Poison

[farscapesg1]

Quick question here. Does ability damage from poison stack if from the same source? Or is it only ability drain that stacks?

Say a creature with poison damage attacks the character and causes 4 points of Strength loss. On it's next successful attack, does does any additional ability damage stack with the previous damage, or does it only inflict more damage if the roll comes up higher than the previous (6 for example).

 

[Infiniti2000]

Damage always stacks. Drain also stacks.

 

[werk]

Wow, good question. I couldn't find anything that addresses this question (hopefully someone else will).

In the absence of anything to the contrary, I would allow it to stack. It is damage.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Damage always stacks. Drain also stacks.

To expand, the character is also poisoned twice, and will need to make two Fortitude saves in order to avoid getting hit with secondary damage twice.

 

[farscapesg1]

OK, thanks. I knew someone would have the answer

Now I just have to start using more of my fiendish vermin. Considering the poison saves are Constitution based, getting to increase the save DCs thanks to Augment Summoning helps make them more useful as summoned creatures

 

[Infiniti2000]

Wow, good question. I couldn't find anything that addresses this question (hopefully someone else will).

What, my word isn't good enough?

To expand, the character is also poisoned twice, and will need to make two Fortitude saves in order to avoid getting hit with secondary damage twice.

There you go again, catching me on my assumptions.

 

[farscapesg1]

Follow-up question:

If a creatures makes a successful attack but doesn't deal any damage due to Damage Reduction, could the creature still inflict poison damage?

For example, a wererat is attacked by a fiendish viper snake. The snake makes a successful attack but doesn't deal enough damage to get past the DR 10/silver. Does the wererat still have to make a Fort save to avoid taking poison damage?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

If a creatures makes a successful attack but doesn't deal any damage due to Damage Reduction, could the creature still inflict poison damage?

That depends on the poison.

Most poison that you'll care about in this case is injury-type poison. Injury-type poison only affects the target if the attack overcomes DR.

Some poison, however, is contact poison - which will affect the target on any hit.

In fact, this is covered under the discussion of DR under special abilities:

DAMAGE REDUCTION

Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or to ignore blows altogether as though they were invulnerable.

The numerical part of a creature’s damage reduction is the amount of hit points the creature ignores from normal attacks. Usually, a certain type of weapon can overcome this reduction. This information is separated from the damage reduction number by a slash. Damage reduction may be overcome by special materials, by magic weapons (any weapon with a +1 or higher enhancement bonus, not counting the enhancement from masterwork quality), certain types of weapons (such as slashing or bludgeoning), and weapons imbued with an alignment. If a dash follows the slash then the damage reduction is effective against any attack that does not ignore damage reduction.

Ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an enhancement bonus of +1 or higher is treated as a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Similarly, ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an alignment gains the alignment of that projectile weapon (in addition to any alignment it may already have).

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk’s stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.

Attacks that deal no damage because of the target’s damage reduction do not disrupt spells.

Spells, spell-like abilities, and energy attacks (even nonmagical fire) ignore damage reduction.

Sometimes damage reduction is instant healing. Sometimes damage reduction represents the creature’s tough hide or body,. In either case, characters can see that conventional attacks don’t work.

If a creature has damage reduction from more than one source, the two forms of damage reduction do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best damage reduction in a given situation.

 

[farscapesg1]

ah crap Oh well, there goes the idea that my summoned creatures could still be useful in the upcoming part of the Shackled City adventure path (or at least my idea of what to expect from the "lost" adventure included in the hard back version).

My idea was to be able to swarm the DR creatures with lower-level creatures able to poison them and put them out of commission. Guess I will just have to leave the "were" creatures up to the big guys in the party (if they listen to me and invest in some silver weapons) and try to keep any non-DR creatures at bay.

I'm really not liking the whole DR thing at the moment

 

[Stalker0]

You could always have the swarm fly through a pot of silver goo first

GO MY SILVER MINIONS!!