Changing cure poison to be more interesting

[brosephalon]

While playing a couple venom mages and consulting ##crawl I've found cure poison to be incredibly situational and pretty boring as a spell.
AFAIK it's only useful:

.When playing a Fo
.After battles vs most poisonous things (which only means you press 5 less)
.When playing a venom mage that hasn't yet got the conjurations needed to cast Venom Bolt, so instead uses OTR (only lasts for a couple levels)
.When going into spider nest/snake pit without rPois (very unlikely in my experience)

Therefore I propose to change the spell to:

Spoiler: show

Transfer Poison
Level 2
School1 Poison
School2 (maybe translocation?)
School3
Source(s)
Young Poisoners Handbook
Casting noise 3
Spell noise 0

Description: Transfers all poison out of your system to target enemy. Ignores AC/EV/rPois but requires a check vs MR which is harder to resist with higher spellpower. Even if the MR check fails, you still lose the status effect. It gains slightly more spell power the more poisoned you are, but always inflicts the same amount of poison. Has smite targeting.

I think these changes would allow it to actually be potentially helpful more than a couple times a game at best.
Thoughts?

[jejorda2]

I like the idea of moving poison from you to someone else, and you are right that cure poison is kind of limited.

If it needs to be weaker, smite targeting can be lost. I'd be in favor of making it a melee range spell like freeze, or even something that charges your melee attacks with poison like confusing touch charges your hands. This poison charge could interact with resistance differently from poison brands like confusing touch checks HD instead of MR like confuse.

I'd also prefer having the player being more poisoned resulting in the enemy becoming more poisoned, but that's a minor quibble.

Does doing it this way remove the decision to give up some spell slots for security against slow death from poison?

[brosephalon]

When I posted this idea in ##crawl, the more poisoned player=more poisoned target was my original idea, but as VolteccerJack pointed out there, this would probably lead to scummy play like having a parked adder/giant mite/whatever weak poisonous on the level above you to get poison levels to make it more powerful, which sounds really tedious. I like the idea of being able to turn potions of poison into an offensive consumable, but i'm not sure how you would accomplish that without said boring play happening
I like the idea of making the spell transfer in melee, perhaps smite targeting is too powerful, especially considering the ignoring of rPois. I'm not sure how much checking HD instead of MR would change the spell, if someone could enlighten me, that would be nice.

Edit, in response to

Does doing it this way remove the decision to give up some spell slots for security against slow death from poison?

I would be inclined to say it would not allow you to transfer poison into the air, but it would allow you to transfer it to the first monster you find, making what would be a slow death from poison into a frantic search.
That, or you could probably just use summon butterfly

[Yermak]

I think it's not a good idea. Your suggestion makes this spell even more situational.
I personally would like to see Cure Poison targetable for you to be able to cast it on allies. It's a very minor buff but Beogh users would find it useful.

[brosephalon]

I think it's not a good idea. Your suggestion makes this spell even more situational.
I personally would like to see Cure Poison target-able for you to be able to cast it on allies. It's a very minor buff but Beogh users would find it useful.

Could you go into some more detail here? The way I see it, being able to smite-target (or melee range target, as jejorda suggests) poison a target while ignoring rPois AND removing your own poison status in the same combat turn sounds much more useful than the rare usage cure poison receives.

[battaile]

Apparently I'm in the minority here, but the status quo, having cure poison just cure poison, seems fine to me.

[brosephalon]

Apparently I'm in the minority here, but the status quo, having cure poison just cure poison, seems fine to me.

now that i think about it, it does sound like a complicated change to a simple spell. elegance in simplicity is an effective way of design.
i just really liked the idea of "transfering poison".

[TwilightPhoenix]

We could keep Cure Poison and add Transfer Poison as a lower level (no higher than 4 I'd say) Poison/Hexes spell. It'd be cool to use and it'd synergize nicely with OTR.

[XuaXua]

Just use Ignite Poison.