Suggestions for Hex Spells

[Yet Another Stupid Noob]

I’ve been lurking on these forums for a while now and after YASD (a HEWz who tried to run from a pack of centaurs in the open with both cTele and Teleport memorized). I decided to submit these ideas to the wisdom of the forum.

Problem:
Hex school is undesirable since by midgame you cannot rely on them, and they are not powerful enough to waste a turn on if they do not work.
In addition the Charm, and specifically the Charm/Air schools are a no-brainer for casters because the movement, missile defense, and to lesser extent flight spells.

Suggested Solution:
Straight up removing Haste/Swiftness and the repel missile spells would require significant rebalancing. I would like to add the following three spells. They could serve as an alternative way for a caster could gain similar utility without being forced to train charm/air.

Dust Cloud-- Lvl 2 hex/earth: By hexing the omnipresent dirt and sand the caster creates a cloud of dust at a point specified.
Mechanic: This acts as a smite targeted fog spell, very useful for controlling line of sight. Useful for making casters close, or protecting against missile attacks. As a meta-mechanic, it would also block other clouds (as all clouds do).

Earthgrab—Lvl 3 or 4 hex/earth: The caster causes stone hands to erupt from the earth, briefly pinning the target in place. After freeing themselves, the target will be wary enough to avoid futures traps for a while.

Mass Earthgrab—Lvl 6 hex/earth: This spell casts Earthgrab on all targets in LOS/Range, causing stone hands to erupt from the earth, briefly pinning all targets in place. After freeing themselves, the targets will be wary enough to avoid futures traps for a while.
Mechanic: This spell gives an unresistible hold effect to any target(s) (possibly size affected) for 20-50 time units. Enough time to either get in a couple of swings against a target without their evasion, or to get a critical few spaces of running room. After the spell wears off, the target gains (clarity?) for 150 time units, giving them immunity until it wears off. Frankly I feel that all confuse type spells (especially Mephitic Cloud) should give this effect to prevent chaining. As an alternative to clarity, one could give the breath effect (sorry Nagas) and not allow one to cast it again until it wears off. I don't know which would be easist to code.

Reasoning: These spells give casters an alternate path to the necessary utility provided by the charms/air combination without being too powerful. Or at least no more powerful than the already highly useful swiftness and repel missiles spells. Earthgrab HAS to be un-resistable or it would get no more use than confusion currently does later in the game. Its shorter duration and lack of chaining will act as its balance.

[wesleyshaver]

I agree about the usefulness of the easily-resisted Hex spells. I was thinking of a mechanic that might help:

Perhaps each time you cast a specific Hex spell on a creature that creature's subsequent resistance to the same spell is reduced. This way with enough casts you can chip away at the creatures MR until the spell is successful.

[absolutego]

the earthgrab spells are interesting. they could work only on humanoids (since you have to hold onto something) and be unresistable, or resistable by virtue of dexterity, speed or some other measure other than MR. i'm not sure they fit hexes better than transmutations (think leda's liquefaction), but that's not a big deal.

dust cloud is already available as a consumable (scrolls of fog) and a spell (evaporating potions of water).

hexes lowering MR is definitely doable (as for the ancient lich example, put a cap on it) but it's a number-crunching nightmare.

[Narretz]

If could work something like this:

Dependant on your spell power, you have a chance that with every cast, if it's failing, you lower the resistance of the monster to that particular spell / or all hex spells. Ok, that's nothing new ...

But if you succeed and the spell wears off, the monster gains a temporary immunity to the spell / school, or has its resistance raised not temporarily, but forever. So you can't enslave strong monsters over and over again. And extending hexes shouldn't work then of course. You could also add some stronger miscast effects (add more glow) that have a higher chance of appearing when you cast a spell too often.

[Bim]

I like the idea of more hex spells (and more earth spells), but I think the current ones should be stronger/more likely to succeed. I'd also say that an easy way to get around the 'enslaving forever' thing is just to get rid of enslave. It's a useful spell, but if we went through the 'chipping away' or even just lowering MR it would become too powerful, so perhaps getting rid of it, or changing it to 'enslave animal' or something would make it a more viable option?

I think the main problem is that by the later stages hex becomes pretty much useless unless you know specifically what can be targeted and what will be resistant, and even then, its primarily back up. I'd love to see it having more 'offensive' hex spells similar to the ones suggested, but also ones that would become more useful later on to compete with charms.