Dungeon Dilettante
Posts: 2
Joined: Saturday, 27th April 2013, 02:59
Suggestions concerning Poison Magic
Basically Poison Mages are great (perhaps easy)in the beginning and bad (Useless is too harsh) in the endgame. To branch out into some other school of magic is almost a "no brainer" decision. Not quite a no brainer I think: winning while still using poisonous cloud and poison Arrow is probably possible, but it's still mostly a decision about what to branch out into and when to branch out. It would be cool if continuing to train poison was a viable (though still controverseal, as there are still resistances to think about) option. As it is I don't think there is any point in training poison magic above lvl 10. The way to changing this, in my opinion, is to add some high level poison spells for Poison Mages to look forward to and work towards. Now branching out and working towards your high level poison spells are two options that can compete with eachother, offering you a meaningful decision about where to take your character. Right now poison magic stops quite abruptly at spell level 6.
I do like the idea of a school of magic that specializes in early game or a school of magic that is particularily hurt by a certain resistance type, and poison is that. But I think that some would argue that it is instead "useless in late-game", and "hampered by circumstances" rather than specializing in a certain area.
Here are some suggestions, I'm not implying one should implement all of them, they're just several possible options for late game poison spells. Food for thought.
1. Make Poison Arrow a higher level spell. Poison arrow is allready a good level 6 spell (I think. The wiki at least compares it to Lehudib's spear; a spell two levels higher than it.) It is oddly close in level to Poison Bolt and close in function too, making current Poison Arrow basically a "no brainer" upgrade of Poison Bolt.
2. A high level Poison Cloud spell. It could do something more interesting than Poison Cloud though, like maybe poisoning and confusing? Or make it Conjuration/Necromancy/Poison rather than Conjuration/Poison/Air and deal both poison and rot. Or call it poison storm and have it be analougous to fire/ice storm in strength and area of effect?
3. Olgreb's Greater Radiation. A spell that radiates stronger poison, with more negative effects such as sickening targets.
4. Olgreb's Toxic Multiplier. A spell that doubles the poison in everything within sight's system. It could possibly have a negative effect of increasing the power of poisons including ones being used on you! Or possibly rather than being cast after you've poisoned some enemies to increase the effect, it could be cast before, like Iskenderun's Battlesphere and increase the potency of your poison spells which you cast while it persists. Either way takes advantage of poison's unique ability to stack with itself.
In summation, I think making poison magic more of a contender for the late-game (though still limited) would make for a more interesting choice. Poison mages would not be pressured to abandon ship for the first other spell book they find. There would be high level spells for them to work towards and which would be worth the effort of specializing to get, the trade off being still having trouble with creatures that have immunity to poison.
Any critique on my suggestions and suggestions of your own are more than welcome. Escpecially if I have mistakenly claimed something that's false, please do correct me. I don't think poison magic is dying for a change, but maybe some improvements would be nice.