Poison magic need to be euthanased


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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 07:23

Poison magic need to be euthanased

Such a pitiful magic class...
Mephitic cloud is the only hope of all poison magics
And Think about the poor life of Olgreb had experienced.

Poison magic needs longevity treatment I suppose. :(

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 07:48

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Poison magic similar to the torture that Sisyphus must endure. Its a magic school full of promise, that exists only to taunt tavern goers into making proposals to improve it. Proposals which will then be cruelly mocked and shut down. And so the cycle of torment continues.

Why did the devs put PM there? To taunt us? To show us that we are imperfect mortals incapable of resolving a paradox? To teach us a lesson about the futility of trying? To have an excuse to sneer, "Not every magic school needs to be good late game"? Why? Why do I exist? What is the point of it all? WHY?

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 07:54

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

have you ever cast poison arrow

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 08:03

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

I tried. I tried to make PM better. I poured sweat, blood and tears into that GD proposal. But did anyone listen? Did anyone care? No! It's all, "bruh, poison arrow is the best damage in the game vs orb guardians. Ought to be a lvl 7 spell" and "acid doesn't belong in poison" and "magic is overrated anyway" and "I -like- having a magic school that tapers off in usefulness".

Sometimes I don't even know why I still try. But time and again, I pick myself up and return to this keyboard for the greater glory of the game. The gods gave me this talent, this gift of making roguelikes great - it can't have been for nothing. Even when spurned, even when you spit on me, I will give my all to make this game better. Not just for you, not just for me, but for all the generations to come who will play DCSS.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 12:29

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

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.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 12:34

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Croases wrote: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.

stopped reading right there

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:01

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Croases wrote:Sure, why not? Here is a restatement of why I think Poison Magic is bad.

snipped for length, but I'm curious, why is it important that VM is just as good as the other book backgrounds? We're okay with gods and species that have different relative power levels, so why should backgrounds be balanced?

Not that it's really as bad as you say, but still.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:08

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

It would be nice if VM wasn't just "I want to be a mage, but I also want this character to be weak." I don't know exactly how that would happen outside of a species with wildly unbalanced apts though.

Venom mages do get some decent spells, and poison arrow is really good, but overall I think Croases is right in saying they really, really lack versatility. If VMs started with a tier 1 weapon of choice they'd be a lot more workable in my opinion.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:19

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

archaeo wrote:
Croases wrote:Sure, why not? Here is a restatement of why I think Poison Magic is bad.

snipped for length, but I'm curious, why is it important that VM is just as good as the other book backgrounds? We're okay with gods and species that have different relative power levels, so why should backgrounds be balanced?

Not that it's really as bad as you say, but still.


I dont think the relatively low power level is what annoys people the most. It's the lack of utility in late game. Every other book background can continue to get some value out of their starting school/skill all the way into the late game. Every other book background gets at least the pretext of late-late game utility.

I know the likely response is "Why is it important that book starts be able to use their skill rather than having it arbitrarily cut off, leaving you a shadow of your former self, a veritable amputee, who must cobble together some utility out of whatever other books he can find lying around like some kind of magical outcast hobo."

Why? Why you ask? For parity. For equality among magical schools. For justice. For freedom. Taking a school that's already mediocre vs other schools, and deciding "let's just not give it any spells > lvl 6" is just cruel and unusual. It's leaving a job half finished at best. At worst, it's intentionally suppressing the hidden potential of something mildly-ok-verging-on-bad in your game which could've been so much more. PM could've been a somebody, dammit. It could've been a contender. If you'd just looked out for it a little.

You, you think Olgreb would've just kicked back on his heels after designing Poison arrow? you think he took a look at Firestorm, and Glaciate, and Controlled Blink, and Necromutation, and thought "Oh. Those spells are really good. Shucks. I could never create anything that good. I think i'll just... retire. Just chalk poison magic up as a bad idea to begin with. Just crawl into some hole and leave my future pupils as the laughingstocks of the magi world." Hell no! He would've sat down, worked out the kinks and devised an impressive spell which would be transcribed from book to book for aeons to come! He would've created a world where a man could come up, 15 runes in hand and be proud to be known as a venom mage first and foremost!

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:26

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

lethediver wrote:you think he took a look at Firestorm, and Glaciate ... and Necromutation, and thought "Oh. Those spells are really good.

he probably didn't

smart guy

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:27

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Sar wrote:
lethediver wrote:you think he took a look at Firestorm, and Glaciate ... and Necromutation, and thought "Oh. Those spells are really good.

he probably didn't

smart guy


You left out controlled blink. Part of you knows I'm right. Part of you knows I'm right.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:32

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

I just think CBlink is pretty good, though there's a very limited set of characters that I'd actually learn it on. The set of my characters that would get PArrow is available is much wider.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:40

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Sar wrote:I just think CBlink is pretty good, though there's a very limited set of characters that I'd actually learn it on. The set of my characters that would get PArrow is available is much wider.


Haste, statue form, simulacrum, iron shot, death channel... if poison arrow was better than these spells, if its utility was "much wider", you'd have a point.

It is not.

PM is gimped. PA is a niche spell. Everything late game is rPois or poison-immune. It would honestly be better for the game long term if poison arrow was removed. Because then people would look at the school and have no excuse to keep putting off the desperately needed reform.

Christ, why can't you see? Why can't you just let me help you?

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:46

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Just to add fuel to the fire, if Firestorm can pierce fire resistance, and Glaciate cold resistance, is there any reason why a level 9 "super poison" spell could not pierce (maybe with halved effect) poison resistance ?

Is it because it would be too easy to bypass high AC & EV ?

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:48

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

But PArrow is much better than Statue Form and Iron Shot... Without Kiku, I'd take it over Simulacrum as well.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 13:52

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

In my opinion, VM is one of the best book starts. Try to get over the fixation of "X has to be awesome throughout the game'.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 14:29

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Merge Poison Magic with Transmutations, with the logic that you transmute your body fluids into venom.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 14:38

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

dpeg wrote:Try to get over the fixation of "X has to be awesome throughout the game'.

There is no point in the game where Poison Magic is awesome.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:00

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

If poison magic is actually bad (I am not saying either way here) the best fix is to just make fewer monsters in lair have rpois.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:06

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

dpeg wrote:In my opinion, VM is one of the best book starts. Try to get over the fixation of "X has to be awesome throughout the game'.


I agree the sting and mephitic cloud are awesome magic, but they lost their power after the Vault at most.
In the very early game poison magic is quite nice, but they are totally useless after the mid-game. It really needs longevity treatment.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:09

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Morrneyo: Why? Disregarding the obvious hyperbole (it is not **!!**totally**!!** useless after mid-game), helping to get you to the mid-game is an impressive feature.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:17

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

As an aside, bringing up that every other magic skill is more useful lategame is probably more of an argument to retain poison magic (i.e. it is actually different, unlike all these other magic skills that are the same and thus should be collapsed into fewer skills) than it is a reason to remove it.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:23

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

lethediver wrote:PA is a niche spell.


a spell that kills most of the game is a niche spell?

crate wrote:If poison magic is actually bad (I am not saying either way here) the best fix is to just make fewer monsters in lair have rpois.


or none preferably IMO, but especially ridiculous are hydras

and remove some of them too please. do we really need spiny frogs AND black mambas? and a bit off topic, do we really need sheep, yaks, crocodiles, death yaks, AND elephants?

Morrneyo wrote:In the very early game poison magic is quite nice, but they are totally useless after the mid-game.


Sar wrote:have you ever cast poison arrow

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:30

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

I like both spinies and mambas. They are cool enemies. They kill you!

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:39

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Spiny frogs and black mambas are good enemies, though you could argue that perhaps crawl doesn't need both of them because they are very similar. Clearly the solution is to make them less similar by removing rpois from one of them!

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 15:53

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

On the topic of removing rP from things, some fiends and other late-game enemies (but not all!) should lose it so that Poison Magic becomes "you can kill some enemies easier than other schools, but need a back-up plan for the rest" magic rather than "any skill point put into this school is a waste" magic (especially since many of the PM spells you want to cast are also Conjurations).

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 16:07

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Poison arrow is not better than iron shot jesus christ.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 16:15

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

dpeg wrote:In my opinion, VM is one of the best book starts. Try to get over the fixation of "X has to be awesome throughout the game'.


Go back to univision.
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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 16:18

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

It's not the worst book start because Sk exists, at the very least, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be better than any of the other backgrounds in the Mage category, and you know I don't consider "late game" at all when talking about background strength.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 16:26

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

duvessa wrote:It's not the worst book start because Sk exists, at the very least, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be better than any of the other backgrounds in the Mage category, and you know I don't consider "late game" at all when talking about background strength.


I think the difference between skalds and Venom Mages is that skalds focus on support magic at low levels, implying that one would most definitely pick up a weapon on d:1 and start training it. Venom mages don't do that, they have level 4 and 5 spells that imply that the player wants to be training magic until they get them to castable levels, THEN switch to weapons.

Sorry if I'm not making sense, what I'm trying to say is that skalds are specifically support magic spells while VM's are almost exclusively offensive magic spells.
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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 16:31

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

I don't understand how that is related to the post you quoted...

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 17:28

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

lethediver wrote:Every other book background can continue to get some value out of their starting school/skill all the way into the late game. Every other book background gets at least the pretext of late-late game utility.

VM is probably weaker than other book backgrounds, but I disagree with this statement. Meph and VBolt are useful throughout a three rune game. Olgreb's remains useful through spider/shoals and even vaults, CPois is nifty to have for any character that can spare the spell levels, and Sting doesn't need to be useful forever--it's a lv 1 spell!

VM could be given a weapon and treated as a warrior-mage in the starting menu (Necromancer too, honestly). Then people would be less concerned about its inability to deal w/ every threat (see: hexes/enchanter). If having multiple schools that 'kill almost all enemies' is good design (not saying this is true, the game would probably be better with far fewer spell options), I don't see why having multiple schools that 'kill almost all enemies but force you to find another way to deal with certain types of enemies' is not good design.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 17:38

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Necromancer has the second best level 1 damage spell in the game.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 17:44

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Necromancer definitely doesn't need the buff. It just usually plays as a hybrid character. Then again, so do most magic classes.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 17:54

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

dpeg wrote:In my opinion, VM is one of the best book starts. Try to get over the fixation of "X has to be awesome throughout the game'.

People say that VM is the strongest in the early game but it doesn't feel like it when you have no way to deal with spiny frogs or hydras.

Unless your definition of early game is earlier than that, pre-lair. Killing a pack of gnolls or orcs with meph and sting/OTR is definitely good, but it's so early on and your character has so little investment at that point that I'm not super interested in "stronger than average until you get to lair". Maybe it's more appealing to streakers, since the early dungeon is said to be one of the hardest/most lethal parts of the game.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 18:01

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

I usually think early game is something like pre-Temple.

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 18:17

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

VM is worse pre-Temple than the rest of the mage backgrounds

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 19:13

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Good: Summoning, Necromancy, Conjurations with spell level < 5
OK: Multitarget conjurations with spell level >5, OOD
No good: Other single target conjurations with level > 5
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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 20:00

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Sar wrote:I like both spinies and mambas. They are cool enemies. They kill you!

But replacing one with the other would still kill you

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Post Wednesday, 11th May 2016, 20:09

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

I think there's enough meaningful distinction between a speed 12 monster and a speed 18 (!!!) one.

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 01:24

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

dpeg wrote:Morrneyo: Why? Disregarding the obvious hyperbole (it is not **!!**totally**!!** useless after mid-game), helping to get you to the mid-game is an impressive feature.


Poison magic is bad. Just bad. FM, IM, and EM are all-round good, but PM is just bad.
Do we have to practice PM to use poison arrow for Antaeus at late game? No! I'd rather stabilizing fire storm.

Other elemental classes are good for early, mid, late game. But poison magic's life starts to end at Lair.

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 03:07

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Out of curiosity, and slightly off topic, why was ignite poison changed to only burn poisoned enemies and not poisonous ones?

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 03:15

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

ajon wrote:Out of curiosity, and slightly off topic, why was ignite poison changed to only burn poisoned enemies and not poisonous ones?


It affected enemies with poisonous corpses, and poisonous corpses were removed.

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 08:41

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

btw PA is a really rare spell.

i think i only found it once before lair and i absolutely murdered everything. actually i murdered everythign so hard (i even had a staff of poison!) i died out of excessive omnipotence delusion from a herd of dire elephants i think.

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 09:53

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Imagine there was a spell that would weaken poison resistance. Oh wait, virulence already exists!

Imagine poison had more than one effect (damage). (Yeah, yeah, mephitic exists.)

Imagine poisons that could slow, blind, disrupt spells, daze or whatever.

PA is pretty strong, but for a lvl 6 spell it had better be!

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 11:01

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Starting to sound like hexes there.

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 12:39

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

It's like poison magic is designed to be awful. Cure poison is a waste of spell slots, mp, turns and whatever else you spend on it. Meph has a nice effect but makes fireball noise. Olgreb does low damage and also kills you. Venom bolt is okay but is all but a strictly worse version of bolt of draining. A similar thing can be said for poison cloud vs freezing cloud.

One of the design goals is to avoid no-brainers. It is currently a no-brainer to avoid this terrible school.

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Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 13:48

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

RBrandon wrote:Cure poison is a waste of spell slots, mp, turns and whatever else you spend on it. [...] Olgreb does low damage and also kills you.

You mean it kills you because you don't have cure poison? :)

Poison magic is ok and VM is an easy start imo.
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Spider Stomper

Posts: 224

Joined: Monday, 19th November 2012, 04:56

Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 18:19

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

Whew, I had forgotten that you had to cast another spell to undo what OTR does to you! Thanks, I had almost convinced myself it was a bad spell!

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osklington

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 297

Joined: Wednesday, 9th July 2014, 08:20

Post Thursday, 12th May 2016, 18:45

Re: Poison magic need to be euthanased

OTR now is a bizarre passive-aggressive spell that forces you to have Cure Poison and cast it in combat, counteracting its purpose as a multi-turn spell that passively poisons monsters while you do other things (because you don't get to do other things, you cast Cure Poison). I don't really have a good sense of what good design is, but that does not seem like good design to me.

If OTR needs to do damage to you, have it do damage to you. If OTR needs to take extra MP, have it take extra MP (by draining 1 MP every turn it's active, for example). Don't make it poison the user.

If there should be a spell that poisons the user, have the player make actual decisions by having its benefits go away when you're not poisoned. A "Toxic Infusion" spell that poisons you and boosts your defense or damage while poisoned could be neat, since you'll need to decide whether the damage you're taking from poison is preferable to the damage you're not taking from monsters.
Last edited by Croases on Thursday, 12th May 2016, 18:49, edited 1 time in total.

For this message the author Croases has received thanks: 7
duvessa, Lasty, Morrneyo, nago, osklington, WingedEspeon, ydeve
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