain, which is hell, so if Zot allows the adventurer to take the orb right then, Zot prevents them from deciding to attack hell next(adventurer will be way too busy fleeing from dungeon to enter any other branches).

So, after I died to the Mummy curse on Tomb:3(morgue-https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Gotonerune/morgue-Gotonerune-20260806-132645.txt). I have thought of a rework. Here's the idea: The death curses are more frequent(no flavour-type curses), but whenever a player is afflicted with a curse, they gain a chance to negate the next curse, equal to (Amount of curses applied * 8)% up to 90%, which begins rapidly decreasing(-5% per DecaAut until 0%) in 10d3 turns after the last death curse was applied to you(this timer resets when you get another death curse applied to you). Torment and drain curses don't increase this chance for torment-immune and negative-immune characters(undead and in death form, for example), and characters who negated the curse's effect with Kikubaaqudgha don't get bonus from negated curse. This way, players won't be irresistibly smitten or/and doomed then baned to death when fighting large quantities of Mummies(it's a problem even with death form), but also it will make solo or small groups of Mummies more dangerous.

By exactly how much does Abjuration being cast on your summon decrease the summon's remaining time? There is no information about it on Crawlwiki, and I need this information for a summoner playthrough

So, have you noticed that the character (adventurer) we play as is usually weaker than naturally spawned monsters of the same species but gets much stronger as we kill monsters and receive XP? There's an explanation: every character we play as has a difference from normal inhabitants. They can collect live force(XP) from all they kill, unlike others (even if a monster somehow killed the entirety of the level they're in, they wouldn't get any more powerful). And, also, messages when entering the dungeon (I don't remember their exact phrasing) say, "If you don't get the orb, you're done for!" and "Orb of Zot, rumored to be powerful enough to resurrect a god..." also, leaving the dungeon without the orb counts as losing(we can assume our character gets killed on the surface). I found an explanation for these, too: our character is wanted dead on the surface because of their power to collect life force because of how dangerous it can be(late-game characters can kill hundreds of their own kin sometimes), so our character decides to go after the Orb of Zot. The reason might be that such living beings (the ones who can collect life force, or XP) have/had a god who protected or empowered them, but the god was either killed or imprisoned, and the adventurer needs the Orb of Zot to resurrect/free them. The reason gods in the dungeon support them is possibly because they assume the adventurer will give the orb's power(or some of it) to them; that's why even good gods allow us to kill thousands of creatures without penance(except some who give penance for killing neutrals/friendlies, but they do that because it's just unnecessary cruelty, considering that neutrals/friendlies drop no XP or loot). The reason killing neutrals/friendlies doesn't give us XP (life force) is because they are actually not real:all of them are magical beings disguised as living ones (after all, why would a butterfly be in the dungeon?).