Improving poison magic


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Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 14th July 2011, 22:05

Improving poison magic

I was wondering if a boost to poison magic could be possible since its one of the schools where is almost useless to train it at all (meph cloud is almost the only reason to train in pm and you can cast it early enough, when you get alistairs intoxication you can probably cast it with almost no effort).

I was thinking something like adding acid effects, such as a level 5 spell to acidify walls, a level 4 acid shield (with damage to everyone who hits you from splash or something like that) a level 7 bolt of acid, and adding a level 8/9 spell similar to Olgreb's Toxic Radiance but that gives 3 levels of poison to everyone and 2 levels to those resistant. I think it wouldn't be overpowered (or at least not as much as Tornado), or instead of poison damage it would do acid damage over time.

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 01:53

Re: Improving poison magic

There's an idea on the wiki to rename Poison to Alchemy, with some acid-based additions for new spells that seem similar to some of those suggestions: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ic:alchemy

The general idea seems reasonably interesting, definitely.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 03:16

Re: Improving poison magic

Alchemy is a much better name; could transition that spell which creates potions from corpses into it.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 03:46

Re: Improving poison magic

Maybe add some spells that can use floor trash as reagents? Weld weapons into a friendly iron golem? Could fit well with the Artificer concept.

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 10:23

Re: Improving poison magic

I think one problem is that it's not clear where the line is drawn between Alchemy and Transmutations. Might it be overall better to just get rid of Poison and move existing spells into Transmutations / perhaps Necromancy as appropriate?

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 13:12

Re: Improving poison magic

I think problem is not the poison school itself, but the late game, when majority of opponents are poison immune

Few new spells would be nice, too
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 13:43

Re: Improving poison magic

mumra wrote:I think one problem is that it's not clear where the line is drawn between Alchemy and Transmutations.


Correct.
Alchemy is the mystic art of transforming one thing into another (lead into gold).
Transmutations is the mystic art that was made for this game which has spells that transform one thing into another.
Poison Magic is the mystic art that was made for this game to categorize the shallow pool of poison-related spells.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 15:06

Re: Improving poison magic

XuaXua wrote:
mumra wrote:I think one problem is that it's not clear where the line is drawn between Alchemy and Transmutations.


Correct.
Alchemy is the mystic art of transforming one thing into another (lead into gold).
Transmutations is the mystic art that was made for this game which has spells that transform one thing into another.
Poison Magic is the mystic art that was made for this game to categorize the shallow pool of poison-related spells.


I've been thinking some more about this and it works for me like this:

Transmutations; changes of form (entirely magical)
Alchemy; relating to composition of matter and scientific processes (magic is basically acting as a catalyst)

Changes to spell schools:
Fulsome Distillation -> Alchemy/Necromancy
Evaporate -> Fire/Alchemy
Sublimation of Blood -> Alchemy/Necromancy?

New spells:

- Grimm's idea for welding floor trash into golems is coincidentally exactly something I thought of a few days ago (kind of related to a portal/branch idea I haven't finished writing up yet). The problems I see are that a) it's very similar to twisted resurrection but b) more abusable, because weapons don't rot like corpses do. Maybe the golems created could be unstable and stop working / fall apart after a while.

- Storm Clouds - Alchemy/Air, produces clouds that zap for elec damage every few turns. Creating real clouds is a scientific process and to me fits that definition of alchemy.

- The Philosopher's Stone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone - This is the classical "holy grail" of Alchemy - it's the sought-after substance that converts base metals to gold and grants immortality / regeneration. How this could fit in with Crawl's mechanics is a bit harder; as I understand it the devs don't want regenerative spells outside of Necromancy, and being able to create gold from floor trash sounds ridiculously abusable. But it'd be nice to have a level 9 Alchemy spell somehow themed around the Philosopher's Stone as this was considered the ultimate goal for alchemists. Something like level 9 Charms/Alchemy which temporarily turns your skin or armour into gold and grants very high AC / MP (and Reflection?)

- Another slightly more interesting option would be turning gold into stuff. Maybe "Bolt of Silver" which uses gold as a reagent and of course inflicts extra damage on chaotic beings.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 15:20

Re: Improving poison magic

Using floor trash has to be restricted somehow like to a god or a species. It won't work with a spell available to everyone. Using gold on the other hand could work (I think dpeg loves the idea) and the bolt of silver is an interesting idea.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 15:31

Re: Improving poison magic

I think leaving poison as poison and simply also including acid spells would work better than changing poison into alchemy. We already have transmutations for transmuting things. Both poison and acid are harmful substances, so simply considering both of them part of the poison school should work fine IMO.

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 17:34

Re: Improving poison magic

I think golem making can be made aviable for everyone if it uses combination of floor trash + something valuable. Gold is a nice candidate for this, artefacts, spellbooks or wands can work, too. Golem needs a source of magic to operate. Gold can be that source, if we assume that alchemy allowr converting gold to MP

BTW gold to MP spell can be a nice new way to spend gold
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 18:03

Re: Improving poison magic

I don't know if zombies regenerate, but Twisted Resurrection beasts regenerate.

Golems shouldn't regenerate, or should only be regenerated by using more floor trash and casting again.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 18:15

Re: Improving poison magic

galehar wrote:Using gold on the other hand could work (I think dpeg loves the idea) and the bolt of silver is an interesting idea.


I'm thinking along the lines of "Alchemists have long sought the ability to turn base metals into gold, but never quite achieved this dream. Turning gold into base metals, on the other hand, has been found to be much easier."

Rather than Yet Another Bolt Spell, something more interesting could be done. I came up with "Silver Shot" - a number of gold coins are converted to silver and fired at the enemy with force; so it's a projectile spell that launches multiple small pellets at a 3x3 area. Like a silver shotgun :)

Strongpoint wrote:I think golem making can be made aviable for everyone if it uses combination of floor trash + something valuable. Gold is a nice candidate for this, artefacts, spellbooks or wands can work, too. Golem needs a source of magic to operate. Gold can be that source, if we assume that alchemy allowr converting gold to MP

BTW gold to MP spell can be a nice new way to spend gold


I doubt we need new ways to channel, and gold seems a bit too easy. In any case, this doesn't really fit with the theme of Alchemy - it's more about changing the chemical composition of one substance into another - I don't see where that suddenly leaps to gold being a source of magic!

However I like the idea of golems using junk + rare item. In folklore, golems are activated by inscribing words on them. So perhaps Enchant Weapon scrolls would make sense (especially if weapons were the required junk); they're suitably rare, but my spellcasters usually have a stash of them lying around that I don't otherwise need to use.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 18:31

Re: Improving poison magic

mumra wrote:I don't see where that suddenly leaps to gold being a source of magic!


Concerning Gold -> Magic, it seems reasonable to me. E=mc^2. Sure, you could use any matter at all, but perhaps gold is easy to work with magically.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 18:43

Re: Improving poison magic

dolphin wrote:
mumra wrote:I don't see where that suddenly leaps to gold being a source of magic!


Concerning Gold -> Magic, it seems reasonable to me. E=mc^2. Sure, you could use any matter at all, but perhaps gold is easy to work with magically.


That did occur to me but you've already said why that doesn't work; if gold, why not anything? Gold being easier to work with sounds a lot like hand waving and has too many implications for the rest of Crawl ... Anyway I think magic works somewhat outside of the laws of physics and you don't want to start applying Einsteinian equations to it ;)
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 19:26

Re: Improving poison magic

dolphin wrote:Concerning Gold -> Magic, it seems reasonable to me. E=mc^2.

I don't think gold's atom is big enough for that. And it would give an insane amount of glow and have a small chance of meltdown collapsing the dungeon. Way too risky. :mrgreen:
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 19:48

Re: Improving poison magic

I really like the idea of having a separate alchemy school, with things like evaporate, ignite and sticks to snakes, and having poison being separate but include acid spells. I think acid spells could be quite strong but would also add a lot of balance, as you could use them but at the risk of damaging the monsters equipment, which would make it worse for you.

I'd also like to see more uses for things like bolts and other specific items outside of their original usage, and just being alchemy based. For instance, having anything other than normal bolts being able to be transformed into a golem (could need a lot?). I also think that instead of gold/wands, it'd be nice to have it take a portion of your life (similar to rot) but this could be quite large, and giving this slowly back when the golem died. This would mean that it would need multiple components, but wouldn't mean that you'd have to dip into important other resources, which have there own tactical use.

Mainly, just more spells like sandblast/sticks to stones.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 20:29

Re: Improving poison magic

I am excited to see what high level spell ideas come out of an alchemy school. Acid wall is a great idea but is also low level spell. Acid bolt, acid cloud, and acid storm are easy and uninspired initial ideas but I don't like any of them.

I like the idea of having a high level spell putting damage over time on LOS enemies like toxic radiance like the OP suggested. Dot spells tend to get less useful in the later game since either a)many things are poison resistant or b) sticky flame doesn't stack with itself.

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 21:01

Re: Improving poison magic

Bim wrote:I really like the idea of having a separate alchemy school, with things like evaporate, ignite and sticks to snakes, and having poison being separate but include acid spells. I think acid spells could be quite strong but would also add a lot of balance, as you could use them but at the risk of damaging the monsters equipment, which would make it worse for you.


I don't want more spell schools to spread XP around ... it's much better to flesh out existing ones than add new ones with only a few spells! Sticks to Snakes should remain in Transmutations regardless, it's a change of form not chemistry ...
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 21:26

Re: Improving poison magic

I just got an idea for an alchemy spell: 'Touch of Midas' .

Enemies you kill drop a pile of god instead of corpses. You would also do bonus damage unarmed as the enemies are slowly turned into gold by your touch.
On a downside, anything you try to eat turns into gold so you run the risk of starvation.
The only way to disable the spell would be to eat a pile of [x] gold.

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 22:16

Re: Improving poison magic

mumra wrote:Changes to spell schools:
Fulsome Distillation -> Alchemy/Necromancy
Evaporate -> Fire/Alchemy


Unless you also suggest that Transmuters get a bunch of starting skill in Alchemy you've just nerfed their entire starting game. (And, since Alchemy is supposed to encompass what's currently Poison Magic, giving Transmuters levels in Alchemy basically makes them overlap with Venom Mages.)

An Alchemy school is cool but there'd probably have to be a lot of hammering out the flavor details of what counts as Alchemy and what counts as Transmutations. If you just want a spell school that includes Poison but also Acid, I saw a suggestion on the wiki somewhere for just renaming it "Corrosion" or something similar.

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 22:43

Re: Improving poison magic

I don't think having more skills is necessarily a bad thing, as seen with enchantment -> hexes and charms. I do however think that alchemy would need an incredible amount of work to make it anything other than (as mentioned earlier) early game transmutations/poison magic. I think the main thing with alchemy is though, that it's all about changing and making things. I don't see anyone thinking that making 'good' potions or anything being a good play style, but it seems that most spells would fall under the remit of transmutations unless they actively changed something, into something else, permanently.

I also think gold cost is a bit lame(/gimmicky), and also quite tricky. Gold is a resource which is scarce, and impossible to guess how much a player would have or be able to find. Having something like the 'touch of midas' or similar would just encourage gold farming which could also be use to break the shops. I'd really like to use the 'junk' in a more proactive way though, and gold is already pretty balanced as a resource.

I'm all for a better poison magic though, adding in acid spells that do damage to most things would be great and balance it out with the other schools. Granted ice/fire have resistant enemies but poison becomes pretty much useless by late-mid game.
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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 23:22

Re: Improving poison magic

Bim wrote:I don't think having more skills is necessarily a bad thing, as seen with enchantment -> hexes and charms.


That was kind of a different thing since Enchantments was a huge spell school that was overpowered, which is the opposite thing going on with Poison Magic.

I'm all for a better poison magic though, adding in acid spells that do damage to most things would be great and balance it out with the other schools. Granted ice/fire have resistant enemies but poison becomes pretty much useless by late-mid game.


Yeah, if my opinion mattered one iota I'd suggest just adding acid spells to Poison, maybe even some rust and material decay spells, and giving it a little name/flavor tweak.

Also, another idea:

A generic acid bolt needs some fleshing out to not be boring. Corroding weapons and armor on the target helps make it distinctive. I had another idea, a side effect that might give an Acid Bolt some more utility and uniqueness. When the target is in water (or if you just aim at empty water), the water is acidified for a time, and will do acid damage to whatever's swimming or walking through it. The acidification will spread to adjacent tiles as the acid dissipates, so as the acid spreads it will cover more area but each individual tile will be acidic for a shorter time. This would be useful in water-heavy areas, like Lair, Shoals, Swamp, etc.

(Yes, I know, technically pouring acid into water would have an effect more like steam clouds, but fire magic already lets you make steam from water. Also, it's magic.)

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Post Friday, 15th July 2011, 23:53

Re: Improving poison magic

minmay wrote:Being an acid bolt is enough to make an acid bolt spell distinguished. Acid attacks for the player are extremely rare, and a bolt spell that almost nothing resists would be new (Bolt of Magma is 55% resistible now, so it no longer fills this niche very well).


True! I hadn't considered that. (Though, that said, if Acid Bolt does get added and become popular I suspect a lot of things might get acid resistance a couple updates later...)

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 00:30

Re: Improving poison magic

nicolae wrote:Unless you also suggest that Transmuters get a bunch of starting skill in Alchemy you've just nerfed their entire starting game. (And, since Alchemy is supposed to encompass what's currently Poison Magic, giving Transmuters levels in Alchemy basically makes them overlap with Venom Mages.)


I think the trick is to remove Fulsome/Evaporate from the transmuter book so they don't have three starting spells that rely on carrying a bunch of stuff around.

minmay wrote:Being an acid bolt is enough to make an acid bolt spell distinguished.


I still think it'd be nice to see slight variance between the different bolt and cloud spells. Maybe "acidic vapour" - it has a short range of 4 or 5, and creates a line of clouds along the target path. Not as good as cloud spells in open areas, but very effective in corridors.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 01:01

Re: Improving poison magic

mumra wrote:I think the trick is to remove Fulsome/Evaporate from the transmuter book so they don't have three starting spells that rely on carrying a bunch of stuff around.


Transmuters needing reagents for their spells is kind of their thing. If you don't want to carry stuff don't be a Transmuter.

Not as good as cloud spells in open areas, but very effective in corridors.


I think there's a design push to have more reasons to fight in open areas instead of Even More reasons to hang back in corridors.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 01:08

Re: Improving poison magic

mumra wrote:I think the trick is to remove Fulsome/Evaporate from the transmuter book so they don't have three starting spells that rely on carrying a bunch of stuff around.

ARE YOU INSANE. I have no idea how a Transmuter would survive without fulsome/evap. Playing a transmuter without fulsome is just like playing a monk with bad skills until you get a form. Granted, if it had a better alternative then that'd be fine, but that spell sort of defines Transmuters.

mumra wrote:Not as good as cloud spells in open areas, but very effective in corridors.

This is a bit like spark in terms of it being good for corridors, and a bit like meph. for leaving clouds. I think if anything it's nice to have things that don't force you to fight in corridors.


As minmay said, it might be nice having acid bolt as something that can't be resisted and degrades items, it'd be nicely thematic and would regulate itself a bit, and give poison magic a good end game spell.

A lower level acid spell could be an 'acid bath' which covers everything surrounding you in acid. This could hurt monsters, degrade walls, destroy all items and make shafts in the floor (or other such effects), this might be an interesting way to bridge between poison and acid, and add a close range spell which it lacks (like S.Discharge for air)?


Edit: sorry I realise some of what I typed was answered above.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 02:02

Re: Improving poison magic

Yeah, Fullsome Distillation needs to go. Evaporate might be salvageable if the supply of reagents for it were not functionally limitless, but as it is now the only limit on the number of 2mp poison clouds you can drop is the level of tedium you're willing to tolerate while harvesting the appropriate corpses.

If we want to preserve the play style of the combination, it's more appropriate for an alchemy deity, or an evocable item with limited charges. In the first case, Fullsome Distillation + Evaporation is nearly as powerful all by itself as some of the entire packages you get from existing deities, and losing your religion slot for it is a meaningful drawback for abusing it. In the second case, an evocable item would create a meaningful choice as to whether you wanted to (for instance) stock up on poison now or hold out for decay.

If transmuters are weakened too much by the loss, throw in a L1 form spell and call it good. Hone Claws, L1 pure transmutation, meld gloves and gain an effect equivalent to the Claws 1 mutation unless you already have better. And done.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 04:13

Re: Improving poison magic

Bim wrote:A lower level acid spell could be an 'acid bath' which covers everything surrounding you in acid. This could hurt monsters, degrade walls, destroy all items and make shafts in the floor (or other such effects), this might be an interesting way to bridge between poison and acid, and add a close range spell which it lacks (like S.Discharge for air)?


I like the idea, but should it really be lower level than an acid bolt? It's got an area-of-effect which would be as effective on as many monsters as Acid Bolt, can be used to replicate some of the effects of Dig, and makes shafts which can be used for escape.

Edit: If the plans for the Poison Magic school involve just including acids in its purview, it could be renamed Pollution Magic, which I think sums up the concept of "harmful substances".
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 05:55

Re: Improving poison magic

nicolae wrote:Edit: If the plans for the Poison Magic school involve just including acids in its purview, it could be renamed Pollution Magic, which I think sums up the concept of "harmful substances".


If that happens, Fedhas should disapprove of spells from the school and threaten to excommunicate a player casting a Pollution spell if they do not stop and go green..
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 08:32

Re: Improving poison magic

I remember when I wiped out an entire gnoll fortress as a level 4 transmuter using only FD/Evaporate and the occasional Spider Form. Good times, but it was also when I decided that the FD/Evaporate doesn't belong in the game, period.

Bim wrote:
mumra wrote:I think the trick is to remove Fulsome/Evaporate from the transmuter book so they don't have three starting spells that rely on carrying a bunch of stuff around.

ARE YOU INSANE. I have no idea how a Transmuter would survive without fulsome/evap. Playing a transmuter without fulsome is just like playing a monk with bad skills until you get a form. Granted, if it had a better alternative then that'd be fine, but that spell sort of defines Transmuters.


Call me crazy, but I thought that the spells that defined Transmuters were the form spells—the ones that actually transmuted stuff.

To elaborate, I don't like FD/Evaporate not only because it's overpowered, but also because it's not a good fit with what I consider the soul of the Transmuter playstyle: the use of self-transformation to beat up enemies in increasingly monstrous ways. Evaporate seemed like something you could do with any old potion and some heat, so it didn't feel like a transmutation, but a random utility thing that Transmuters had just to make their lives easier.

To be honest I don't like Sticks to Snakes for the exact same reason I don't like FD/Evaporate. Since it doesn't seem as terribly broken, I wouldn't mind that spell staying in for now, though even that doesn't seem necessary if we can put in a L1 or L2 claw spell to tide the player over until Spider Form.

Now to be on-topic again: I really like the idea of augmenting the Poison school with Acid. Although I like the idea of Alchemy in general, I'd like the flavor of the Poison school to stay consistent with its pollution aspect.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 09:43

Re: Improving poison magic

I agree that FD should be removed. This would solve the problem of Evaporate being overpowered by adding a meaningful limit to the number of clouds you can create and would also make mutation scumming much harder. Starting potions for transmuters could be adjusted if FD is removed to guarantee usefulness (more confusion and poison, maybe degeneration).

Also a L1 spell that is actually useful at XL1 would help the Tm background. The power difference between level 1 (a weaker monk) and level 2 (a poison throwing avatar of death with snakes in tow) is just surreal. The suggested hone claws spell would become mostly obsolete with spider form, but could still be useful in rare situations (before you get reliable blade hands). I think something that works for longer and works with forms would better cover the loss of ubiquitous evaporate ammo. Confusing Touch would be perfect for this, but is not a transmutation. I think no other background uses it, so it could be reflavored (to the extent L1 spells have flavor) and turned into a transmutation.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 11:05

Re: Improving poison magic

Improving poison and wrecking transmutation could be two different threads.

But as to Evaporate, the idea has been floated before that all potions created by Fullsome Distillation should be unstable and should disappear after a time limit like potions of blood do, or at least the potions of mutation. I think that would get rid of the abuse and keep the spells useful.

I don't really think Evaporate is overpowered, because everything worth using confusion potions on has enough HD to resist them by the time you get to Lair. It is wonderfully powerful in the early dungeon, but by the time you have enough potions and MP to use it continually, the enemies all resist it.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 11:32

Re: Improving poison magic

Let transmutations as it is , you fool ones !

I have always thought on poison mages as the opposite of healers, that is the kind of caster that works on substances that inflict sickness on the body. I would be better to improve poison school adding sickness effects like rotting, some kind of toxic/mutagenic agents (bad mutations obviously), flesh-eating or corrosive bacteria or being able to distill bio-hazard infections, plagues and even summon vermin.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 12:27

Re: Improving poison magic

jejorda2 wrote:But as to Evaporate, the idea has been floated before that all potions created by Fullsome Distillation should be unstable and should disappear after a time limit like potions of blood do, or at least the potions of mutation. I think that would get rid of the abuse and keep the spells useful.

I proposed that. I think the discussion led me to restrict the instability to mutation potions. It's less urgent now that mutagenic corpses' drop have been reduced, but would still be useful.
I do think the fulsome/evap combo is fun and interesting, so why not try to balance it instead of removing it? There's nothing inherently wrong with, it's not "broken by design". I agree with minmay that the combo isn't vital for transmuters so it could be moved to an alchemist background. I use s2s more than evap usually.
To balance fulsome, give it a 2/3 chance to fail when creating potions (corpse is consumed). For evap, cap its power at 50 and have the spell power affect the effectiveness of the cloud (damage, chance to confuse, duration of confusion effect) not just the duration.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 12:31

Re: Improving poison magic

or a 2/3 chance of water? I love me them water potions.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 12:37

Re: Improving poison magic

I definitely agree that it needs to be toned down, and my incredulous tone was to point that out :P

I'd like to see a 2/3 (or 1/3 if that's abit harsh) of corpses disappearing, and a more cloud based attack which 'thins out' could be good too. I merely meant that It's great flavour, and is completely unique to that background.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 12:58

Re: Improving poison magic

galehar wrote:For evap, cap its power at 50 and have the spell power affect the effectiveness of the cloud (damage, chance to confuse, duration of confusion effect) not just the duration.

Is there any way in the current code for different instances of the same type of cloud to have different strengths? I was under the impression that one of the difficulties in trying the get mephitic cloud balanced just right was that since clouds are clouds, there isn't much that spell power can do.

So the game probably needs different strengths of each cloud. I'd say there should probably be a set scale of strengths, something like solid cloud, thick cloud, heavy cloud, modest cloud, light cloud, thin cloud, wispy cloud. Delicate, faint, slight, robust, or hearty might be used in there. Each cloud strength would have a set chance of decaying to the next weaker type each turn, perhaps 1/4. Maybe that would be different for different types of fumes. The clouds in vaults wouldn't decay, and would be called something like a "standing modest cloud of freezing vapor."

Each strength would do different damage, or be able to affect a different max HD of monster.

And different spell powers would make different strengths of clouds. Maybe high power mephitic cloud can make sold clouds of noxious fumes that can confuse titans, but evaporating a potion of confusion can only create a modest cloud that only confuses orc warriors but not knights. At high spellpower, a potion of slowing might be evaporated to thick clouds. Conjure flame might take repeated castings to turn a light cloud into a heavy cloud.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 13:23

Re: Improving poison magic

jejorda2 wrote:
galehar wrote:For evap, cap its power at 50 and have the spell power affect the effectiveness of the cloud (damage, chance to confuse, duration of confusion effect) not just the duration.

Is there any way in the current code for different instances of the same type of cloud to have different strengths? I was under the impression that one of the difficulties in trying the get mephitic cloud balanced just right was that since clouds are clouds, there isn't much that spell power can do.

Not yet, but it's not hard to add it. I'm not sure it's necessary to make it player visible with adjectives and decaying into weaker type. It seems needlessly complicated. Just add a power member to the cloud struct, give it a default value for cloud generators (vaults could even set it) and set it with spell power when the cloud is created from casting a spell.
The coding is simple, but balancing it will need work. Clouds from firestorm would be much stronger than conjure flame for example. Also monster AI would need to be adjusted (needs improvement anyway). And there's probably other consequences which might emerge from such a change. So it's not especially hard, but it needs work and needs to be planned. It's definitely a high priority for 0.10 IMO.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 14:39

Re: Improving poison magic

minmay wrote:By the way, I don't think acid spells should corrode armour. This is because players with acid spells will turn into player ghosts with acid spells.


Nasty! Could always just prevent player ghosts from casting acid.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 15:43

Re: Improving poison magic

minmay wrote:By the way, I don't think acid spells should corrode armour. This is because players with acid spells will turn into player ghosts with acid spells.


Well then players are just going to have to learn to not die after memorizing an Acid spell. :twisted:
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 15:48

Re: Improving poison magic

I don't recall seeing this mentioned, but if the chosen route goes down alchemy, how about to differentiate between transmutations and alchemy, the former is all about transforming yourself and others and the latter about transforming objects. This would mean Fulsome, Evap, and Snake Sticks would all become alchemical spells while transmutations would get a couple of new starting spells. What those spells would be, I'm not sure, but that "Hone Claws" spell is similar to the one I had for a level 1 spell.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 16:14

Re: Improving poison magic

TwilightPhoenix wrote:I don't recall seeing this mentioned, but if the chosen route goes down alchemy, how about to differentiate between transmutations and alchemy, the former is all about transforming yourself and others and the latter about transforming objects.


Does Transmutations really have a pressing need to be split up like that, though? Alchemy as a concept has a lot of flavor but it's also got a lot of overlap with existing schools, and it would incorporate three rather different domains -- poisons, acids, and transmutation of materials. I don't think it's the way to go.

I think if we're going to expand Poison Magic by giving it new concepts to cover, we should just focus on the poison-related ideas of sickness, decay, or contamination and flesh those out, instead of taking concepts from a pre-existing school. Transmutations is fine how it is, except for FD/E needing a nerf.

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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 16:39

Re: Improving poison magic

I really don't think splitting up transmutations and alchemy into different schools is a good thing, right now they're basically the same, and unless someone made a workable alchemy patch with some really good ideas (not just 'use gold as spell power' or 'make golems') I doubt that it would be possible, as it seems a lot of work (with much already needed to be done).

Poison really needs a boost, and I think Acid is the way to go. Having ghosts with acid attacks isn't too bad, as we're talking of relatively high level ghosts, by which time you should be able to deal with them/corrosion. As mentioned though, it would not be too bad to have them just not cast acid, as poison already affects most characters, and as mentioned in another topic, player ghosts can be a bit too strong in places.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 17:52

Re: Improving poison magic

nicolae wrote:Does Transmutations really have a pressing need to be split up like that, though?


I don't know, hence the "if the chosen route goes that way". But I wouldn't really say it'd be splitting up the school. Transmuters generally rely on unarmed combat and forms to beat stuff up with Evap/Fulsome and Snake Sticks helping said Transmuter get to the point where they can cast those forms. The other "affect objects not yourself or others" spells are either not often used or are really used by other backgrounds and feel like the Transmutations school is kind of just tacked on. I mean, when did you play a Transmuter to cast Sandblast, LRD, Stoneskin, or Shatter? You typically play an Earth Elementalist. The other spells, Passwall, Dig, Alistair's, Condensation Shield, and Ignite Poison, are certainly not ones a Transmuter focuses on using (though they're always nice to have).

Hmmm... I shouldn't have brought that up. Now I'm tempted to start trying to propose some more spells for the school to make it go with the general Transmuter play style better. But, that's not within the scope of this thread and my thoughts aren't collected anyway.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 19:12

Re: Improving poison magic

Bim wrote:unless someone made a workable alchemy patch

Someone is. Eronarn is currently implementing his proposal. Doesn't mean it will be accepted though.
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Post Saturday, 16th July 2011, 20:48

Re: Improving poison magic

There will be something to fill the gap for transmuters I am sure. Really they would just need a level 1 spell to get them going. Even just gaining a temporary level 1 body mutation (claws, talons, hooves, etc) would be plenty. Scratch that it would probably be overpowered later in the game with all the aux attacks, but something along those lines. Doesn't have to be shark punch or breath bees after all. Sticks to snakes is great but no one uses it because evaporate is almost always better.
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