Monday, 8th February 2016, 08:33 by Croases
Here are the main problems I think Poison Magic has.
1. Its early game is tedious. Sting encourages kiting, OTR encourages kiting plus Cure Poison plus resting afterwards, there are a whole bunch of enemies (phantoms, necrophages, ice beasts, player ghosts, high-end zombies) that you can't really kill and have to kite across the level so that you can park/stair dance/approach from another stair. It is important to have resistant enemies, of course, but no other elementalist faces nearly as many at this point of the game (AE and EE have nothing resistant, FE only has imps, IE gets Throw Icicle so they don't care overmuch about cold resistance).
2. It loses steam much sooner than it ought to. Lair has multiple black mambas and spiny frogs, which have poison as their sole resistance; facing them as VM is no different than facing eight levels of molten gargoyles as a FE or AE. One major reason that rP is given willy-nilly to every monster, I think, is Mephitic Cloud, which brings me to my first suggestion: remove it. I don't think anyone would disagree that a Crawl without it is better than a Crawl with it, and while it does have one interesting aspect (HD-based resistance), that can be moved to another Poison or Poison/Hexes spell.
3. It has no utility options, being limited to "kill non-rP things" and "kill non-rP things even harder". Ice Magic and Air Magic have a whole load of charms that make it attractive to dip into them even if you won't ever use their offensive options, while Earth couples well with Transmutations and even Fire, the designated offensive school, has its share of utility in Inner Flame and Ring of Flames. Poison instead gets Cure Poison, a spell that is in the game mostly because there are other poison spells that necessitate it, and Mephitic Cloud, which doesn't do anything that other poison spells can't.
Now, I am not really versed in game design, but here are a couple of suggestions on how to improve the school.
a. A Poison/Charms spell that poisons you and gives you slaying/spellpower/SH/EV/AC/you-name-it bonuses depending on how poisoned you are. As with ambrosia, you'll need to have the detrimental effect to keep the beneficial effect going, you lose the benefits if you cure your poison. Interesting in that you can adjust your bonuses by using other self-poison spells, but must carefully consider whether the damage you'll be taking from poison will be lower than the damage you won't be taking from the enemies.
b. High-level spells that move the focus of the school from "kills non-rP enemies" to "uses non-rP enemies to kill everything". These may include: Poison/Hexes nerve control spell that forces an enemy to move in a single direction (hitting things if they're in the way, low-risk mini-Discord), Poison/Necromany tissue degeneration spell that gives a non-rP enemy hyperactive ballistomycete-style explosions every turn (couple with Inner Flame for extra fun), Poison/Transmutations possession spell that instantly kills a (damaged?) non-rP enemy, moves you into its position, and gives you its speed/attacks/resistances for the duration (that's right, shard shrike form... actually, Antaeus form too).
c. Remove Mephitic Cloud, and concurrently remove the gratuitous proliferation of rP in the game. At least one Fiend ought to lose it, as should a couple other major demons, and probably either of mambas or spinies.
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