dota-2
In the original dota there were many game modes that could be activated using commands at the start of the game. Among these I remember one that basically made it so you either couldn't deny, or so there was no point in doing so. Can this be done somehow in Dota 2? Can you turn off denying or render it useless in dota 2?
IE: My friend likes dota, but hates the concept of denying, so I'm trying to find out if this is possible to help give him motivation to play.
Update as of 18/1/2013
The options menu has been changed to make it easier to find the control rebinding for items. I have taken a new screenshot - simply click on steps 1 through 4 from anywhere in the game client to open up the menu and rebind your item hotkeys.
Note: this part of the answer is outdated, but I left it alone for now. If it's appropriate to delete it, mods are welcome to do so.
You can change the key bindings for both abilities and items by clicking their icons underneath the list of controls in the options menu. Below is a screenshot of the controls menu, you can see that I reassigned my items to numbers 1-4 and my extra mouse buttons.
It is not immediately apparent that these buttons which look like the ingame HUD are actually additional key binding options, but each one that is labelled can be changed.
It's also highly recommended that you rebind at least a few control group keys to something else, but it's rare that you will need all 6 control groups in a normal game. I chose F1-F3, but you can use whatever you like.
There are three main reasons.
When you are giving an armor bonus to your creeps, you will end up pushing your lane towards the enemy, which is something you do not want to do as you're granting them improved safety and risking a gank to yourself.
Sometimes, you may want to toggle it on and off randomly when in lane to mess with the enemy hero timing in their attempts to last hit your creeps.
As AdamP pointed out in the comments, the aura may give you away if you are invisible or hiding nearby.
Best Answer
tl;dr : No, DotA 2 doesn't support yet custom game mode.
DotA 2 is a full online game (Appart for some tournament where players play on local lobby). This means that the game settings are set on Valve's server and thus can not be changed. Either you play All Pick, Captain's Mode or ARDM you can not turn off deny when playing matchmaking. Even if you create a private lobby, there are no option implemented at the moment that allows such thing.
However, with the release of Source 2 coming early 2015, DotA 2 is on the way to fully support custom games modes which could lead to DotA games where denying is turned off. Still this would not be an official DotA game and you might not find many players to play with you.
That being said, learning to deny is a concept inner to DotA. If your friend has trouble denying he can use the folowing command dota_force_right_click_attack "1" which makes denying a lot easier since you can right click to deny and are not longer required to press the Attack key then select the creep you want to deny (This command can be written in an autoexec.cfg file so you don't have to type it everytime you start the game. If it's the whole concept of denying that is the issue then I'm afraid there is not much more you can do, denying is a part of DotA and is a very interesting game mechanic. It can help you control your lane (if you want to push or not), it forces you to decide if you want to commit for a tower kill or if you let it being denied, you can even do some clutch plays and deny allies when they are low life thus denying some much needed XP and Gold to the enemy team.