Fixing Poison Magic

[raikaria]

Ah, poor Poison Magic. We love you for a Lv 3 spell and then never touch you again because so many monsters are nearly immune to you and you have no spells beyond Rank 6.

That's... kinda a problem.

So, how do you encourage people to actually use Poison Magic?

Firstly, we need to know the two core issues with Poison Magic:
1: A lot of monsters [Undead; Unholy; Blobs; several beasts] are immune to it. RPois is too prevelant to make Poison Magic worthwhile.
2: No endgame spells

So, clearly the solution is to add new spells to Poison Magic which encourage it to be leveled; while allowing it to not be completely useless against everything. Luckily; there is a damage type which would fit into Poison Magic while fixing this problem.

Acid.

To make up for the lack of resistances to Acid damage, either the spells can have lower power or be of higher levels, but I think adding Acid-based spells into Poison Magic would fix the school. Aside from the obligatory Acid Bolt [Or Arrow/Shot] and Acid Cloud spells that could be added, you could do things like a 'Jelly Form' spell which is Poison Magic/Transmutations. There could be a spell which deals both Poison and Acid damage as well perhaps as a Lv9 spell in the vein of Glaciate [Perhaps something like covering the ground in a toxic; acidic ooze?]

I think adding these sorts of spells would encourage people to use Poison Magic for more than just Meph Cloud. Which opens up new styles of play to multiple races; particually those with high Poison Magic aptitudes; such as Nagas; Octopodes and Formicids.

And of course the Snake Pits could be made harder by having the stronger Naga Mages use Acidic spells.

[Sprucery]

I don't think poison magic needs fixing. My Venom Mages use Venom Bolt even in Zot and Poison Arrow is great, of course. Poison resistance does not make those spells useless.

Acid spells are another thing, might be cool, but would need more interesting types than just the typical bolt/cloud spells imho.

[KoboldLord]

Poisonous Cloud and Poison Arrow are good enough that I will drop everything on another sort of conjurations character and start training poison magic just to use them. They are both excellent all the way through a three-Rune game, and they're both still good enough to justify the spell slots afterward.

Venom Bolt is generally weaker than the other bolt spells, but if it's the only penetrating bolt spell I have I don't care about such things. Just having a penetrating bolt at all is a really good thing, and it's actually quite good at eliminating pack monsters for most of the game even if there are better options that may or may not show up in treasure drops.

Really, I think you're underestimating Poison Arrow. Don't think of it as a level 6 spell; thing of it as a level 8 spell that refunds mp and hunger every time you cast it, plus gives you extra spell slots and you have an innate wizardry bonus to cast it. It kills most dangerous things in the game really fast.

I wouldn't pick up the low-level poison spells unless I started with them, but that's a property shared by most of the other low-level damage spells too. Flame Tongue or Sandblast aren't exciting any more either if you first pick them up post-Lair.

[adozu]

from the page "Refused and Rejected Concepts List"

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:planning:wont_do

Adding acid spells to the Poison Magic school.
Poison is already well-defined, adding spells that bypass all of its drawbacks/advantages does not improve it.
Acid damage is not very different from plain nonelemental damage for players, since acid resistance is so rare and the monster corrosion effect is mostly insignificant.

sorry :\

i had this cool idea for a poison themed god instead but my inability to compelte it has left it half baked in my hard drive

(https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15922 just for reference, i still think there are very salvageable ideas)

[byrel]

I enjoy the VM background quite a bit. I don't think poison magic needs a lot. (I do skip venom bolt basically all the time, so maybe that could use a buff... I just don't feel the need for a bolt spell with OTR online.)

[Sandman25]

Venom Bolt does much more damage.

[Lasty]

Moved to CYC because, although this is a GDD-type post, it's been brought up and rejected many times before and is on the list of rejected ideas.

[ZipZipskins]

I'd highly recommend actually using Poison Arrow before you make sweeping statements about the school

[Sandman25]

I'd highly recommend actually using Poison Arrow before you make sweeping statements about the school

I am not sure what you mean. OP clearly states that there are no level 7+ spells in Poison Magic so it makes little sense to train the school higher (spell power is subject to serious step down). With all other schools you can train them higher because level 8+ spells exist.

Yes, I know that devs told several times that having schools without high level spells is good for diversity.

[onget]

problem of poison magic is that it does not do anything in the extended game.
And, that it lacks high-level poison spell is training poison magic in high skill will always be a bad idea.

[ZipZipskins]

I'd highly recommend actually using Poison Arrow before you make sweeping statements about the school

I am not sure what you mean. OP clearly states that there are no level 7+ spells in Poison Magic so it makes little sense to train the school higher (spell power is subject to serious step down). With all other schools you can train them higher because level 8+ spells exist.

Yes, I know that devs told several times that having schools without high level spells is good for diversity.

I'm talking about the OP saying that people use Poison for meph and never touch it again, that Poison has no endgame spells, that Poison is "completely useless against everything"

That's all ridiculous lol

[ontoclasm]

problem of poison magic is that it does not do anything in the extended game.
And, that it lacks high-level poison spell is training poison magic in high skill will always be a bad idea.

Neither of these are true, and neither would be a problem if they were. 27 Poison is probably a waste but 27 anything is a waste, generally speaking.

[tabstorm]

Poison magic is already as overpowered as the other damage schools in optimal play, maybe more so due to ease of kiting. Being mediocre in extended is a design goal of poison magic, I imagine - that is the design space it occupies.

[n1000]

I hear a lot of similar suggestions that poison magic is weak. This is not the case. Venom bolt is a level 5 bolt that appears in a starting book so while conjuration-focused IE and FE are awkwardly icicling single yaks or corralling them into a good shape for fireballs a VM can easily line up and kill stacks of elephants. The spell does not scale to the same strength as BoF/BoC at very high power and obviously poison is resisted by many monsters which gives some player pause. However, I've played several characters which continue to cast VB into Zot. Granted, it's not as strong at this final stage of the game but it's fantastic in Vaults and against monsters with shields. NB: people overestimate monster poison resistance, VB takes a lot of casts to kill hydras, but it will kill them.

PArrow is a fantastic skill with great range and immense damage. Being level 6 makes it fairly easy to cast if you're not weirdly opposed to training poison magic. It's awesome for taking out uniques and even at moderate spellpower can likely one-shot Ironbrand Convokers and 2-3 shot Frost/Fire Giants/Ettins. Despite the popular notion of Poison Magic being an early-game focused school, parrow in particular scales very well into high spellpower ranges. I've had two or so characters that had a good chance of one-shotting orb guardians and the aforementioned giants.

I'm not going to suggest anyone jump into extended with poison magic being their primary source of damage but even in Pan/Hell its range and non-resistible damage means parrow has a place.

I don't know precisely what threads like this seek besides turning poison magic into something identical to fire magic which, mind you, has equally annoying problems vs rHellfire monsters. You're going to have to deal with monsters that your character is worse at fighting no matter what. You have to train multiple offensive skills to be able to kill everything unless you play pure physical melee and then well you're playing pure melee which has obvious disadvantages which have been discussed ad nauseam. the long and short of it is that poison magic is pretty good on its own and lends itself well to transitioning into other conjurations/melee.

[edgefigaro]

All that needs to be done to buff the poison school is to put PArrow in a second spellbook.

[byrel]

I hear a lot of similar suggestions that poison magic is weak. This is not the case. Venom bolt is a level 5 bolt that appears in a starting book so while conjuration-focused IE and FE are awkwardly icicling single yaks or corralling them into a good shape for fireballs a VM can easily line up and kill stacks of elephants. The spell does not scale to the same strength as BoF/BoC at very high power and obviously poison is resisted by many monsters which gives some player pause. However, I've played several characters which continue to cast VB into Zot. Granted, it's not as strong at this final stage of the game but it's fantastic in Vaults and against monsters with shields. NB: people overestimate monster poison resistance, VB takes a lot of casts to kill hydras, but it will kill them.

Honestly, my contention for the OPness of VM is OTR. I can walk straight through a horde of orcs with it on, and all the normal ones just die. The knights, etc. might take 2 casts. Which you can then apply the damage while running away. You have almost 0 risk, and can just kill anything non rPois (including those stacks of elephants.)

On top of that, you start with mephitic cloud, blowgun needles and faux rPois. You get a level 4 single school spell online, and orc is yours. You have plenty of XP to go for a weapon then, which synergizes really well with OTR and mephitic giving you crowd control. Or go vehumet and pick up conjurations.

As onget is fond of pointing out, stong in the early game is strong, because it gives you the space you need to get midgame tools online.

[wheals]

By the way, if you're playing 0.16, poison attacks were buffed versus monsters in 0.17. Basically even if they have rPois they still have a chance to get poisoned, just like players now.