ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This really should be changed. In current form, it leaves huge AoE pool of poison. It doesn't deal enough damage to monster to really matter and, in fact, does damage Hydra itself, as well as any other summon, making them easier to be swiped by other monsters aoes. This makes it more of a negative effect rather than something that should be helpful, especially that you Hydra range is meh, range of summonning is small, acid cloud is big, and in the end most of your summons have to bath in it.

In my opinion, it should reduce enemy Lightning, Acid and Blight resistances. Only Hydra deals first two types anyway and it still makes this buff 2/3 of Hydra's damage, unlike Ritch or War Hound who boosts all damage they deal AND damage of other summons. The Blight one would make Hydra better for magic summonners hopefully (that's what I imagine is what Prodigy is for? Go for lot of Magic, forgo AM, use staves for elemental damage boost and focus on Hydra/Ritch with support of Blighted Summonning skills).

I fully agree, the Hydra's effect is problematic. The cloud also obscures the view for a long time, so that it's hard to make out what's going on.

But turning the effect into resistance-lowering feels a bit uninteresting. Especially since it will be mostly useless, with the Hydra only doing 1-2 poison/lightning attacks in it's lifetime.

The poison cloud could be modified so that it does more damage, lasts for a shorter duration and doesn't hurt friendlies. It would also be nice to have equal chances of causing fire-clouds and lightning-storms.

Another option would be to give it a small chance to cause status effects (poisoning/burning/stun) in enemies.

A related hydra poison could bug:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=36670

I do agree it's a bit boring, but that is what Hydra needs if it's supposed to be damage dealer, every other summon can have it's damage boosted (that includes Spider). Enemy resistance lowering effect went as far as -70% on my char. That meant, summoning Dog, then Drake, then detonating Dog, was doing insane aoe damage, with added confusion and fire breath+aoe flame field+army of whelps. Hydra needs something to keep up, and I think allowing it to support on its own would work.

As for your bug, it's what NPC do when you hit them once, they all swarm to you and look with their big eyes on you till you leave, or attack again when they murder you (or you lead them in water for free gear+xp).