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Likely poison mechanics
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3898242" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>I hate it.</p><p></p><p>I hated how poison was done in 3ed... REAL poisons are substances that affect you gradually and often slowly. Poisons in tales and stories are scary when you don't see them coming (e.g. hidden in food, delivered with a barely noticeable scratch), when their effects become relevant later so that it takes a while to understand you're poisoned, and when they drag you down slowly before killing you if you don't find a way to stop it. These are the reasons for the "poison is evil" idea: cowards use poison because they can get away with it, and because they can avoid fighting. It is also evil because it kills slowly and painfully.</p><p></p><p>In 3ed poisons are too quick, they're over in 1 minute. The effect can last long (good), but it's scary only for 1 minute when you don't know what the secondary effect is... after that, you're already recovering (no need to find a specific antidote) and you know exactly how long it will take to recover. It would be ok to have this if we had first a period when you actually got worse, but instead in 3ed we only got the recovery part of being poisoned. So effectively, 3ed poison is a away to actually kill someone more quickly, and because the effect is immediate they are mostly used in combat, not out of combat. No wonder that people have issues with the idea that "poison is evil", the mechanic doesn't justify this at all, they actually make it even mercyful.</p><p></p><p>I was hoping some 4e developer might want to solve these issues, but apparently poison is so much used as a combat device nowadays that they wouldn't even think about it. What gets better with 4e is that at least it's a bit more gradual, but then it gets more boring because it's turned just into another form of HP damage.</p><p></p><p>The ironic thing is that 3ed already has a decent mechanic for poisons: the one which is used for diseases. It works quite well, if you generalize the time steps so that they don't always equal to a day, but could be shorter if you want (so that you could also have poisons that kill in you in a matter of hours or even minutes if you like).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 3898242, member: 1465"] I hate it. I hated how poison was done in 3ed... REAL poisons are substances that affect you gradually and often slowly. Poisons in tales and stories are scary when you don't see them coming (e.g. hidden in food, delivered with a barely noticeable scratch), when their effects become relevant later so that it takes a while to understand you're poisoned, and when they drag you down slowly before killing you if you don't find a way to stop it. These are the reasons for the "poison is evil" idea: cowards use poison because they can get away with it, and because they can avoid fighting. It is also evil because it kills slowly and painfully. In 3ed poisons are too quick, they're over in 1 minute. The effect can last long (good), but it's scary only for 1 minute when you don't know what the secondary effect is... after that, you're already recovering (no need to find a specific antidote) and you know exactly how long it will take to recover. It would be ok to have this if we had first a period when you actually got worse, but instead in 3ed we only got the recovery part of being poisoned. So effectively, 3ed poison is a away to actually kill someone more quickly, and because the effect is immediate they are mostly used in combat, not out of combat. No wonder that people have issues with the idea that "poison is evil", the mechanic doesn't justify this at all, they actually make it even mercyful. I was hoping some 4e developer might want to solve these issues, but apparently poison is so much used as a combat device nowadays that they wouldn't even think about it. What gets better with 4e is that at least it's a bit more gradual, but then it gets more boring because it's turned just into another form of HP damage. The ironic thing is that 3ed already has a decent mechanic for poisons: the one which is used for diseases. It works quite well, if you generalize the time steps so that they don't always equal to a day, but could be shorter if you want (so that you could also have poisons that kill in you in a matter of hours or even minutes if you like). [/QUOTE]
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