Overcosted and/or removal-worthy spells (that aren't charms)

[tabstorm]

I'd like to suggest level adjustment, removal, or tweaking to a few spells that I don't see used very often. No charms, though, I don't want this to become a debate about whether charms should be removed or not.

Lv2:
Cure Poison: This spell is kind of lame. Should just be removed.

Lv3:
Gell's Gravitas: I don't know if this is really very useful. I don't see it used often but I have not played 0.17 AM much.

Lv4:
Alistair's Intoxication: I've never seen anyone cast this spell in years of playing. It overlaps with Mass Confusion. Why keep it?
Force Lance: I don't think anyone really uses this. Dubious use of spell levels.

Lv5:
Irradiate: Rarely see this used except out of curiosity. Its schools are awkward, and the spell can backfire on you in a bad way. It's probably a waste of spell levels. Maybe it would be fine if it gave less contamination.

Lv7:
Ring of Flames: This spell is probably is better at level 6. It is nowhere near Haste in power but everyone thinks Haste is overpowered anyway. I would use it but I rarely seem to have the spell levels for it. Probably too powerful for L5.

Lv8:
Necromutation: 8 -> 7. This is way overcosted and nowhere near as good as the other level 8 spells in the Necronomicon. It should be level 7.
Discord: 8 -> 7. I think it's a bit of a reach at level 8 for a Hex.

If I got any spell levels wrong please correct me.

[Wahaha]

Cure poison is not super useful, but I don't think there's an excessive amount of poison spells you know, I don't think there's a good reason to remove it. Maybe it could be made more interesting like turn poison into heal.
Ring of flames was good the one time I used it. Spell levels is indeed the problem but I wonder if it will help to move it to 6, it's only 1 less spell level. I think it's good enough for a lvl 7 spell, it's just the spell levels. Though if we compare it to haste then lvl 5 charms/fire would be "appropriate".

[Siegurt]

Force lance is actually not bad if you're already training said schools (and there's good reason to do so most of the time)
It's like IMB that also gives you some extra breathing room, but costs more XP.

Cure poison seems like it's primary purpose is to make OTR be not horrible. I would be fine with just removing the self-poison from OTR and cure poison at the same time.

Gell's is pretty awkward and not very effective, but it's I think primarily an experiment, I think it might be interesting with enough tweaking, but it's new and needs tweaking IMHO.

[Sprucery]

Cure Poison is occasionally very useful, it's much nicer to do Spider with it if you don't have rPois.

[Kolbur]

Cure poison is a very important spell for venom mages. Poison is a big threat in the early game, Lair and poison branch and cure poison is one of the few protections against it you can use if you don't find rpois. It's even useful in late game/extended if you don't want to waste an item slot for rpois. At lvl 2 it is far from overcosted.

[radinms]

Alistair is a good spell because it depends on only spellpower, not MR.
Even titan, high-level elf, you can confuse them.
This is different from mass confusion, that depends on both spellpower and MR.

[mps]

Leda's liquefaction comes to mind.

Excruciating wounds and warp weapon seem a little on the high end level-wise, as do all spells that are in three schools.

[radinms]

Nobody uses leda's...

[tabstorm]

I think that Leda's and Gell's should have some synergy but I don't know how well it actually works. I would use it if ranged ammo were more reliable early on, probably.

[duvessa]

cure poison is a really badly designed spell, it just substitutes for a consumable

[bel]

I use cure poison together with OTR a lot. Would be hard if you needed to burn a !curing every time you needed cure poison. Of course OTR could just remove self-poisoning.
I use force lance sometimes with cloud spells to push monsters into a cloud. I also used it once in spider to push things away when I had no rPois. Don't use it often.
Irradiate is fine, though transmut doesn't synergize with conjurations. Guaranteed hit and pretty good damage. Could do with less contamination, but probably it's fine.
About Discord, not sure if lvl 7 is a good idea. It can be pretty powerful. Draconian packs, vaults:5 etc.

Rest of the points seem ok.

[byrel]

Right, OTR is Cure Poison's only excuse for existing. I think you could remove the application of poison to you, and just deal a small flat rPois-checking damage per turn the Toxic status is on you if we need a downside to the spell (which to be honest, we probably do.)

[Dharmy]

((Stopped lurking and logged in for this post))

Cure Poison is quite useful since rPois only gives 50% protection. It's just one of those things that's useless until it isn't.

[ydeve]

Irradiate is useful for a Cj if you were stupid and got surrounded.

Force lance is also decent on a Cj-type character because you'd want to train both schools anyway and the breathing room very useful for squishy mages.

[bcadren]

I'm generally not for removing things; I'm for fixing them when they can be fixed; but here's my two cents (on spells listed and other spells):

Cure Poison: This has been around since Linley's Dungeon Crawl. It's FINE as is. It's generally not as good as a rank of rPois; but it's a solid thing to have a GUARANTEED source of curing.It -could- go; but I think it's fine. (Obvious design space overlap with Elyvilon's Purification). [Doesn't need fixing; probably used little to none by people that don't start --VM, but that's fine; same can be said of a lot of start spells.]

Gell's Gravitas: Now that singularity is gone; can we think about turning this into a (non-damaging) singularity and increasing the cost? A spell that just pulls crap towards the center would combine really well with FBall or F.Cloud, etc. Current Gell's is too weak to be worth anything though. [Buff Please; cool unique effect.]

Alistair's Intoxication: I've stood by this spell before; I'll stand by it again. It has a weird niche; but when it works it's really good. Since it ignores MR and simply confuses x% of monsters (human int or higher with no rPois); it affects a different list of monsters. Also being completely different spellschools than Mass Confusion; means a different list of characters uses it. (Excellent support spell on a Transmuter). That said; most situations where it's useful (unless you are playing riskily and barging into the middle of a room); Meph Cloud also works. So *shrug*. I like it; but I can see the overlap.

Force Lance: I said it once; I'll say it again. IGNORE MONSTER SIZE. If this spell didn't have some dubious thing about 'monster weight' versus spellpower it'd be much more reasonable to use the knockback effect.

Irradiate: You joking? This spell is great. Only real issue is that; by using Contam it directly competes with Haste, which a lot of people don't like. My Formacid win cast this spell...101 times. Had a Tengu that lost (one hit by Xtahua) who used it in combination with tornado to obliterate the Royal Jelly. It's fine if you either ONLY use it as a panic button or have a way of dealing with Contam (Cancellation, Jiyva, Zin, Cure Mutation, Necromutation, Being a Ghoul). The -Slay, -AC effect it has on targets gives it good synergy with other Transmutations spells; it's also really good with axes or while stairdancing. [Keep; maybe tweak Contam amount?]

Ring of Flames: I'll agree with the OP. It's a nice spell but not more powerful than Haste. Knock to 6 or even 5.

Discord: I've never cast this spell; so I have no opinion.

Necromutation: It's really good in Tomb and quite usable for much of extended. *shrug* IDK if it should be cheaper than DDoor or not.

Leda's Liquefaction: Very few people use this (slowing down foes semi close to you is rarely worth sacrificing your ability to run away)and the design space overlaps with Metabolic Englaciation and Fedhas's Rain ability.

Edit: Corrected a Spell name.

[araganzar]

Leda's is a situationally useful spell with a very regrettable downside that will keep most people from memming it. Either remove the self-slow or greatly reduce it.

I don't think burning a turn to cure poison while you are getting parrowed or standing in poison mist is worth it so it's a horrible rPois substitution. Make it level 1 unchanged, give it 0 cast time, or change it to also provide rPois for a very limited time.

Alistair's suffers from a binary dependency on Clarity and a lack of differentiation from meph/mass confuse. Why not have it bypass clarity, confuse the player more briefly than the monsters? Maybe also do something like slow movement while confused? Slowing movement is not as big a deal on a confused monster and then people might use it so it's easier to chase confused guys down.

Ring of Flames is a good spell, should be level 6.

Discord is quite powerful and absolutely devastating in the hands of someone with good transloc. Level 7 seems to easy to get to for a lot of combos.

Irradiate is a great spell but getting roughly half of yellow contam in one cast prevents me from really using it. I love the spell, I was excited to see a transformations spell that did not depend on unarmed. But why would I destroy my ability to cblink, go invis, or haste? Reduce the contam considerably. If you want to decrease repeat castings give it a corrosion effect or something that doesn't crap on your haste/invis.

Force Lance is very good when you can bounce guys off walls. Like wind fan I have a hard time figuring out what it's going to knock back and how much. None of this info is very accessible in game. Removing the effect of monster weight and giving the user some idea of the % chance of knockbacks would be helpful. As it stands I won't use it because there are more predictable and therefore useful spells that occupy the same niche.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

I remember cure poison nearly every time i find it, because i rather press z+x and move on than tap 5 furiously.

[MainiacJoe]

The only time I've used Leda's was on a Spriggan, so maybe I was dodging the self-slow. It made kiting Orb Guardians a breeze, they were no threat at all.

Cure Poison is useful for low-level, low HP characters that can be outright killed by a single dose of poison: Sp, Ko, VS.

[dowan]

Everyone keeps omitting the fact that cure poison requires decent spellpower to actually cure poison. Plus you have to find the spell, which isn't common early on unless you're a venom mage. Still, it's only level 2, and as Kittenz pointed out, it's better than 5ing off the poison.

[duvessa]

Everyone keeps omitting the fact that cure poison requires decent spellpower to actually cure poison.

you can cast it more than once

[jejorda2]

Change [cure poison] to also provide rPois for a very limited time.

The Resist Poison and Resist Electricity (Insulate) spells were removed for good reasons. Nobody would pass them up, but if you had convenient equipment, they were useless.

[dowan]

Everyone keeps omitting the fact that cure poison requires decent spellpower to actually cure poison.

you can cast it more than once

True, but it's still a relevant detail to the spell.

[Sandman25]

I would discourage from training Poison magic for cure poison's spell power. I successfully used Cure Poison with 0 skill levels in poison magic as hybrid. If you are a dedicated caster, it's even easier. If you are a fighter, you don't mind casting Cure Poison multiple times since you are at full MP anyway. Just make sure your miscast rate is not too high (10-15% is fine IMHO)