What makes Mephetic Cloud fine?

[Xion350]

It functions early on exactly like the old Evaporate... a mass confusion tool. It makes early dungeon completely trivial.

[jejorda2]

It takes three spell schools to get it working, and if you spread your skills out much, then things start resisting it once you can cast it reliably. It's not nearly as overpowered as it used to be, when it really always gave you a nine square cloud.

[dassem]

True, but can you still remember that feeling the first time you were breezing through the lair and you suddenly realized that hydras (or spiny frogs) can resist poison? Or that horror when St. Roka shakes off the confusion in one turn?

That spell has almost the whole Crawl spellcasting experience in it: Fail, fail occasionally, coast for a while, overconfidence, death.

[njvack]

Also, it's friggin' loud and can invite a bunch of friends to your party before you're ready to entertain them all.

Also also, it's not like the dungeon's entirely devoid of rPois stuff -- imps and early p's will ignore it completely.

[crate]

Meph isnt overpowered. It's not even close to being the best level 3 poison spell in the game (spider form), not even close to being the most powerful level-3-or-less air spell in the game (swiftness), and maybe not even the best level 3 conjuration (conjure flame is possibly better).

[TwilightPhoenix]

Even oozes and skeletal rats resist it. Yeah...

It might have the potential to be more of a crowd controller than the plain confuse spell, but the confuse spell works on everything (in theory, MR and HD can be hard to overcome at times).

[Davion Fuxa]

Mephitic Cloud isn't overpowered, it isn't going to help you much longer after the Early Game is done and even during the Early Game you'll have enemies that it can't be used on.

That said, Hexes might be too weak in comparison to it so maybe the topic should be in line with improving the Hexes spells which produce similar effects but with weaker results - and I'm not talking just about Confuse here either.

[crate]

Hexes are not too weak compared to meph either. Meph is kind of a bad stabbing spell....

[Pereza0]

Meph Cloud is good in the early game only.

Stabbers who dont have a stealth aptitude as good as that of Spriggans might have a hard time approaching their victims without waking them, Meph (and some others too) helps with that. Also, apart from the three-schools-of-magic thing, if you spam it too much you'll get hungry which can be a problem too

[Jabberwocky]

I think they were trying to refer to confusion stabs.

[KoboldLord]

I don't think I can think of any instance where I'd want to use Mephitic Cloud as a stabber. It's great when you're not a stabber and you can get it working on the strength of other skills that you were planning to train anyway, but it's really very important to carefully maintain your escape route when you're using it. Odds are pretty good you'll need that escape route. Being surrounded by confused enemies at half health isn't very helpful when you draw in another whole pack of orcs or centaurs.

I'd still like to see Mephitic Cloud moved to hexes instead of conjuration, because I don't like to see conjurations-focused casters get a solid escape option and status effect with no sacrifice of xp at all, but lined up against the other hexes it looks pretty fair. In exchange for being AoE, it has some pretty severe drawbacks for its function, such that there are situations where you would actually want Confuse rather than Mephitic Cloud or vice versa.

Evaporate really wasn't comparable at all, because on-demand miasma clouds at an arbitrary location is just crazy for a 2nd-level spell, and on-demand poison and steam aren't really any better. The potion management mini-game was an abomination of game design and utterly failed at its intended function of limiting use of the spell, given how common the relevant potions ended up being.

[Pereza0]

I don't think I can think of any instance where I'd want to use Mephitic Cloud as a stabber. It's great when you're not a stabber and you can get it working on the strength of other skills that you were planning to train anyway, but it's really very important to carefully maintain your escape route when you're using it. Odds are pretty good you'll need that escape route. Being surrounded by confused enemies at half health isn't very helpful when you draw in another whole pack of orcs or centaurs.

Well, you obviously dont want to use it on the first pack of kobolds you encounter when you go down the stairs on an unexplored map.

What I usually do is explore the whole map, clearing lone or easy monsters without doing much noise and placing exclusions of packs of enemies and uniques. Once I do this I usually have the map of the level almost completely explored with a couple of exclusions here and there. As you can imagine escape routes aren't a problem here.

Now, when you go for the packs stealth isn't that reliable, being noticed by a single orc will put everyone after you, and if you are squishy you might be smitten several times and killed while you run. Meph on the other hand, can be used the moment someone shouts, and you no longer have to worry about smiting or spells if you manage to confuse priests/wizards, and you don't have to expect company if you have already made sure to clear nearby enemies. Meph also gives you a reliable way to escape from this packs, if you go full stealth you'll have to rely on consumables. Meph also gives you a good way to set up kills on enemies that were not asleep in the first place

The potion management mini-game was an abomination of game design and utterly failed at its intended function of limiting use of the spell, given how common the relevant potions ended up being.

I liked the fact those potions got to do something useful when they are otherwise worthless (bet its the reason the added Evaporate in the first place) but I agree it isn't enough to justify having in the game if everything else about it is unbalanced

[crate]

You can also just be smart about luring those monsters one-by-one and then use the second-best stabbing spell in the game on them (ensorcelled hibernation; best is invisibility, of course).

[Pereza0]

Well, yeah thats viable once you have enough skill to cast both reliably, but in the early game you will probably have to choose one due to exp limitations.

Both spells are pretty good, guess it boils down to your aptitudes, whether your target has magic or poison resistance and if you'd rather be at ease dealing with tough individuals or packs of monsters.

[Davion Fuxa]

I'd still like to see Mephitic Cloud moved to hexes instead of conjuration, because I don't like to see conjurations-focused casters get a solid escape option and status effect with no sacrifice of xp at all, but lined up against the other hexes it looks pretty fair. In exchange for being AoE, it has some pretty severe drawbacks for its function, such that there are situations where you would actually want Confuse rather than Mephitic Cloud or vice versa.

I wouldn't be against this actually, with maybe it changed to being Hexes/Poison/Air instead of Conjurations/Poison/Air. Having Hex spells that a more geared to 'Shock & Awe' instead of 'Stealth & Dagger' certainly adds viability to Hexes.

As for Confuse, why not just consider lowering the Spell Level for it and making it have an extreme high chance of success - maybe make it level 2 like Slow and change both spells so that perhaps when the spell is cast they throw two dice instead of one to beat MR or HD or whatever.

[crate]

Confuse spell is already extremely good. It certainly does not need to be better.

Have you even played an enchanter????

[yogaFLAME]

My issue with the "it's only good in the early game" argument is that the early game is where 99% of the difficulty in caster-background games is located. That argument doesn't make sense.

That said, the spell is fine. I do like the move to hexes proposal, since the spell is a free pickup for conjurers.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Well, yeah thats viable once you have enough skill to cast both reliably, but in the early game you will probably have to choose one due to exp limitations.

Ensorcelled Hibernation is a level 2, 2 school spell. It's much easier to get online than Meph and is better for stabbing. Invisibility is much harder, of course, but if you're training Hexes up you're going to get it usable sooner or later anyway.