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Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Sunday, 5th February 2017, 22:30
by Cantwell
I'm really loving Poisonous Vapours in trunk right now, and it got me thinking about a top-tier poison spell.

I propose a L7/L8/L9 Poison spell, "Olgreb's Hideous Nerve Gas".

On casting, it affects all monsters in line of sight.

Monsters with poison immunity and blindness immunity are not affected.
Monsters with poison immunity (rP∞) are blinded.
Monsters with poison resistance are blinded and muted.
Monsters without resistance are paralyzed and heavily poisoned.
Monsters with rP- are insta-killed.

One of the roles that the Poison school can play is "stabbing without Hexes". Currently, that means Mephitic Cloud at L3 and then Alistair's Intoxication at L5. Olgreb's Nerve Gas would extend that theme, but wouldn't be limited to stabbers.

Does it need a downside or a cost besides the magic points? Discord has one (now everybody's berserk), but Tornado and Shatter only have the noise, right? Maybe one turn of paralysis? Maybe vomiting straight to Hungry?

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Sunday, 5th February 2017, 23:03
by kroki
i think its in the right place on the power curve for a lv7 dual school / lv8 single school spell. still i also think that unless devs drop the "no acid spells in poison magic school" conduct theres no elegant way to make poison work past mid game

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 03:27
by Gorgondantess
IIRC, the reason poison doesn't go past level 6 is simply because it's meant to be strong early game, and weak/nonexistent late game. I think a spell like that would make poison have a bit too much staying power - you'd absolutely annihilate Elf: 3, it'd probably be one of the best spells in the game for Vault: 5, and it would reliably carry you through most of the Depths and and a good portion of Zot: 1-4. We'd likely see the return of Spriggan Poison Mages breezing through 3-rune runs with mainly just that spell and Poison Arrow.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 06:11
by papilio
They're just total duplicates to other existent spells. I prefer just remove all poison magic schools and extract some useful spells to Hexes.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 07:18
by Elitist
papilio wrote:They're just total duplicates to other existent spells. I prefer just remove all poison magic schools and extract some useful spells to Hexes.

Do we want to make hexes stronger?

Gorgondantess: That makes perfect sense. Poison is strong until you meet your first wyvern zombie. They're the only caster that absolutely needs to branch out from their school as early as, say, D:4, or else they're going to struggle with an enemy with rPois+/+++. At the same time, Poisonous Vapours is a dumb strong spell and with new Olgreb's, I'm liking VM these days. Honestly.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 08:39
by Sprucery
Elitist wrote:They're the only caster that absolutely needs to branch out from their school as early as, say, D:4, or else they're going to struggle with an enemy with rPois+/+++.

Luckily wyvern zombies are quite rare. You'll probably see 0 or 1 of them in the Dungeon. Fast enemies with rPois are generally rare in early D. The crucial point for VM is Lair; how to deal with spiny frogs and black mambas.

I've won four VM and definitely didn't branch out early (everyone learned the spells from the starting book first etc.).

As for the OP, sure, if the spell is of high enough level, it sounds fun.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 09:17
by duvessa
Cantwell wrote:Monsters with poison immunity and blindness immunity are not affected.
Monsters with poison immunity (rP∞) are blinded.
Monsters with poison resistance are blinded and muted.
Monsters without resistance are paralyzed and heavily poisoned.
Monsters with rP- are insta-killed.
This is too many different effects. It should just blind everything without blindness immunity, regardless of rPois.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 10:29
by huiren
duvessa wrote:
Cantwell wrote:Monsters with poison immunity and blindness immunity are not affected.
Monsters with poison immunity (rP∞) are blinded.
Monsters with poison resistance are blinded and muted.
Monsters without resistance are paralyzed and heavily poisoned.
Monsters with rP- are insta-killed.
This is too many different effects. It should just blind everything without blindness immunity, regardless of rPois.


At that point would the spell be sufficiently distinguished from invisibility? Even if it were more powerful and a different school, I'm not sure the game needs another "you can kill everything that doesn't have X resist" spell.

I do agree there's design space for high level poison spells like this, though, that don't act as direct damage spells, but let you leverage your poison magic skill to stab or disable monsters. I especially think it would be appropriate for them to exist as high level cross school spells, so that poison maintains its role of being a primarily early game school, but still remaining relevant into extended and without the feeling of becoming useless for anyone who doesn't have Parrow in the mid to late game.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 12:32
by pedritolo
Nice idea, but I'm afraid it's simply too powerful unless you get it at lev 9. For a stabber, it cracks the whole game wide open, since it affects all foes that are otherwise very hard to kill.
It's clearly over the top, but I like it because of that. Mind you, some people will hate it for exactly the same reason and will drone on about balance and whatnot.
Me, I like my games unbalanced TYVM.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 19:21
by edgefigaro
I really feel like players that request high level poison spells have never really explored the space that Poison Arrow, Poisonous Cloud, and Ignite Poison inhabit, as well as how efficiently poison builds transition into lategame if that is the player's desire.

I'm all for a new poison spell, but I also really like the school as is. That having been said:

Venom Mages need love.
Put ignite poison in the VM book and you have a fun class to play to boot.
AND/OR
Put spider form in and you have another character that can build into unarmed.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 19:43
by kroki
edgefigaro wrote:I really feel like players that request high level poison spells have never really explored the space that Poison Arrow, Poisonous Cloud, and Ignite Poison inhabit


maybe because exp spent on those becomes dead weight around zot, with no stronger spells to justify even dipping into poison magic

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 21:31
by edgefigaro
Yes, a kit that comes online during sbranches and is effective vs vaults (including v5), elf, and depths gives you no way to prepare for zot with all that experience. /sarcasm

Poison builds into the endgame very well because it destroys the midgame, giving you plenty of surplus XP to either prep for zot or prep for extended, and 10~14 spent in poison in sbranches isn't a meaningful amount of xp late game.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 21:37
by duvessa
huiren wrote:I'm not sure the game needs another "you can kill everything that doesn't have X resist" spell.
huiren wrote:I do agree there's design space for high level poison spells
you're contradicting yourself

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 21:44
by njvack
I'm not sure every spell school needs to have good options at the top end. Poison is extremely good early, pretty good through Vaults (and honestly parrow is good against anything without rP, including most dracs and orb guardians) and hey, you've only invested for a L6 spell. When you find conjurations you like more, you can learn those; you've been training conjurations anyhow. Damage/cast is really good for most poison spells.

All this said, as long as poison means "damage over time" it's the school of "let's kite!" which is not my favorite way to deal with monsters.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Monday, 6th February 2017, 23:03
by Quazifuji
Gorgondantess wrote:IIRC, the reason poison doesn't go past level 6 is simply because it's meant to be strong early game, and weak/nonexistent late game.


My impression has been that the devs (at least some of them) aren't strictly against making poison more powerful late game, so much as they're okay with it being mostly an early game school, and most proposals to give poison lategame spells are focused too much on buffing poison's late game, rather than being interesting spells that would be good additions to the game and fit well with the poison school that are also good in the lategame.

Granted, part of the problem there is that the poison school's main identity right now is "resisted by rPois". That makes it pretty much impossible to design a spell that fits well with the poison school and is effective late game, because the whole reason the school falls off in the first place is that rPois becomes more prevalent in some end-game branches (poison arrow and, when it existed, poison cloud could already basically annihilate anything not poison-resistance at any part of the game anyway).

So in the end, designing good high-level poison spells is nearly impossible, because if those spells are resisted by poison then they won't help the school's main problem anyway, and if they're not resisted by poison then they don't really fit into the rest of the school (and proposals that don't resist poison are often designed specifically to improve the school's versatility anyway, such as all the proposals to add acid spells at high levels).

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 21:57
by TeshiAlair
Here's a late game poison idea:

Lvl 7 Poison/Necromancy or Poison/Hexes: Black Mold

Target a corpse or undead. It rots (-AC if it is undead) and spreads this effect to nearby corpses and undead. Moldy units spread strong poison to nearby enemies and can blind them if not resistant to poison. You can cast this on your own summons without causing them to become hostile.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 02:18
by prozacelf
Forever ago I suggested a higher level Poison spell that gave the player severe poisoning in exchange for Might and/or Agility effects. The Might effect would only apply if the caster weren't poison immune and would only last as long as the player were still poisoned, to prevent just casting the spell and quaffing a !cure. That proposal never went much of anywhere, but I still feel like it's the type of approach that is more likely to gain traction than "Poison spell that damages dudes with rP" or "Poison spell that inflicts status effects on baddies."

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 19:42
by lethediver
It is simply the will of the devs to not fix it. Not a lack of interesting proposals. All the other elemental schools have lv 9 spells with unresistable damage that frankly arent very interesting. Nevertheless, they exist.

I think the gaping hole in PM is there to teach us a lesson. Kind of like how early game Sigmund is there to teach you that you should not fight everything the instant you see it. "Just because this part of the game is flawed does not mean your proposals will ever effect it. Just move on." The will of the gods is mysterious, but ultimately to our benefit. I learned a lot about futility and how to save my own time/sanity by participating in this forum.

Not everything you do in life will have an impact even if you are right and your intentions are noble. Remember the lesson friends. When you see something that needs fixing ask yourself, "will this be another poison magic?" Not every injustice must be fought. Just let it go.

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 20:14
by njvack
I've never understood why people say "poison needs a high-level spell" but not "staves need something bigger than a lajatang"

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 20:28
by kroki
njvack wrote:I've never understood why people say "poison needs a high-level spell" but not "staves need something bigger than a lajatang"


but latajangs usually spawn with great brands such as elec,vamp or speed. they are also perfectly capable of killing everything in 3 rune game

Re: Proposal: L7/L8/L9 Poison Spell

PostPosted: Thursday, 9th February 2017, 21:12
by ion_frigate
njvack wrote:I've never understood why people say "poison needs a high-level spell" but not "staves need something bigger than a lajatang"


Because lajatangs are not completely ineffective against large swathes of monsters in Extended. Using a lajatang as your main offensive weapon in Pandemonium is suboptimal. Using Poison Magic as your main offensive weapon in Pandemonium is suicidal.

Granted, I don't know that this is a problem - having a school of magic that loses efficacy later on isn't necessarily a bad idea - but it's definitely not the same thing as there being no 20-damage staves.