Poison in literature and in gaming

[Michael Silverbane]

Here is an article about some deadly poisons, most of which would be available to pre-industrial peoples.

For me, I think that the homogenizing of poisons in Type III D&D into (mostly) only affecting ability scores and only affecting creatures twice (once on the initial exposure and once again after a minute) was a mistake. Pathfinder remedied this somewhat, with the way that its poisons work. As did Type IV D&D, in a slightly different way.

I like for poisons to have lots of different effects, including ability damage, hit point damage, and various status effects (unconscious, blinded, paralyzed, etc.) as well as differing onset times, effect periods, and so on.

 

[Ovinomancer]

1) "Cyanide" isn't one substance, it is a group name for several. Not all are equally lethal. The article's cited does of 1.5mg/kg does not specify which form. Most likely, that is for cyanide salts, the form used for suicide pills. But elsewhere. The article notes:


Blood weighs about 1.06kg/liter, and there are 5.5 liters of blood in the average human body. That means the concentration of 3mg/liter being "generally fatal" is a vastly different than the 1.5mg/kg = lethal listed elsewhere.

2) if you check the list of antidotes and possible antidotes, you'll note that the timing and complexity of some treatments- administering 100% oxygen, consumption of vitamin B12 or even (possibly) glucose- would probably not have been discovered and would be utterly meaningless if cyanide killed quickly and reliably.

3) like any poison, means of exposure matters- mere contact may be treatable by washing it off. Injection, inhalation or ingestion means more serious measures must be taken.

1) Cyanide is one substance. That it can exist in multiple forms doesn't change this, much like oxygen is in the air and in water.

The 1.5 mg/kg value is likely for gaseous cyanide, but that amount in your food should so kill you.


The difference in lethal concentration vs bloodstream concentration is one of time. The body doesn't stop being poisoned in one go, so the poison accumulates in the body. There are a number of factors that influence applied concentration to bloodstream concentration, so the different numbers are not surprising.

Essentially, if you're exposed to a concentration of 1.5 mg/kg cyanide, unless it's very brief, you'll get plenty in your system to kill you. Essentially, at 1.5 mg/kg concentration, you cannot metabolize it safely and will accumulate a lethal concentration. Quickly.

For interest mg/kg is the same as ppm (parts per million), so we're talking 1.5 parts per million lethal dose and 3 parts per million lethal concentration in the bloodstream.

2) Cyanide kills quickly and reliably /at lethal doses/. However, not all or even most exposures to cyanide are lethal doses and you still want to detoxify the person so they don't suffer the nasty effects of even non-lethal hypoxia. Further, high doses that aren't lethal still induce severe hypoxia, which can cause organ damage. So, the fact that there are treatments for cyanide poisoning do not, in any way, indicate that cyanide isn't fast acting, nor do they indicate that lethal doses aren't, you know, lethal.

3) You decontaminate a victim because cyanide is readily absorbed through the skin. Washing a person off isn't to treat the poisoning, it's to stop additional poisoning.

And, for cyanide, it really doesn't care much for how it's applied -- it doesn't change it's toxicity much due to how it enters the body. Some, yes, but not much. Cyanide is a generally nasty substance.

4) And, if you think cyanide can be bad, do not ever look up the mechanism of VX nerve agent. Ugly.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A cyanide is any chemical compound that contains monovalent combining group CN. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom.

IOW, it is a family of compounds as opposed to "one thing with many forms", like oxygen or carbon, which are elements.

 

[Celebrim]

The problem with realistic poisons is that they involve a lot of bookkeeping that is generally a burden during play.

Further, they realistically involve incapacitation of a player over a long duration, which is not very fun in play. One of the worst things you can do in a game is take away the players ability to contribute to play over an extended period. Oddly, maiming a PC is usually a worse thing to do to a PC than killing the PC. Even in systems without resurrection, killing a PC just means that the player gets a new PC. Maiming the PC though involves a situation where the player may neither feel comfortable abandoning the PC, nor playing the PC.

Thus, much as a part of me wants more realistic poisons and diseases (which work very much like poisons), they have to be filed along side realistic linguistics, realistic coinage, flavorful and numinous magic items, realistic pricing and appraisal, and so forth as things that would only work if the book keeping was automatically handled. Heck, increasingly I wonder if this applies to all bookkeeping, as DMs simply can't keep track of the placement and weight of everything that a player is holding, and if a player isn't invested in doing so, it doesn't matter what the system is.

 

[Ovinomancer]

IOW, it is a family of compounds as opposed to "one thing with many forms", like oxygenr carbon, which are elements.

I'm honestly confused as to why you think what you quoted, in any way, contradicts what I said. Just because I choose to frame my statement in less precise terms doesn't mean this wasn't exactly what I was saying. The 'one things in my statement is the CN- ion. The 'many forms' are the various chemical compounds it makes.

Look, at this point I feel like I'm bearing a dead horse. To go back to the original question, cyanide is poetically the most like it's portrayed in the moves. It's also dangerous to handle and hard to employ. The best cases of cyanide poisoning are either intentional ingestion or closed environments. The most common are through inhalation of smoke in fires where there's is a lot of certain plastics. Those reached from mild (common) to fatal (rarer). But, in the end, cyanide is a very effective and fast poison that comes in many forms, from gases, to liquid, to various solids. Avoid it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm honestly confused as to why you think what you quoted, in any way, contradicts what I said.

Because it does.

The cyanide family of carbon compounds are chemically distinct from each other; they have different chemical makeups. Cyanides can be a colorless gas, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN) or cyanogen chloride (CNCl), or a crystal form such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) or potassium cyanide (KCN). They are NOT the same thing in different forms.

An example of carbon being the same thing in many forms would be graphite, diamond, coal, and graphenes. Chemically, they are all (potentially) pure carbon, but because of the different arrangement of molecules, they all behave differently.

But tell ya what, I will agree that cyanide is the most accurately portrayed poison in fiction.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Because it does.

The cyanide family of carbon compounds are chemically distinct from each other; they have different chemical makeups. Cyanides can be a colorless gas, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN) or cyanogen chloride (CNCl), or a crystal form such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) or potassium cyanide (KCN). They are NOT the same thing in different forms.

An example of carbon being the same thing in many forms would be graphite, diamond, coal, and graphenes. Chemically, they are all (potentially) pure carbon, but because of the different arrangement of molecules, they all behave differently.

But tell ya what, I will agree that cyanide is the most accurately portrayed poison in fiction.

Okay, I'm really starting to think you're more interested in getting in the last say rather than examining the topic, as this is the second time you've responded in a way that prevents the quote notification from working, and that takes extra effort. This, combined with the fact that you're going after a narrow semantic argument and trying to claim my layspeak explanation was wrong because I didn't use the precise words you read on wikipedia, leads me to believe that you just want to win the argument.

So, sure, okay, I don't mind. You win. There's a difference between saying cyanide is one thing in many forms and saying cyanide compounds all have the CN- ion but different chemical structures.

 

[Blue]

In fantasy literature, there are many tales of poison that, either slowly or quickly, will kill its victim. The poisoner in Best Served Cold, for example, is very effective at killing people outright (and often within moments) with the slightest drop of poison, rarely needing a weapon at all (and if so it would be a minor one, like a blowgun dart).

In D&D (for example) this is almost impossible to do by itself. You can maybe weaken someone with ability damage (which varies from annoying to very annoying) and *maybe* knock an animal or stupid person unconscious with int poison, but really, the only "killer" poison is the one that does con damage, and that doesn't always kill the victim either (often you need a combination of con damage and good old fashioned hp damage, usually from a weapon).

I can see why games move away from "save or die" poisons (I think the last holdout in 3.x was the green part of the prismatic spells, but that is hard to bottle), but in D&D it is odd because there are "save or die" spells and "death from massive damage" effects. Poison, however, is basically a way of wearing down an opponent, only you use ability score points as the ablative marker instead of hit points.

Is this a general problem in gaming - is "save or die" (or heck, just "die") poison too quick and lethal to be fun in games? Or is it the other way around, and literature has made poison so very deadly for literary reasons?

In the real world, getting stabbed through the stomach with a sword is usually fatal, or at least incapacitating. D&D runs on a heroic (if not super-heroic) level that doesn't imitate that.

The story you mentioned where the slightest drop will kill someone almost instantly seems to go the other direction - where the poison is a super power. In truth many poisons require some time, sufficient dosage, and perhaps proper delivery so it's not washed out with the blood. And that's considering something man-sized. Something larger than an elephant would laugh at those dosages, yet D&D fights giants, dragons, and all sorts of tremendous creatures.

I enjoy systems like 13th Age where poison is usually ongoing damage - so it still may kill you if left unchecked to run through your body for a minute, but that would require failing a save every round to throw it off.

If you want to look at it in a different light the abstract level of HPs does hold up the myth - remember that some HP loss is fatigue, using up your luck, etc. None of those would be an actual contact with the poison - a hit by the dice at that point just indicates a wearing down, not an actual solid contact in-narrative. So once that ablative heroic buffer is gone, in other words when they only have a few HPs left, then poison can end up killing them.

 

[Particle_Man]

If you want to look at it in a different light the abstract level of HPs does hold up the myth - remember that some HP loss is fatigue, using up your luck, etc. None of those would be an actual contact with the poison - a hit by the dice at that point just indicates a wearing down, not an actual solid contact in-narrative. So once that ablative heroic buffer is gone, in other words when they only have a few HPs left, then poison can end up killing them.

Sometimes. But even a 1 hp commoner in 3.x can't be killed by Dex poison, for example. He can, at worst, be rendered immobile (but still conscious).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Okay, I'm really starting to think you're more interested in getting in the last say rather than examining the topic, as this is the second time you've responded in a way that prevents the quote notification from working, and that takes extra effort.

First, I have absolutely no idea what you're going on about here. All I did was snip, quote, & post. Nothing special. You may be experiencing a bug.

You should post that in Meta.

This, combined with the fact that you're going after a narrow semantic argument and trying to claim my layspeak explanation was wrong because I didn't use the precise words you read on wikipedia, leads me to believe that you just want to win the argument.

So, sure, okay, I don't mind. You win. There's a difference between saying cyanide is one thing in many forms and saying cyanide compounds all have the CN- ion but different chemical structures.

Second, this isn't mere semantics. You and I are having this discussion here & now. But we have no idea who may be reading these words, now or in the future.

You were claiming the cyanide family of compounds was "the same thing in different forms." This isn't true in any way and is extremely inaccurate. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN), cyanogen chloride (CNCl), sodium cyanide (NaCN) and potassium cyanide (KCN) all have very different properties as solids, gasses and liquids.

To illustrate differently, let's look at monoxide compounds:

A monoxide is any oxide containing just one atom of oxygen in the molecule. For example, Potassium oxide (K2O), has only one atom of oxygen, and is thus a monoxide. Water (H2O) is also a monoxide; see dihydrogen monoxide hoax. A well known monoxide is carbon monoxide (CO); see carbon monoxide poisoning. Most of the members of the Periodic Table form oxides when oxidized. There are two main types of oxides: monoxides and dioxides. Monoxides (generally MO) such as silicon monoxide (SiO) only exist at high temperatures. Among monoxides, CO is neutral, GeO is distinctly acidic, and SnO and PbO are amphoteric.

You wouldn't assert that water (H2O), carbon monoxide (CO), potassium monoxide (KO), germanium oxide (GeO), tin oxide (SnO), and lead oxide a.k.a. litharge or massicot (PbO) are "the same thing in different forms", would you?

If you wouldn't, then don't do it with the cyanide compounds.