D&D (2024) Is there any confusion between Poison Damage and the Poisoned Condition?

[Zaukrie]

That's one reason I'm working on diseases, and have considered creating new poisons also.....but I'm beginning to doubt I'll ever sell much that makes all this work worth my time, and working on PDFs kind of burns me out on DMing....

 

[Zaukrie]

For some reason the designers didn't like Ongoing Damage for 5e and avoided it as often as possible. It does exist, but barely: Alchemical Fire and... what? Acid Arrow, sort of?

Truth, I almost typed that, but I was only 95% sure I was right about it.

 

[mellored]

For some reason the designers didn't like Ongoing Damage for 5e and avoided it as often as possible. It does exist, but barely: Alchemical Fire and... what? Acid Arrow, sort of?

It's just a lot to keep track of.

 

[the Jester]

For some reason the designers didn't like Ongoing Damage for 5e and avoided it as often as possible. It does exist, but barely: Alchemical Fire and... what? Acid Arrow, sort of?

There are a few poison effects that do ongoing damage- vrock spores, a pit fiend's bite, and a vegepygmie chief's spores, at least. I have a bunch more homebrewed monsters that do ongoing poison. I suspect it was a matter of not wanting to have to track too much; it's very easy to forget things like ongoing damage or effects if there are too many on the battlefield, so to speak.

 

[Clint_L]

It is definitely confusing. I am currently playing a Way of Mercy monk, and my hand of harm does necrotic damage but applies the poisoned condition (with no save, which is an extremely powerful effect).

The issue as I see it is that "poison" as a type of damage means exactly that: something has poisoned you, like a snakebite. But "poisoned" as a condition actually means something different: it basically means "debilitated," and though it could be from poison, it could also be from disease or, as in this case, a necrotic effect...or something else all together.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It's just a lot to keep track of.

Yes. That would be the reason, all right!

There are a few poison effects that do ongoing damage- vrock spores, a pit fiend's bite, and a vegepygmie chief's spores, at least. I have a bunch more homebrewed monsters that do ongoing poison. I suspect it was a matter of not wanting to have to track too much; it's very easy to forget things like ongoing damage or effects if there are too many on the battlefield, so to speak.

Right. I almost added "And some monster abilities" but I couldn't think of examples in spite of being pretty sure that there must be some, somewhere.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I dont think there's a lot of confusion at my table, but I prefer to remove poison as a damage type and instead deal either Acid or Necrotic damage and add the Poisoned effect.

A weakening poison that makes you feel sick is generally necrotic, while the ''oh my gods, my blood is on fireeeee! kill me please! '' type is acid.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t think it’s confusing, but I’d be in favor of changing the “poisoned” condition to “sickened.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not too keen on all diseases being tied to the poisoned condition. Not every disease should have to impose disadvantage on all ability checks in addition to whatever other effects they might have, IMO.

 

[Zaukrie]

I don’t think it’s confusing, but I’d be in favor of changing the “poisoned” condition to “sickened.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not too keen on all diseases being tied to the poisoned condition. Not every disease should have to impose disadvantage on all ability checks in addition to whatever other effects they might have, IMO.

100%!

 

[Incenjucar]

I would argue that the mechanics should be seperated from an implied cause so they can be used for more things, and then we can just have "Conditions caused by poison" and "Conditions caused by diseases" instead for resistances.