Poison status/Cure Poison spell

[MrPlanck]

[split from the gargoyle thread]

Immunity to poison is excellent in Snake/Spider and nice in Lair, and most of the rest of the time it doesn't matter.

I think this is an oversimplification. rPois is very handy all game, imho. In extended you may have lots of HP, but strong poison effects from clouds ala green deaths and draconians, gold dragons, and death drakes can have serious downside when you are in a tough fight.

[dck]

Poison status isn't a reason to claim rPois is relevant because curing exists, wanting to take less damage from strong poison damage sources like early bolts of poison or parrows at any point is.
Mind you rPois only lets you resist the poison bit of miasma which isn't nearly as bad as the slow.

[Arrhythmia]

Poison status isn't a reason to claim rPois is relevant because curing exists,

Even better, "Cure Poison", a spell, exists.

[dck]

And it's the worst spell in the game by far.

[ackack]

And it's the worst spell in the game by far.

?

I think it's actually pretty nice. Two levels is not really many slots, conserving curing for its other uses is nice, and the nature of the spell means you can get away with it at like 50% failure with no problem, meaning it doesn't even really take a noticeable investment of skill. I don't think it's necessarily something I would rush to learn in the early game as a VM, but as a general purpose utility spell I think it's pretty good.

[Implojin]

And it's the worst spell in the game by far.

I strongly disagree with this statement.

Cure Poison allows you to conserve !curing to be used in the event of Rot, and as such is useful as a strategic choice in advance if you intend to do Tomb, the Hells, or Crypt in your current game.

Cure Poison also gives you a backup option in case of surprise Zot trap deep red poison. Consumable destruction is (sadly) still a thing, and as such you aren't always guaranteed to have !curing on hand to deal with that.

I had Cure Poison memorized on 4 out of my 9 wins during the 0.12 tournament, and of those 9 wins all of the 15 rune characters had Cure Poison castable.

Is Cure Poison's core spell concept of "spend mana to remove a status ailment" more fundamentally unbalanced than the entire summoning school's core concept of "spend mana to have something else fight for you so you don't have to take any damage"?

Does Cure Poison really see less use by players than, for example, Song of Slaying or Teleport Other?

In my humble opinion, Cure Poison is fine and is not in need of fixing.

[reaver]

I've never found Cure Poison to be a spell worth the effort to get it online. Regeneration, for example, heals you almost as much as poison can hurt you, while taking only slightly more effort to get working.

[ackack]

For those of you who don't get why Cure Poison is bad, consider the spell Regeneration. It heals you almost as fast as Yellow Poison (the max you can get with rPois!)

I like the combination of condescension with one of the stupidest possible assumptions you could make in rebutting.

[XuaXua]

For those of you who don't get why Cure Poison is bad, consider the spell Regeneration.

Problem in a word: Necromancy.

[dck]

Oh, I forgot about song of slaying. Apologies.
But I can't really say I share your opinion on cure poison. I consistently end games with 10-15 curing potions laying around (3 rune or 15 it doesn't seem to differ much strangely enough) aside from the 3-5 I always keep on me and I'm no better player than you, this is on characters that just have average, decent defenses all game long and probably not any source of cons until very late (and even then it's probably not being worn if there's anything in any way more useful). I've of course learnt the spell before with similar thoughts in mind but the I don't think preparing in advance to the unlikely event of being zot trapped into deep red poison when you happen to have no curing is reasonable or justification for the spell to be considered actually useful.
Perhaps instead the zot trap effect that inflicts so much poison that it can kill a 300+hp ogre with regen casted before even going down from extremely sick to very sick is bullshit and shouldn't be there at all.
I don't see the point in comparing it with summoning, but tele other is good for Wr because you get it to moderate power as you get other more important things from your starter book working and it removes low MR threats from your LoS which is pretty good I think.
Also, I'm curious now, did you actually cast cure poison in any of those games?

@reaver: there's no need to be a jerk.

[reaver]

For those of you who don't get why Cure Poison is bad, consider the spell Regeneration. It heals you almost as fast as Yellow Poison (the max you can get with rPois!)

I like the combination of condescension with one of the stupidest possible assumptions you could make in rebutting.

rPois reduces Red Poison damage to Yellow Poison damage IIRC.
Edit: Checked it in wiz mode. This is still the case.

Also, I didn't mean to sound mean. I'll edit my post.

[1010011010]

Cure poison has nice synergy with Olgreb's Toxic Radiance; a very useful spell on my current venom mage.

[MoogleDan]

My only issue with Cure Poison is that I could see it making new players believe they don't actually need rPois to do Spider's Nest or Snake Pit, and then they discover enemies with Poison Arrow. Not that I'm speaking from experience here or anything >_>

[dck]

For the nest could just drink a potion of resistance when you see arachne, and it's not like finding her there is a surprise.

[BlackSheep]

I routinely pick up Cure Poison on any character capable of casting level 2 spells without too much bother. It's extremely straightforward, offers synergy with a few other poison spells, and is guaranteed to work as long as you pass the fail check. It certainly doesn't obviate the need for rPois, but the two are not mutually exclusive (the way they used to be).

[spudwalt]

Cure Poison is also handy for those rare games where you literally find absolutely no source of rPois for most of the entire game. My latest TrWr of Chei had that problem (until he drowned stupidly in the Shoals, that is). Seriously, I cleared down to, like, D:21 as well as down to Snake:4, Shoals:4, and Orc:4 (though I hadn't gone into the Elven Halls yet), and there were no rings of poison resistance whatsoever. Heck, I would've settled for a staff of poison or randart with rPois, just so I could eat poisonous corpses.

[nordetsa]

It's really a nice spell that can potentially make you free of an item slot.

On the other hand, I'm wondering why other spells that grant you free resistance has been removed, but this one stays (like insulation, for example) Is it because cure poison cannot 'prevent' poison but can 'cure' it?

[ackack]

Not having rPois means that you take direct damage from Poisonous Cloud and (I believe) somewhat more direct damage from Poison Arrow, so it's not exactly the same thing.

[dck]

Basically the whole point of having rPois is making parrows not hit you for insane damage.

[siprus]

It's really a nice spell that can potentially make you free of an item slot.

On the other hand, I'm wondering why other spells that grant you free resistance has been removed, but this one stays (like insulation, for example) Is it because cure poison cannot 'prevent' poison but can 'cure' it?

There is of course ring of fire.

[spudwalt]

There is of course ring of fire.

Yeah, but ring of fire does more stuff than just temporarily give you a resistance. It boosts your other Fire spells and burninates anything that stands next to you, at the cost of lowering your cold resistance. All insulation ever did was give you rElec for a while.

[neil]

It's really a nice spell that can potentially make you free of an item slot.

On the other hand, I'm wondering why other spells that grant you free resistance has been removed, but this one stays (like insulation, for example) Is it because cure poison cannot 'prevent' poison but can 'cure' it?

Cure but not prevention is one reason: you can cast insulation before the fight, at your own leisure, so the turn spent casting it is often or even usually not relevant (particularly if you just keep it up all the time on dangerous levels). With cure poison, though, there is a good chance you'll need to cast it in the middle of battle (if you get seriously poisoned), and that decision (do I cast cure poison, quaff heal wounds, or keep attacking and hope the fight will end soon?) is potentially more interesting.

[bcadren]

Cure Poison is worth the slots, especially since Spellcasting of 3-5 or so with fair intelligence is enough to cast and you don't really have to bother with poison magic to use. Course, this is coming from a perennial Sif worshiper that can and will just drop the Spell when removing poison no longer is that useful.

[Amnesiac]

cure poison is like a potion of curing for poisoning that otherwise would kill you if you don't have any or if you want to avoid using one. I think it's worth those 2 spell levels...

[rebthor]

It's really a nice spell that can potentially make you free of an item slot.

On the other hand, I'm wondering why other spells that grant you free resistance has been removed, but this one stays (like insulation, for example) Is it because cure poison cannot 'prevent' poison but can 'cure' it?

Cure but not prevention is one reason: you can cast insulation before the fight, at your own leisure, so the turn spent casting it is often or even usually not relevant (particularly if you just keep it up all the time on dangerous levels). With cure poison, though, there is a good chance you'll need to cast it in the middle of battle (if you get seriously poisoned), and that decision (do I cast cure poison, quaff heal wounds, or keep attacking and hope the fight will end soon?) is potentially more interesting.

I don't think I've ever done this and I think you'd be hard pressed to think of a situation where this is the best course of action. Any situation that a person might think, "Hmm, I'm in really bad shape here in red poison next to this foo," I can pretty much guarantee that casting cure poison is not the right choice unless you're going to die anyway and want to leave a funny replay.

It's just cast cure poison after and save a curing potion. This puts it pretty much in the same boat as insulation except you might not have any MP at the end of the fight and have to decide if waiting for 2 mp to come back is worth waiting for over using a curing potion.

[BlackSheep]

I'll cast it midbattle if I've put down the creature that was poisoning me. Otherwise I'm likely to wind up right back in the red again.

[rebthor]

Yes but you also need to be next to something that's going to hurt you less than red poison. So again, it's not impossible to think of a case that it's a good idea but it's very unlikely to be a good idea. Here's a good example, you've got 30 HP left in a corridor after having just killed a spiny frog and are in red poison. You're now next to a green rat. Then you could cast cure poison but you're probably still better off using one of the 50 or so curing potions* that spawn during normal play to gain back a little HP too.


*number completely made up

[BlackSheep]

Generally I try to avoid being next to something if spending one turn next to it is a horrible idea. Your example is fine, though you could replace 'green rat' with any number of monsters.

[Tarp]

As an aside: If you know cure poison, you should be allowed to eat poisonous chunks.

[Amnesiac]

As an aside: If you know cure poison, you should be allowed to eat poisonous chunks.

yeah, if you can magically remove poison from yourself, why can't you remove it from chunks?

[Amnesiac]

It could be not "casting spells to get nutrition", but just automatically clean poisoned chunks, then. It's a quite minor but pleasant effect and a bit of a buff to the spell. Also it would kind of just make sense, maybe. Also, cure poison is a strategic spell itself. It allows saving potions of curing and sometimes it can help in places where you need rPois, maybe.