Shattered Kingdoms

I don't think hellions need a boost to their melee ability outside of getting rescue. Combat casting works fine as is. And I think if you want to spam a bunch of attacks a round, you should probably play a warrior.

If it's not supposed to be a combat spell then could you just remove it from being able to cast it on a weapon? The spell isn't even worth it to begin with.

I have to say plague on a fountain is the biggest F you to newbies I can think of.

Plague on a weapon isnt so bad if you can land curse as well. With the recent change to items casting spells it seems kind of pointless to buff your weapon.

I'm a big fan of maledictions lasting longer on weapons, although it's just as frustrating when you're forced to enter into combat on a trash NPC first, making all of your maledictions go to waste.

However, if maledictions lasted 5 or 6 ticks as opposed to the 2 or 3 (IIRC) that they last now, then that would reward maledicting shurikens, which I'm a huge fan of personally.

I'm sorry, but that just seems to be a poor suggestion. By combat spell, I meant cast during combat. But since you can cast it on your weapon ahead of time, you don't need to worry about casting it during combat. As a malediction, it is helpful to have your opponents suffering from it in combat. Consider that plague is more useful than it used to be just a couple of weeks ago, because plague hurts your reflex save, and reflex saves are much more important now.

I agree with your first sentence. I really do not think it is worth risking punishment over plaguing fountains in high traffic areas. (Is this punishable?)

2 classes have the spell and only one of them can effectively use it since that class is directly wielding a weapon. Casting directly on weapon reduces chance of landing because art no longer applies. Using the spell opens yourself to contracting the disease itself which isn't really that consequential since the dex debuff isn't substantial. Not trying to be negative here, but I do not feel the spell accurately depicts the actual symptoms of black death (fever, chills, headache, weakness etc)

Its just a trolling spell for fountains.

In today's much more tender gaming environment, I agree that the way plague spreads is pretty harsh. Perhaps it would be more useful (while still staying thematic) if we limited the spread to people who are in the same group?

Also, plague does more damage to dexterity than poison does to strength, and like poison it is stackable. So the item cast is effectively a freebie. You can still go ahead and cast it in combat if you really wanted to without having to worry about it failing due to the weapon cast.

One other thing I notice about plague vs poison is that when poison reduces strength there is a chance of dropping items due to weight. To make the two spells more equivalent, plague probably ought to make you drop items due to loss of carrying capacity from dexterity.

That, shorter cast time and a larger dex debuff would make it a useful spell. Up to you though.

One other thing lacking from a weapon-cast standpoint is that of the three stat-affecting malediction spells, one affects dexterity while two affect strength and none affect constitution. Changing one of them to be CON based would differentiate better and also be another penalty to fort saves. If I had to pick one, it would probably be poison, since weaken is pretty hard tied to strength. Curious about opinions on this.

Hard to tell the outcome. Could potentially be overpowered.