Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 12:29 by Croases
Sure, why not? Here is a restatement of why I think Poison Magic is bad.
1. There is already a school of magic with offensive spells that are great early on, but don't work against everything and taper off during the endgame, it's called Necromancy. But Necromancy gets Regeneration, Haunt, Death's Door and Borgnjor's to remain useful throughout the game, and has an additional gimmick in raising the undead, while Poison Magic gets "poison things" and "poison things some more" - in point of fact, the lack of diversity in PM spells is so bad that I'm fairly sure that you could take out all spells above level 6 from Necromancy and it would still be a better-designed school than PM.
2. Speaking of which, the "great early on" part of Poison Magic's niche is an utter lie, no other school faces as many resistant enemies as venom mages during the early game. FE has imps (parkable, poison-resistant), IE has ice beasts (can be handled by Throw Icicle or your own beasts, poison-resistant), AE has eels (can be easily disengaged) and sky beasts, EE has nothing, and Ne has minor demons and undead (poison-resistant). Playing a VM entails running away from nearly every enemy that any other caster background would run away from, and then some. This, combined with the kite-heavy nature of Handbook spells, makes the VM early game incredibly tedious.
3. Because of resistance issues, VM is notable as one of the only backgrounds with a book that is just plain insufficient to clear Lair. Three top-tier Lair threats (hydras, spiny frogs, black mambas) have rP, which is three more than any other school - I can see the entire tavern rioting about how FE or IE "got ruined" if death yaks got rF+, for example, or hydras had rC+ (though IE would still lay them to waste with Throw Icicle), even though this just puts these classes closer to VM. I don't know what can justify such a difference between VM and every other magical background, beyond design inertia and Mephitic Cloud trivialization issues.
4. I've seen people advise that VM should be thought as a hybrid class and must pick up a weapon to "complement" its spells, but there's nothing to complement there because, unlike other "pick up melee early" backgrounds like Wr, Su and Wz, VM has no support spells - what these people actually want to say is "Poison Magic is so terrible that you're better off burning your book and going Trog". The relative lack of support spells is unique to Poison and Fire, and Fire gets a lot more variety in its offensive options to make up for its lack of support, while Mephitic Cloud and Alistair's offer PM nothing that its basic offense (Sting/Venom Bolt/Poison Arrow/Poisonous Cloud) can't already deal with.
In conclusion, "it's okay for a school to not have high-level spells" is a Tavern meme that conceals the real problem behind Poison Magic, which is that it is an awfully narrow school with a difficult and tedious early game, little to no support options, and overreliance on a single gimmick ("heavy damage that is mitigated by a common resistance") that is done better by Necromancy anyway.
Last edited by
Croases on Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 12:36, edited 1 time in total.