Suggestions concerning Poison Magic

[BountyHunterSAx]

What's *wrong* with a hexes/poison spell whose goal is to increase a creatures' vulnerability to poison? I'm thinking a nice 3x3 cloud of some kind. At 7-8mp, it's still a pricey-as-hell (and probably suboptimal) approach. But then, lots of spells are and that's okay. And if it's high level like that it could work against a creature's MR-check, which would make maxing its power very meaningful. . . and then synergize nicely with OTHER poison spells like pArrow.


Also, how about a ring-of-pestilence? Necormancy/Poison spell at Lvl7/8 that gives you rN, rPois, and makes you trail miasma clouds wherever you go while giving your poison and necro spells an enhancer level? Less useful than necromutation or ring of fire, but then less drawbacks as well. Granted, this one is a stretch, but I've *really* wanted to run my "5th Centaur of the Apocalypse" build for a while !



-AHMAD

[Guppyfry]

How about a vulnerability virus? The plague dynamic is the only really interesting idea to me and I think it makes sense as a cross with hexes since it's a debuff and gives both schools an incentive to make a higher xp investment.

Level 8 hex/poison - "infection"
Smite targeted
Target has a 50% chance of being infected
Infection causes vulnerability (mr-) and rp- for 4 turns
Infected enemy casts infection on all adjacent including player each turn it is infected

[o_O]

Most other schools have THAT ONE SPELL. Haste, Deflect Missiles, Invisibility, Iron Shot/Crystal Spear, Storms, Haunt or Lichform, OOD, CBlink, Butterflies, whatever Tmut has. Do fire spells peter out in the extended endgame? Who cares, they are training wheels for fire storm. Notice that these spells don't have the downsides that many lesser spells of that school has: Fire is bad vs fire immune things, but then firestorm cuts through resistance, Necro has lots of corpse and draining stuff, but then you become undead and shoot ghosts at dudes, Hexes can be resisted with MR, but then you get a spell that makes everything in the universe except you blind (except Sinv things). Giving poison a THAT SPELL, would mean points invested in the skill are not wasted, because when everything is immune to Arrow and Cloud you will still want Nuclear Poison Storm or whatever.

As for spell ideas: "Pandemic", the target bleeds, is poisoned and anti-mighted. Panned monsters have a (highish) chance to spread it when they hit things and a (low) chance to spread it to things nearby, (probly loosing spell power each time the disease 'jumps'). Maybe it should be a pandemic cloud or bolt instead of single target, idk.

Also part of this issue is really with extended.
Early game has goblings and gnolls and kobolds and snakes
Mid game has orcs and bees and hydras and so forth
Extended has undead and demons and demons and demons. Its ok that the game gets progressively more demon oriented, but currently its fairly binary.

[sgrunt]

Most other schools have THAT ONE SPELL.

...Poison Arrow?

[XuaXua]

Any thought to a targetable low level spell called "Draw Poison" allowing you to target one poison chunk creature (or yourself if poisoned) and cause pain by pulling out poison? Possibly prevent said monster from being able to poison from a short time?
Works like Cure Poison, but causes damage to self, so might cause death. Low level single target ignite poison with poison as the skill.

[mumra]

Any thought to a targetable low level spell called "Draw Poison" allowing you to target one poison chunk creature (or yourself if poisoned) and cause pain by pulling out poison? Possibly prevent said monster from being able to poison from a short time?
Works like Cure Poison, but causes damage to self, so might cause death. Low level single target ignite poison with poison as the skill.

No. We totally don't need a new low-level poison spell that is just "weaker version of a mid-level poison spell".

[XuaXua]

Ignite Poison isn't a poison spell.

[mumra]

True, my bad. Seems a bit strange really.

[khalil]

True, my bad. Seems a bit strange really.

I think the idea is that you're transmuting the posion into gasoline or something.

[Bim]

It's fine not being equal, but you can't really play a 'venom mage' in the way you can pretty much play every other class without having to branch out as much.

have you played necromancer?

Have you used necromutation and haunt?

I have to agree strongly with mumra that there just seems to be a gap in PM. Poison magic is the only school which tops out at a level 6 spell (I know hexes is only 7, but you do have invs to compensate), and it just needs something to boost it into being a 'real' spell school rather than an early game crutch.

[XuaXua]

That is apparently the point, though. It is an experience consumer that is worthless for near to extended endgame, making investing in Poison a tactical choice.

[crate]

Necromutation, best spell for killing things

edit: anyway if you want to make a higher level poison spell that's ok, but poison magic has arguably the two strongest level 6 conjurations in the game (one of them the strongest by quite a lot) so it's not like poison is bad as-is.

Personally I don't see a problem with VM anyway, you want to branch out into something else--usually melee--just like, well, every other elementalist.

[Bim]

I meant necromutation and haunt together - try to think things through. Although even without using haunt, necromutation is still an incredibly powerful spell for pretty much every situation other than holy pan. Again, I realise all schools don't need to be balanced, but as it is it forces a 'no-brainer' situation. You could easily be a pretty dedicated ice/fire/air/earth elementalist (you may need some support spells) and get through a normal 5-6 run win with 'storms and tornado/shatter, but you are forced to branch out heavily with poison.

As I know how pedantic everyone likes to get, I realise that there will be people who have done a 15-rune pure venom mage using no support spells and only using a club and a hat as equipment - but I'm talking about the average user experience.

[crate]

Well if you'd rather, then think of VM like a warper. You're certainly not going to kill everything with translocations.

[khalil]

But warpers get items and some weapon skill, which states that they are expected to branch out.
Venom mages don't.

[crate]

Ok, healer then. You don't get weapon skill, you don't get a weapon, it's really really hard to win without using something that's not just invocations.

[Bim]

Healer isn't a magic school/magic based character class though...

[Bim]

Did anyone say anything about wanting starting books to be useful throughout the whole game?
Pretty much every other class can go down their class 'route' and win with only some secondary branching - VM's MUST branch unless you're playing a challenge game. It's just about cutting down on that no-brainer.

[crate]

Healer isn't a magic school/magic based character class though...

How is this any different from VM in a way that actually matters? The difference is you have a god instead of an item but that's actually not a significant difference unless you intend to abandon Ely (but then you're abandoning "healer" play anyway).

Also if you just want 3 runes then VM can win fine with only barely getting non-poison things, since, you know, poison arrow exists and so does the ability to not kill things (well if you really wanted you could do this for all 15 runes but it sounds kind of annoying).

edit: Also one of the big things about crawl is that a background is just a set of stuff to get you started in the dungeon. It's not at all supposed to--and it doesn't!--define a character path for you. Again if you want more poison spells that's fine, toss ideas at the devteam. But poison does not need to be changed imo (though it could benefit from more good ideas).

[galehar]

Pretty much every other class can go down their class 'route' and win with only some secondary branching

You already have been given several counter examples (necro, warper and healer). Instead of trying to "fix" the poison school or VM class, try a different approach. How about adding an interesting high level poison spell to crawl? To be a welcome addition, it needs to be sufficiently differentiated from existing spells. Also, spells which disable rP are a really bad idea in my opinion, so I would suggest to try something else.

[Kate]

getting the orb is a no-brainer imo, should cut down on that no-brainer

(I suggest reading the manual and figuring out what a no-brainer actually is in terms of useful design discussion as opposed to pointlessly repeating a phrase you heard somewhere and don't understand).

Also I sort of like the idea of a high-level poison spell being some sort of plague/virus, and agree that just removing rPois is pretty boring.

[khalil]

necromutation sucks ass

What.
It's the only way I can get away with spamming high level spells without having to stop and eat every three firestorms.
It's just like playing a mummy except you don't completely suck.

[Bim]

The phrase 'reductio ad absurdum' springs to mind. There's also no need to be needlessly belligerent - put your point across with some dignity.

But, to put you at ease, the definition of no-brainer from the manual is -
"wherever there's a no-brainer, that means the development team put a lot of effort into providing a "choice" that's really not an interesting choice at all. And that's a horrible lost opportunity for fun."

Other offensive spell schools give you the choice of (more or less) specialising or branching out - VM does not as it pretty much forces branching out and there's no point to keep training it after the early game. Therefore, I think it should be expanded to give you more choice and allow for more play styles, because that equals more tactics/strategy, which, as the manual says, helps to add more fun.

There's been a lot of suggestions for higher level spells and there are only two ways to go, either something that takes away rpois or something which adds more irresistible damage. The parasite suggestion seems to be the only one that is different from cloud/arrow and would be a fitting final spell as it's a much different mechanic (like the other elemental schools final spell).

I would envisage this as a smite-based single-target spell, which gradually spreads the parasites to all nearby monsters damaging health and either slowing or paralysing for a few turns. It could also scale the damage depending on how many monsters are around the focal point/monster of the spell. So if you were up against a unique for instance, as the parasites were more concentrated they'd deal more damage to the singular monster, but if there were many the parasites would spread, giving less damage to more monsters.

(Lastly, pure-necro is extremely good/powerful (go play a DDNm right now and get haunt, necromutation and bolt of draining up and running) and warper/healer are both set up by their class to be mixed with other abilities because they have no pure offense capabilities (unlike vm) so they don't really compare.)

[Kate]

The point is that "branch out and be flexible based on the things you find in the dungeon" is exactly the same kind of no-brainer as "don't die to the monsters", ie, one that is so completely obviously not a design problem in any way that labelling it a no-brainer and saying that it needs to be changed would be totally laughable and nobody would ever do it.

[yogaFLAME]

The phrase 'reductio ad absurdum' springs to mind.

I'm not sure why, since as has been said you were using the phrase incorrectly. Just because you managed to phrase something as "players must do x" doesn't mean players have no choice in how to do x.

In fact, you were probably using it completely backwards. Compare the current situation to a world where there is a very powerful spell waiting for VMs at level 8/9. Is there a most-obvious-choice in the latter situation?

(yes)

(and that's okay, because maximizing choice quantity is not the only thing game design revolves around)

[Mumcon]

How about adding an interesting high level poison spell to crawl? To be a welcome addition, it needs to be sufficiently differentiated from existing spells. Also, spells which disable rP are a really bad idea in my opinion, so I would suggest to try something else.

I just want to quote this to draw attention to it, because it seems like the bottom line here. Given the two basic facts that poison is quite strong where it's used and that not everything is supposed to be useful everywhere, abstract arguments about how it's comparatively lacking are all easily sidetracked. I think people understand that adding a properly scaled level 8 or 9 version of Sting/Venom Bolt/Poison Arrow wouldn't break the game per se, but because justifications for the "role" of that sort of spell haven't been sufficient, all it amounts to in the eyes of cynics is its "nature" (which is certainly quite boring).

Here are some actual serious ideas--two of which borrow the themes of 'smog' and 'toxic waste', one an attempt at a plague spell, and one a suggestion for OTR. If devs don't think any of these ideas have any potential whatsoever, then I pretty much have no idea how to theoretically approach designing an interesting high-level poison spell.

4 - Poison - Olgreb's Toxic Radiance

Change this to cause sickness. Preventing monsters from regenerating health seems like it could be a mechanic that scales up well even against things like giants and dragons.

7 - Poison/Hexes - Contagion

My attempt at a basic plague spell (mumra may have already presented much better ideas somewhere, I don't know). Starts by infecting the player.

Poisons, blinds for 3-6 turns, and in the case of the player also confuses.

Poison resistance protects from blindness and poison, but not the player-only confusion (which can be blocked by clarity).

After the 3rd turn, the infected become contagious: infectible monsters have a 33% chance to be infected any turn they're adjacent (or perhaps it's a matter of MR instead of being a flat 1/3). Being contagious lasts for 10 turns, and immunity to re-infection lasts 100 turns.

Only being undead protects from infection itself (i.e. it doesn't affect demons, but they can be used to spread the virus--useful for packs of demons+natural creatures).

8 - Poison/Air - Blast of Smog

1st and 2nd turns create a ring of clouds of smog (confusion+weak poison) radius 1 and then radius 2 around the caster. 3rd turn blasts that ring into surrounding enemies, dispersing it while causing all visible enemies to take Air Strike-level wind damage, in addition to strong poison for those not poison resistant.

8 Poison/Earth - Toxic Waste

3-turn delayed spell. On the third turn, any visible non-water/lava/etc. tile has a 66% chance to erupt in toxic waste, dealing Stone Arrow-level damage and strong poison.

[mumra]

No, I hadn't formalised an idea, it's just something I was thinking about.

Firstly I was thinking this should be called something like "Olgreb's Pox". That name actually fits a Hexes link quite well too.

I like the idea of starting the infection from yourself. Otherwise I was thinking this could be a cone/spray (like Dazzling Spray). Demons being used as carriers but not actually suffering the effects could be interesting but it's a somewhat rare effect. Blindness I quite like as a side-effect but it seems strange to have the player/monster effects so different; player blindness isn't implemented yet but I think it should be at some point.

Another possibility I was thinking about is that the infection causes pustules to grow on the monster's body, these burst when the monster is damaged e.g. by shooting at them with other spells or ranged weapons, and that's what spreads the plague to nearby monsters.

Blast of Smog's firing pattern is pretty good but you have to be careful with mechanics like this because clouds can't override each other and presumably the air blast would push other spells out of the way - so that spell would get the player free immunity to a variety of cloud dangers (perhaps not a huge problem but worth thinking about).

Sickness as a Toxic Radiance effect wouldn't be that noticable on most monsters I think. Most of the time you'd be better off doing something damaging rather than just stopping them heal.

[XuaXua]

Sicksplosion

Turn an enemy into a poisoned, potentially confused, ticking timebomb. When he dies, likely by increasing poison damage, which increases in lethality over time once infected (if not reduced by rpois checks or healing), nearby enemies are potentially infected with sicksplosion.

[prozacelf]

Blast of Smog's firing pattern is pretty good but you have to be careful with mechanics like this because clouds can't override each other and presumably the air blast would push other spells out of the way - so that spell would get the player free immunity to a variety of cloud dangers (perhaps not a huge problem but worth thinking about)

Actually, I could see that turning into a primary use of the spell. Which is not to say I have a problem with that. I think it'd be very useful to have something that'd clear out clouds and hurt monsters like that. I don't think it'd be that unreasonable as a lvl 8/9 spell effect either, unless there's something I'm just overlooking.

[mumra]

Actually, I could see that turning into a primary use of the spell. Which is not to say I have a problem with that. I think it'd be very useful to have something that'd clear out clouds and hurt monsters like that. I don't think it'd be that unreasonable as a lvl 8/9 spell effect either, unless there's something I'm just overlooking.

Fair point. There's actually a proposal somewhere on the wiki I think to give elves a "Gust of Wind" spell to blow clouds back at the player, making PCloud less effective against them.

[Mumcon]

mumra: You may be right about sickness not being that strong of an effect. I had thought that if it went on long enough and if the enemies had enough HP (especially if the sickness was able to negate regeneration) the benefit could materialize, but I don't know how it would work in practice. Also, I hadn't thought about the blast clearing out other clouds, though it makes perfect sense--so certainly that would be necessary to take into consideration.

One of the difficulties I encounter in designing spells of non-trivial complexity (an example of trivial would be Venom Bolt which is beam + penetration + poison) is making it such that all elements work together to fit the theme.

The effects of that plague spell were somewhat loosely chosen, but confusion was chosen as a player-only symptom in order to serve as a kind of penalty that can be negated if a player cares enough about the spell to wear jewelry just to deal with its effects (comparable to clarity / sustain abilities and CBOE). I can't expertly envision how effective a spell with a particular % of infection would be if it caused the effect I described, so maybe the spell would still be balanced if it causes confusion in everyone or no one. Or as a bonus to make the amulet of stasis more interesting, perhaps confusion could be scrapped for bouts of 1-2 turns of paralysis or hasting and it would affect all monsters including the player, but the player could wear stasis to negate that effect... But I don't want to talk about so many possibilities that it sounds like I haven't made any concrete proposal worthy of being analyzed. You can consider all the spells I listed before to be concrete proposals, whereas this post here is just an analysis or commentary of what I've previously proposed.

Incidentally, something like a fireball is easy to envision, but themes like 'toxic waste' and 'smog' are harder to visualize in simple terms--it's easier to 'convey' the theme if you make it a more complex spell, and conveying the theme well is necessary to make the idea appealing, which is why I ended up putting forward multi-turn techniques. There's certainly a way to express the concept of toxic waste or smog in a single turn while maintaining an interesting mechanic, but it's not like I felt the need to simplify it much given how many other level 8/9 spells operate over multiple turns (about half: Disjunction, Necromutation, Death's Door, Fire/Ice Storm, Tornado).

edit: Fixed a few places where I put the wrong word, seems I was a bit tired when posting this.

[jejorda2]

What about a spell that permanently stops health regeneration on the target, so you can hit it, run away to heal and regain mp, then come back and finish the job?
Anything worth using it on is risky to approach in the first place. Give it a short range to make it riskier. Maybe it also prevents the enemy from ever sleeping?

[crate]

Monsters that don't regenerate are awful design so I doubt that spell will be implemented.

[khalil]

The point is that "branch out and be flexible based on the things you find in the dungeon" is exactly the same kind of no-brainer as "don't die to the monsters", ie, one that is so completely obviously not a design problem in any way that labelling it a no-brainer and saying that it needs to be changed would be totally laughable and nobody would ever do it.

The problem is you don't need to branch out with most classes. I had a necromancer that didn't learn any spells after twisted resurection, and that didn't stop him from getting the orb.
Furthermore, my HOPr never did anything other than kill stuff with axes, and he only died because I'm a moron who didn't remove teleportitis before Zot:5.

[njvack]

The problem is you don't need to branch out with most classes. I had a necromancer that didn't learn any spells after twisted resurection, and that didn't stop him from getting the orb.

Whether or not players need to branch into other fields is completely tangential to whether there's a good high-level poison spell to be designed. Let's put that in its own thread if we really want to keep that discussion going.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Here's a few spells I came up with. Mind, this is mostly mechanics brainstorming rather than thinking about balance, such as what spell level these should be, how long they last, etc. Coming up with interesting mechanics is the hard part, after all. The spell names may or may not outright suck.


Infection (Poison/Hex?) - The spell is casted and focused on a specific target. If the spell is casted again on a different target before the original expires, then the spell immediately ends on the first target. The victim of the spell, should he lack rPois, suffers various debilitating effects, such as momentarily blindness, momentary silence, dazing, brief confusion, being forced to stop and vomit, temporary slowness of movement speed, temporary slowness of attacks, and/or perhaps a few others. These each have a chance of triggering every turn for the duration of the spell, so they won't all happen at once unless you're very lucky. The effects are all also short lived (1-3 turns). The spell itself lasts much longer.

The victim will also be surrounded by toxic clouds that inflict the same effects on anyone nearby. This can simply afflict the debuffs on nearby monsters rather than actually spawning clouds, if needed. Monsters can avoid the effects or get rid of ones they picked up by simply keeping their distance from the infected individual. Should the victim die and leave a corpse, then the corpse will continue to have the infection "anchored" on them until the spell expires or is recasted. If it gets raised from the dead then the spell remains on the resulting undead minion. No corpse and the spell ends immediately.

rPois does not protect a monster from being an anchor for the Infection spell, but it can protect them from the effects. The same applies to the player (they can target themselves if they so choose). Targeting an unoccupied space ends the spell immediately.


Toxic Bomb (Poison/Conj?) - Sort of like a debuff-variant of Fulminating Prism. The spell summons a bomb at the desired location that, after a few turns, detonates. Anyone caught in the blast will suffer light poison damage and one or more debuffs, such as brief confusion and being forced to stop and vomit. This could or could not leave clouds. Probably the weakest idea here, but I do like how Fulminating Prism behaves.


Necro Parasite (Posion/Necro?) - This spell targets a corpse and raises it from the dead by afflicting it with a number of toxic parasites. The parasites assume control of the body and force it to attack anything nearby. The corpse will emit poisonous clouds in stronger and greater numbers the longer it lives. However, due to the rapid multiplication of parasites within the host body, this zombie has a very finite lifespan. After a couple of dozen turns, its body will burst, causing damage to everything nearby while also poisoning them. Anything killed by the poisonous clouds or the exploding corpse may leave an infected corpse that'll rise up a few turns later and begin the cycle anew. If the zombie is slain before it bursts, then the worst it does is leave a toxic cloud on its tile if the parasitic infection was far enough along.


Impurify (Poison/Air?) - This spell targets a tile occupied by a cloud. It converts the cloud into a poisonous gas cloud. If there are adjacent clouds to that one, it'll slowly spread and convert the clouds into poison until it runs out of adjacent clouds or it spreads too far and ends up diffusing itself. This spell could have some interesting uses, such as using a Scroll of Fog to shield yourself from ranged attacks and then, when the monsters push through the fog to find you, you turn the fog into poison. Once everything is poisoned, you could then cast Ignite Poison to set them all on fire (as well as the clouds). You could also lob a fire spell into some water to make some steam and then turn all the steam into poison.

It probably should not affect a cloud that's been ignited by Ignite Poison and certainly not any cloud that is already poisonous.

[Frelus]

Just throwing out a suggestion:
Create Swamp: Takes an area (let's say 5x5), turns the ground into poisonous swamp, slowing and making everyone stumble (somewhat worse than shallow water effects, I'd say).
Poisons every round, and the ground itself is poisonous, too.
Furthermore, another idea for a spell that may combo well with that:
Freeze Poison. We got Ignite Poison, this is the other side of it - Freezing and slowing everything poisoned and standing in poison.
Something that may also work would be a Summon/Poison spell (could be incorporated into the swamp?) that summons high level snakes.
Incorporating acid into poison, we may get Acid Cloud. Acid Spray (Cone shaped, or in all directions?), Acid Rain (Creating tiles of dissolving acid in the floor, damaging anyone stepping into it).
A "transformation" spell may be made that makes you spew poison and become immune to it for a while - also well usable with ignite/freeze poison.
Basically, I would love poison to transform into something different lategame: Something that you use to set something else up.
If it is using a swamp to create a killzone, just getting poison into undead to ignite it (which should be possible, they should just not get damaged by the poison itself), using acid to herd enemies into corridors, spew poison all around you to blow a whole room up.
I would really love that.

[Lasty]

I don't think that any new spells which are mostly resisted by rPois are going to be useful for making the Poison skill worth training past the early teens. Poison is already very good at killing everything w/o rPois, so much so that if there were Level 8 Poison spell which instantly killed everything in LOS w/o rPois, it would probably not see significant use.

So, please focus your ideas on things that would be useful in some way in areas where most monsters are rPois+ or better.

[mumra]

So, please focus your ideas on things that would be useful in some way in areas where most monsters are rPois+ or better.

I think you missed a whole massive part of this thread.

[Kate]

if there were Level 8 Poison spell which instantly killed everything in LOS w/o rPois, it would probably not see significant use.

I think you have no idea what you're talking about.

[khalil]

He says that if there was a level 8 posion spell that killed evereything that didn't have resist poison, it woudn't get used much because most endgame things (demons, electric golems, liches) have rpois.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Lemme make a few edits to that quote...

I don't think that any new spells which are mostly resisted by rN are going to be useful for making the Necromancy skill worth training past the early teens. Necromancy is already very good at killing everything w/o rN, so much so that if there were Level 8 Necromancy spell which instantly killed everything in LOS w/o rN, it would probably not see significant use.

So, please focus your ideas on things that would be useful in some way in areas where most monsters are rN+ or better.

Yet I never see anyone saying Necromancy is useless even though it can't kill stuff or raise the dead in Extended. New Poison spells do not have to be capable of gibbing everything in sight in order to make the skill more useful.

[mumra]

He says that if there was a level 8 posion spell that killed evereything that didn't have resist poison, it woudn't get used much because most endgame things (demons, electric golems, liches) have rpois.

This is an endgame monster right:

  Code:

Orb Guardian (X) | Spd: 14 | HD: 15 | HP: 59-103 | AC/EV: 13/13 | Dam: 45 | doors, fighter, see invisible | Res: magic(120), drown | XP: 3899 | Sz: Giant | Int: normal.


And what about Draconians?

Forget about the post-endgame, it's irrelevant here. There are plenty enough non-rPois things in Zot that a high-level poison room clearer is still going to be desirable. For everything else there's Poison Arrow.

[Jeremiah]

We do have a precedent for poisons affecting things with rPois in the post-endgame - Needles of paralysis etc can affect demons even with rPois, and while they do not use poison magic, I assume they have their effect through some kind of poison/toxin.

So is there room for something similar in poison magic, with the chances of it working vs demons being determined by poison magic skill rather than throwing? I'm not sure what the effects would be as you would presumably not want to duplicate the effects of needles, but if there was something interesting it might create a reason to train poison magic to high level.

[galehar]

So, please focus your ideas on things that would be useful in some way in areas where most monsters are rPois+ or better.

No. Spells which overcome resistance need to be rare, or the resistance becomes irrelevant. Fire and Ice have 2 each (bolt of magma, throw icicle and the storms) poison has only one. But it's a very good one. Adding another high level one would probably make poison more like fire and ice, which isn't good.
Also, the game is primarily balanced around a 3 rune game, there's a reason it's called extended. And the poison school is useful throughout a 3 rune game. If poison is useless in extended, then maybe more poison vulnerable threats need to be added to it.
That being said, I like the idea of a level 7 plague spell (pois/hex). And as it's been suggested, it could use rP monsters as infection vector without affecting them. Infected monsters are sick but the current boring effect is replaced. Each turn, a sick monster (or player) has a chance of being afflicted with a random effect among confusion, slow or paralysis. Or nothing, it may act normally. The random status effect only lasts a turn, so the status isn't visible to the player. It's gone before he gets the control back and he only see the "sick" status.
The tactical effect is a bit like confusion (monster is mostly disabled, but not completely harmless) but more random (from completely disabled to fully effective). And there's some damage over time of course. The chance to trigger an effect and the individual weights for each effect give a lot of knobs to tweak to balance the spell.

[prozacelf]

Galehar--I assume that the "infection" itself would be irresistible, but the effects would be resisted by rPois? If so I think it'd be good to have the effects be poison + the random effect. Otherwise it seems like it'd be higher level for less impact than PCloud or Mass Confusion. Also it might make sense to flag things like golems and ghosts as non-contagious, depending on how much work that would be.