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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zerakon" data-source="post: 4709182" data-attributes="member: 12921">Let's say a character named Bob is struck by a Pit Fiend's tail sting's secondary attack and then by a Carrion Crawler tentacle in the same fight. Poor Bob!The Pit Fiend says that the "target takes ongoing 15 poison damage and is weakened (save ends both)."Carrion Crawler says that the "target takes ongoing 5 poison and is slowed (save ends both)"*IMO the most sensible thing to do is to keep the Carrion Crawler's status effect as an atomic effect and not throw away the ongoing 5 poison damage just because Bob was already hit by a stronger poison.So, at the beginning of Bob's turn, he takes the highest of each type of ongoing damage. In this case, he takes 15 ongoing poison damage.He's both weakened and slowed during his turn.At the end of his turn, he rolls a save vs. each atomic status effect on him. If he saves vs the tail sting effect and fails vs the carrion crawler's tentacle poison, then he's still "poisoned" but is now only taking 5 poison damage per round.I agree with Mengu that PHB page 278's description of how to handle ongoing damage is vague. The third bullet point can make the case that when Bob is struck by the carrion crawler, he absolutely ignores the 5 ongoing damage effect because he already has a higher amount of that type of ongoing damage. But I think if this is the intent, it's a poor rule and I'm willing to take my game into house rule territory on this issue, because I think status effects should be atomic and not broken apart. I also think -- and here I majorly disagree with Black Knight Irios's conclusion -- that if five creatures hit you with the same kind of poison, that it would be harder to shrug off the poison, so having to make five saving throws to get to the point where you feel fine is a better way to handle the situation than having to make only one save. Again, I think I could easily be going against the rules as intended, so I'm not making a proclamation about how the rules are worded but rather how I play.*Yes, the carrion crawler's attack description is improperly worded; it doesn't even use the word "damage" anywhere! However, it's obvious that "ongoing 5 poison" means "ongoing 5 poison damage."</blockquote>

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