Move either Borgnjor's or Door to Poison

[Croases]

  Code:

Noxious Rebirth
Poison
This spell instantly heals any and all wounds suffered by the caster, but the venomous cocktail used to revive the body also permanently lessens its resilience to injury — to a degree dependent on (and inversely related to) magical skill.

The spell is powerful enough to literally pull someone out of Death's Door, although the shock will render the caster incapable of action for a while.

  Code:

Suspend Life
Poison/Charms
Renders the caster nigh invulnerable to harm for a brief period, but brings them dangerously close to death in the process. So close, in fact, that the body believes itself to be dead — healing effects will do nothing.

The caster will receive one warning shortly before the spell expires. With high power, the caster will be left more resilient when the effect ends. It has no effect on those who are undead.

Really, does Necromancy need four level 8 spells, including two different "get out of jail free" cards?

[ion_frigate]

My vote is for Borgnjor's -> Noxious Rebirth.

Gameplay reason: it's the more universally useful of the two - it's not going to leave you dead when it wears off, whereas Death's Door can if you're not careful. Poison could use a boost, and Borg's would be a bigger one.

Flavor reason: it makes a LOT more sense than Death's Door. "Suspend Life" almost sounds like it should be Charms/Hexes.

[genericpseudonym]

Isn't poison supposed to be the school with no high-level spells, which eventually falls off? It seems like adding those high-level necro spells would violate that.

[duvessa]

Isn't poison supposed to be the school with no high-level spells, which eventually falls off?

Does that make it a good design? Amnesia traps were supposed to be in the game but they were still removed.

[Shard1697]

I think poison magic as it is right now is a really unsatisfying school of magic to use, because you know that you're sinking XP into something which won't be worthwhile later(and isn't really better than other schools early anyways)

[PowerOfKaishin]

Adding high level magical conjurations to poison (in the form of acid) is against its design, but I see nothing wrong with it having high level auxiliary spells.

[dowan]

It would seem having people actually use poison magic is against the design goals...

[and into]

Well, poison arrow and poison cloud make the magic school "not a waste," but I agree it would be nice to have more cool poison spells. However, the tricky part is that the new spells have to stand on their own feet, rather than existing just to pad out poison magic.

About the OP, I wouldn't object if either of those spells were moved, but I don't feel too strongly about it.

[ichbins]

Would it be OP making the Virulence Spell available to the player?

[ontoclasm]

Well, poison arrow and poison cloud make the magic school "not a waste," but I agree it would be nice to have more cool poison spells. However, the tricky part is that the new spells have to stand on their own feet, rather than existing just to pad out poison magic.

This is the key bit right here. People hear two statements:
1) Poison Magic isn't the worthless piece of trash you might assume it to be, and
2) We/I don't think [this suggested high-level poison spell] should be added,
and mash them together with a large handful of dev hatred to get "we will never improve Poison Magic or add high-level Poison spells for any reason." Make a good, interesting, distinctive Poison spell and it'll get in, but that's easier said than done.

That said, moving Borg's to Poison doesn't strike me as a terrible idea. I dunno if it should actually happen, but it's not actively awful the way most give-Poison-Magic-a-high-level-spell suggestions are.

v Incorrect. Adding acid spells, specifically, is on the list (because it's a bad idea). That doesn't preclude other spells.

[removeelyvilon]

Well it IS on the official "will never happen list" for what it's worth.

[Baldu3]

Could add some curare effects to poison as well, having a curare weapon spell would be pretty cool since the slow works on (almost?) everything. Curare cloud/bolt sounds a bit much though.

[eliotn]

Some ideas for more poison spells:

-A poison the player takes that buffs the player, at a particular cost. Hard to say what form this would take.
-A Hexes/Poison spell that temporarily allows an enemy to be poisoned while they remain in your sight, even enemies that would normally be immune. If the enemy is not immune beforehand, they may be affected by a more potent poison. Would help make poison relevant against low MR mobs.

[Quazifuji]

Well it IS on the official "will never happen list" for what it's worth.

Acid spells are, not high level poison spells in general. The problem is that there have been a huge number of suggestions that just consist of "give posion magic a high level spell for the sake of poison magic having a high level spell, and make it acid so it isn't useless in branches filled with poison-immune enemies/because I can't think of good high level poison mechanics but acid seems like an open design space."

Personally, I think finding ways to buff poison magic would be nice, but moving Bjorg's or Death's Door there seems like a weird way to accomplish it. The school is pretty much entirely offensive, suddenly having its highest-level spell be a super-powerful defensive spell doesn't feel like it fits. Necromancy already offers plenty of utility at lower levels, so it having powerful high-level utility spells works. Poison is an offensive school, even its utility mostly targets enemies (especially with cure poison gone).

I wouldn't mind seeing Bjorg's or Death's Door moved to another school, and I wouldn't mind seeing poison getting some powerful end-game spells, but I think I might rather see those things addressed separately.

[Brannock]

Death's Door could work as a Translocations spell. I don't think it fits in any other school except that or Necromancy without serious thematic overstretches. Tloc already has a bunch of "save yourself" spells.

[Croases]

Poison/Hexes Death's Door works by using tetrodotoxin and curses to turn yourself into an unfeeling, unstoppable voodoo zombie!

And thematically PM has no real gimmick other than "poison things". An additional "sacrifice HP to do extra damage/save yourself" angle could work well for it, especially if a "poison yourself for X counters, get considerable damage/defense boosts as long as the poison remains" spell is added to the school.

[Floodkiller]

Move Poison Magic to Transmutations, giving Poison Magic users more cool tools to mess around with for investing and giving Transmuters more reasons to invest past the bare minimum to function.

[Shtopit]

Move Poison Magic to Transmutations, giving Poison Magic users more cool tools to mess around with for investing and giving Transmuters more reasons to invest past the bare minimum to function.

While transmuter is my favourite background, I don't really see this well, for a few reasons. One is that there already is a certain synergy between poison and transmutation (spider, ignite poison, alistair), which can start at low levels, so that there already are advantages at training both schools without joining them together. Another is that a school which allows you to become immune to poison and to inflict poison on everything in sight looks like too much to me: too much gain from a single investment. Third, I'd rather see better synergy between transmutation and Necromancy appear instead, both for flavour (the interest concerning biology by both schools) and to make Necromutation a little better for transmuters. Like, making Ice Form a level 3 Ice/Trans/Necr spell.

[dowan]

You do realize poison has the spell cure poison, right? So there already is a school that lets you be immune to poison and inflict poison on everything in sight, in fact both spells to do that are in the VM starting book.

[nago]

RIP Cure Poison, we won't miss you

[Shtopit]

You do realize poison has the spell cure poison, right? So there already is a school that lets you be immune to poison and inflict poison on everything in sight, in fact both spells to do that are in the VM starting book.

Cure =/= immune. Right now, you can get statue form and then cast Radiance until you run out of MP or cast poisonous cloud on yourself and stay there and keep fighting, while cure poison requires you to waste turns and MP depoisoning yourself instead of [doing anything else].

EDIT: Fun Fact: if Radiance doesn't poison the caster any more, what I said only counts for using poisonous cloud in melee.

[asdu]

As far buffing as poison magic goes, all this proposal would achieve is to make me consider poison arrow a bit more seriously on conjurer-type characters, i.e. the only characters that had any interest in the poison school to begin with. Which in turn means that finding poison arrow would be a prerequisite for even considering the use of borg/ddoor (though, in all fairness, pain weapons already kind of do this anyway).
On any other character I'm not going to train 16+ skill levels of a magic school that has nothing else I want, at least not in the part of the game where I still care about what's going on.