Fedhas Madash

"Spread life and death"

Fedhas Madash is the god of plant and fungal life. Fedhas encourages followers to promote the growth of plant life, especially through the decomposition of corpses. However, Fedhas forbids harming any species under his/her protection, or using necromantic effects on corpses. In return, Fedhas grants followers the power to promote the growth of fungal life - and cultivate it as an ally or weapon.

No backgrounds start with this religion.

Racial restrictions

Fedhas does not accept undead worshipers (Ghouls, Mummies, or Vampires), most likely because they violate the natural cycle of life.

Appreciates

• Using Decomposition on corpses and certain undead.

Deprecates

• You or your allies destroying plants.
• Attacking allied flora. (Penance)
• Using corpse-violating spells. These include Sublimation of Blood, Animate Dead, and other spells that affect corpses or chunks, as well as Necromutation (which violates your own corpse). (Penance)

Given abilities

Piety level -: "Green [Species Name]"

• All plants are friendly towards you. (Passive)
• You can walk through plants. (Passive)
• You can fire through allied plants without harming them. (Passive)
• Decomposition - Causes corpses in your field of vision to rapidly decay. Corpses with a monster on top of them will not be affected. It turns corpses into skeletons, zombies into skeletons (or destroys them), destroys ghoul genus monsters for piety gain, and causes friendly toadstools to grow. (Free) Note that as of version 0.8, this is now invoked as (p)rayer rather than an (a)bility.

Piety level *: "Inciter"

• Evolution - Uses fruit or piety to turn one targeted plant in your line of sight into a stronger species under your control. Plants and bushes become oklob plants and the cost per upgrade is 1 fruit. Oklob saplings also become oklob plants, but the cost is 4 piety. Evolving toadstools and fungus become wandering mushrooms and cost 3 piety. Ballistomycete will become hyperactive, exploding like a giant spore a few times before dying, and cost 4 piety. (2 MP, Piety or one Fruit)

Piety level **: "Photosynthesist"

• Sunshine - Targeted ability with a small area of effect, inflicts back lit status (same as Corona), and evaporates water (deep water turns to shallow water and shallow water turns to dry land). (2 MP, 50-100 Food)

Piety level ***: "Cultivator"

• Growth - Creates plants in a circle around you and costs 1 fruit per plant. If a complete circle can't be placed, then the plants are placed on open squares closest to monsters. Lets you choose how many plants to spawn. (2 MP, Fruit)

Piety level ****: "Green Death"

• Reproduction - Creates giant spores from corpses in your field of vision to attack your enemies. (4 MP, 100-200 Food)

Piety level *****: "Nimbus"

• Rain - Creates a circle of water around you. The floor becomes shallow water, shallow water becomes deep water. Plants and fungus randomly spawn. (4 MP, 150-300 Food, 4-6 Piety)

Piety level ******: "Force of Nature"

• No new abilities.

Punishments

• The elements will be invoked against you, the equivalent of an ice, earth, fire and air miscast.
• Hostile plants (biased towards oklobs) will grow around you. This effect will only happen when abandoning Fedhas, never when simply under penance.
• Corpses in line of sight will produce hostile spores.
• All previously neutral or allied plants will also turn hostile upon abandonment or excommunication.

Strategy

Best characters to use Fedhas would be:

1. Merfolk, move speed bonus, evasion bonus, tail attack etc. in water.
2. Ranged attack characters (spells or ranged weapons), play keep away with Grow Plants and Rain.
3. Enchanters or characters with confuse or paralyze, to drown enemies in deep water created by rain.
4. Stabbers, to take advantage of confusion of wandering mushrooms and spores.

I guess you could win a 15-rune ascension with Fedhas, but then again you could do it with no gods too. I'd say Fedhas's one of the worst choices for a 15-runer, because Fedhas requires corpses for piety and very few things in Abyss, Hells, and Pandemonium leave them.

Not to mention that many of his/her abilities lose their shine against demons, such as spores not causing confusion and most demons flying right over deep water. I do think that Fedhas's a pretty good and interesting god before those areas though. His/Her abilities have a lot of neat applications.

• Most useful for Merfolk. Using rain twice will allow you to create deep water into which you will retreat into, and shallow water is useful too. Merfolk gains speed and evasion bonus, and non-giant, non-amphibious enemies will flounder around and lose turns if they are in shallow water. Can use deep water to put stashes in as Merfolk. Also handy to a lesser extent as tengu as they fly over water. Larger races like Nagas, Centaurs, Ogres and Trolls can get by in water as they don't incur combat penalties from being in shallow water.
• Useful for ranged combatants, both magic and arrows. Fire through plants, walk through plants to gain distance etc. Using rain twice will allow you to create a ring of deep water around yourself to keep the melee away. Remember that you can fire through oklobs/wandering mushrooms too, not just plain plants
• Also helpful for stabbers, wandering mushrooms distract and confuse, and spores confuse. Also, oklobs distract enemies, even if they are far away as enemies are sometimes distracted when hit by the acid. Note that oklobs can fire through each other like you can fire through them, which means it's okay to have them block each other's fire lines.
• Fun trick is to create a corridor surrounded by deep water with rain and sunlight/dig, and when enemies get in there, confuse them so they'll drown. You can even get the loot by drying up the deep water with sunlight, or just being Merfolk. Easy way to create a drowning hole is to use rain twice while some enemies are around you, as deep water is not created where enemies are, so it'll create a path surrounded by deep water, which means easy confusion+drowning.
• Rain also puts out sticky flames. You can also use it in combination with cold bolt to kill enemies faster with freezing cloud. Another thing you can do is put a conjure flame there, which will create a lot of steam cloud that blocks view, like a poor man's fog scroll (takes 3 turn to get going though, rain, conjure flame, then 1 turn for the steam to kick in). Fire bolt works too, except clouds are smaller, though works 1 turn faster as there's no delay in fog producing. Another use is to use rain so you are surrounded by shallow water squares while on dry land, and hit enemies with elec brand, which will aoe electrocute them for minor damage, especially in corridors so you can fight one at a time while electrocuting two or three enemies.
• Another use of rain is to block off problematic areas. For example, rain can be used to block off annoying jelly vaults as the more dangerous jelly-type enemies can't swim.
• Often times, it's better to spend piety on rain hoping for a plant growth rather than spending fruit growing plants, since piety is renewable, and since Fedhas piety doesn't decay, you'll have plenty as long as you are not in corpse-less area.
• If you manage to accidentally submerge some loot by drawing a Water card from a deck or by killing something in deep water, you can use sunlight to free the loot up. Depending on what you flooded, you may or may not deem it worthwhile to switch to Fedhas specifically for this, however.
• Remember that sunlight can reveal invisible monsters. Costs 0 piety and a minor amount of hunger, and is unresistable. Can be used to strand aquatic monsters, which will suffer damage slowly until they are dead, though they can flop back into water.
• You can use sunlight to create pathways in waterlogged areas like The Shoals or The Swamp (though the tides in the Shoals may end up re-flooding your pathways).
• Reproduction ability's spore will confuse any enemy that's non-magic immune and natural, regardless of poison res or magic res. Wandering mushroom attacks will be resisted by poison res however. Reproduction is more useful with casters who can kill enemies from a distance and produce corpses far away, or blink away from corpses and then use reproduction since it does significant friendly damage and confuses you through poison res. One neat trick is to use the Portal Projectile spell to teleport a corpse in midst of enemies before using Reproduction. Another good trick is to cast Inner Flame on your spores.
• Not so good late game. Need corpses to gain piety and late game monsters like demons and undeads don't leave them. Lack of plants late game branches, okhlobs etc are weak late game.
• Note that moving through plants take 1.5 times as long [move_player()]
• Using LOS spells like refrigeration and shatter is not recommended since it might get plants and get your piety down.
• Kills using spores give full experience, though oklobs half like normal summons.
• It appears from personal experience that fruits with the least amount in the inventory are automatically used up first. For example if you have 11 bananas, 1 strawberries, and 15 sultanas, the strawberry will be used up first, then the bananas.
• Decompose instantly kills ghouls/necrophages/skeleton-less zombies and gives piety for it. Also turns zombies into skeletons, gives piety.
• Note that upgrading a fungus costs 1 piety rather than the 2 it costs to upgrade toadstool.
• Don't worry too much about letting allied plants die as the penalty is only 1 piety, or about 1 corpse's worth.
• Invocation improves strength of oklobs (oklobs fire (10+inv)/30 % of the time and gain HD), wandering mushrooms (gain HD), and HP of plants created using growth (+inv*10 HP), and more rain clouds from using rain ability.