Dungeon Crawl Reference

Third day, third deity for Crawl. I'm on a roll with the last two and this is probably going to be my last one for a while.


Patchouli is the goddess of all elements. She does not command any single one but her grasp is firm as she can control the elemental aspects of the world with relative ease. Her followers are expected to be just as versatile and adaptable as she is as well as learn to command these elements at will.


Patchouli is pleased by:
-Killing and sacrificing creatures.
-Sacrificing items that have a specific element attached to them. Ex. Rings of fire or ice, weapons branded with fire, ice, electricity, draining, armor with elemental resistances, etc. You can sacrifice them by dropping them on the floor and praying.

Patchouli requires penance for:
-Nothing in particular.

Powers granted:
1. Level one elemental defense (I'll explain this below)
2. Level two elemental defense
3. Imbue Self with Element ~ Invokable ability, for a short while, the character imbues his or her weapon (fists included) with the elemental brand of their choosing. So you can start punching things with flaming fists for a short time. Spells of the same element will have a boost in power. Opposite elemental spells don't suffer a drop in effectiveness. Lasts longer with higher invoke ability. Costs a good amount of MP, piety, and food.
4. Level three elemental defense and a constant level 1 resistance in every element except electricity.


Elements count as the following:
-Fire
-Ice/Water
-Electricity
-Negative Energy


Elemental Defense:
Let's say your character has no equipment on and that all elemental resistances are at zero. Your character gets hit with fire and has elemental defense level 1, then the fire resistance for that character will jump to 1 level of resistance to fire for a short time. If the character is continually hit with fire, the elemental resistance stays up. If s/he is not hit for a while, the resistance disappears. If the character is hit by ice and fire in a short period, both resistances go up. In this way, if the character is hit by all four elements, s/he can have all four resistances up.

At level 2, the resistances jump to level 2 resistance when the character is hit by said element. And at rank 3, the character's resistance to said element when hit by it jumps up to max elemental resistance for that element. And like before, the resistance wears off if not hit by said element, however, at the higher ranks, the resistance takes longer to wear off.

So yeah, if hit by all four elements, the chart can look like this:
Res.Fire +++
Res. Cold +++
Life Prot. +++
Res. Poi. .
Res. Elec. +

There are two exceptions to this rule, one is if you enter a branch of hell that specializes in an element. Then you'd get a message along the lines of "The heat is so intense that you already feel yourself being protected from the fire." And that element would jump to max and stay at max for throughout that part of hell. The other is if you hit yourself with said element, such as a disk of storms.


If you leave the religion:
-Your resistances have a chance of temporarily dropping when being hit by an elemental attack. Ex. Get hit by a fire spell, fire resistance drops.
-Elementals and fiends are summoned in at random.
-You're smited with a random element at times.



This deity started out as a way to give monks a boost they needed in gameplay, so it was originally a buddhist kind of deity. But then I realized that it was too niche, so I rewrote it and got this result. Again, it's still helping monks a lot as they don't typically get these kind of elemental boosts and defenses that normal weapon users get. However, other classes are more than capable of making good use of this deity and it maintains balance by the fact that you don't have total defense against all elements at any given time, instead, it spikes when needed, namely Zot, hells, and various other places that will hit you with a variety of elements. Granted, she not too good early game, but there aren't many elemental oriented attacks at that point either.

-Ramus