Cheibriados

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

"Take it easy."

Cheibriados is a god of deliberation. Those following Cheibriados travel more slowly the further they progress in their faith, and are forbidden from using any means to hasten themselves. In the process of so imitating their god, they attain perfection of mind and body, and the mysteries of time unfold before them. Especially devout followers may even momentarily abandon the flow of time and its needless disturbances. Followers of Cheibriados move more slowly as they gain favour, and are rewarded for killing creatures who are faster than they are. As they move slower, worshippers of Cheibriados are granted increased attributes. Cheibriados rewards the faithful with the power to slow other creatures and the power to briefly distort the flow of time. Devout worshippers will gain the ability to inflict great harm on all those who move more quickly than they do, and finally the ability to step out of the flow of time entirely. Cheibriados likes it when you kill fast things, relative to your speed. Cheibriados strongly dislikes it when you hasten yourself or others or use unnaturally quick items.

Appreciates

• Killing creatures that are faster than you, with a chance of a large piety increase for much faster creatures and ones with high HD ("Cheibriados (thoroughly) appreciates the change of pace").

Deprecates

• Increasing your speed: this includes potions of haste, Swiftness, weapons with the speed brand, equipment with the rampaging ego, and the lightning scales. You may not hasten or frenzy enemies, either. If you go berserk, or the item causing haste was unidentified, Cheibriados will block the haste effect and not punish you for it. Do note that using a piece from Xom's chessboard will be punished by Cheibriados if it produces one of the forbidden effects.

Given Abilities

Piety Level -: "Sluggish Foo"

• Raises the support of your attributes: Cheibriados increases your Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence as your piety increases. Each stat increase comes with an incremental increase in your movement delay equal to 2 + piety / 20 auts, capping at 10 auts for normal or faster speed player characters. Further stat increases occur at higher ranks of piety. At maximum piety you receive +15 to all stats.
• Slows the effects of poison: The rate at which poison damages you is halved. This effectively doubles the duration of poison, but makes it much more survivable, especially in severe cases. The duration of sickness is also halved.

In addition, Cheibriados does the following:

• Slows down the Zot clock, giving you 150% the time (+9,000 deca-aut per floor, up to 40,500 deca-aut at once). (Passive)
• Dramatically reduces the monster spawn rate and map morphing rate in the Abyss. (Passive)
• Reduces the Orb run monster spawn rate. (Passive)

Piety Level *: "Deliberate"

• Bend Time: Slows everything adjacent to you. Monsters resist based on their HD rather than their willpower, which means that it can even affect enemies with unshakable will. (Costs 3 MP and 1-2 Piety)

Piety Level **: "Unhurried"

• No new abilities.

Piety Level ***: "Contemplative"

• Temporal Distortion: Moves nearby monsters forward through time, relative to you. In effect, this forces ranged opponents to move adjacent to you, but may also place them one space away. This ability does not cost a turn. (4 MP, 3-5 Piety)

Piety Level ****: "Epochal"

• Slouch: Damages everything in LOS (including invisible enemies) that's faster than you Damage = [Speed Difference] × 4d3 / 2. Only monsters that have detected you take damage from Slouch. (5 MP, 8-12 Piety)

Piety Level *****: "Timeless"

• Step From Time: Moves you to nowhere and lets time pass. During that time, monsters wander away and may even go to sleep. Monsters that end up in your LOS must perform a fresh check against your stealth to notice you. (10 MP, 10-15 Piety)

Piety Level ******: "Foo Aeon"

• No new abilities.

Punishments

Cheibriados does not appreciate abandonment, and will call down fearful punishments on disloyal followers! Offenders against Cheibriados will find their movements remain slow while the attention of Cheibriados remains upon them, and will frequently have any magical hasting stripped away. They may also become further slowed and exhausted, be put to sleep, or have wild and unpredictable magical effects from the depths of time unleashed upon them. Cheibriados's wrath lasts for a relatively short duration.

Upon abandonment, Cheibriados will continue to slow your movement for as long as its wrath persists. It will occasionally punish you with one of the following forms of divine retribution, increasing in severity with the danger of your current situation:

• Cheibriados's wrath always reduces the remaining duration of your haste status to 1 turn.
• At low tension: lose 1-5 points from a random stat.
• At medium tension: Slow for 100 turns.
• At high tension: Sleep for 4-8 turns with a 50% chance of slowing.
• At very high tension: make a very loud noise, sleep, and a 50% chance of slowing.

Strategy

• Unlike the other gods, worshiping Cheibriados greatly magnifies the deadliness of your mistakes. One careless step could translate to two or three needless enemy attacks, which could very well be lethal. You can use the shift-direction key or auto-explore; they both automatically stop you when enemies are spotted.
• Cheibradios only affects your movement speed; all other actions act as normal. You can attack from a distance to pick off or weaken enemies without moving any more than you have to.
• Worshippers should try to abuse their stats as much as possible. Devotees of Cheibriados can wear heavier armour, cast spells with greater power and success rates, with better EV and Stealth, to boot.
  • The entire Translocations school becomes extra strong with Chei, even for otherwise melee characters. Blink, Passage of Golubria, and IMB open up spaces for you to reposition. Spells like Dispersal can get enemies away; Lesser Beckoning and Manifold Assault can get them closer.

Cheibriados offers several excellent abilities:

• Bend Time can reliably slow even the strongest enemies for very little piety. While you can't run, slowed enemies hit less frequently. Skill level 4.0 in Invocations gives a 4% or lower failure rate.
• Temporal Distortion is an instantaneous ability that "jumps forward" in time. It has a number of powerful tactical use which may not be obvious at first. Skill level 7.0 in Invocations gives a 4% or lower failure rate.
  • The most direct use is to bring enemies closer, so that melee characters can be in attack range. Conversely, it might open a small distance for you to escape through the stairs.
  • It can be used to dodge orbs of destruction, dissipate harmful clouds, or split up merged slime creatures.
  • Damage-over-time effects like poison or Sticky flame apply themselves over skipped time.
• Slouch is not cheap, but it is an effective irresistible attack against everything in sight. Damage is based on your and monster movement speed, but not Invocations. It works best on fast monsters, such as invisible unseen horrors or the swarms of the Spider's Nest. Assuming a move delay of 20, Slouch will deal on average 60 damage to opponents of speed 20 (killer bees) and 40 damage to opponents of speed 10 (most monsters). 9.0 skill in Invocations gives a < 4% failure rate.
• Don't forget you have Step From Time. It can spare you from certain-death situations; by the time you return, most enemies will have wandered off and summoned enemies will have run out of time. Remaining monsters might not even notice your return, if you have high stealth. Unlike Slouch, the strength of Step From Time, and not just the success chance, depends on Invocations skill. Skill level 14 in Invocations gives a < 4% failure rate.
  • Step From Time is much more effective in open levels with lots of space for monsters to redistribute themselves. It is less effective in constrained areas, like small portal levels.

History

• Prior to 0.28, Cheibriados forbade followers from intentionally going berserk (unintentional berserks had speed boost suppressed). Bend Time was available on worship, and the poison-slowing effect was unlocked at 1* piety.
• Prior to 0.27, Cheibriados would disapprove of using quick blades.
• Prior to 0.26, Cheibriados would slow your metabolism at 1* piety (instead of the zot clock).
• Prior to 0.25, Cheibriados's wrath inflicted random miscast effects instead of creating noise.
• Prior to 0.20, Cheibriados's wrath could exhaust you and force you to Step from Time. Also, the wrath had a chance to curse an item.
• Prior to 0.17, slouch damage wasn't based on monster movement speed.
• Prior to 0.14, Bend Time only became available at 1* piety.
• Prior to 0.10, Cheibriados would only give you bonus stats if you wore equipment with the ponderousness ego (and offered an ability which allowed you to convert your gear into ponderous artifacts). Cheibriados would also offer various resistances as well. These benefits increased with each equipment slot you made ponderous.
• Prior to 0.9, species with equipment restrictions were unable to get the full ponderous benefits from Cheibriados, and each new ponderous item gave a larger benefit than the last.
• Cheibriados was added in 0.6.