Talk:Better Poison Implementation (3.5e Variant Rule)

Poison Template

==== Generic Poison ==== * Duration: ''Base DC'': (Max) ''Creature DC'': 10 +1/2 HD + creature's [[constitution]] modifier ''Lethality Threshold'': ''Delivery'': ''Initial Effect'': ''Heightened Effect'': ''Secondary Effect'': ''Delayed Effect'':

For me and people who are generally interested in making interested poisons. --Leziad 06:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts

You were asking for thoughts in chat last night, and here they are now that I'm awake and have looked at it again.

I like the basic idea. Poisons get different time scales, do more than just ability damage and the random status effect, and generally feel a bit more interesting. They can all (so far anyway) kill you if you get too many doses of them and fail a bunch of saves, and that sort of stacking feels pretty appropriate. I strongly prefer it to the original "wait for 5 attribute damage saves to go off" stacking. The lethality numbers might need to be boosted in general, but it's a great idea that I think just needs a bit of tuning. I have mixed feelings on the no-save part of the poison though. It's interesting, does a fair bit to make poison more useful without worrying about stacking the DC to the heavens, and probably fine as a minor de-buff rider but it's a large departure. I'm not comfortable with it yet basically, though I suspect it's not a big deal.

There's some really confusing terminology in here though, and the order that things are listed in is confusing. For example, the "secondary" effect always happens when you've been exposed to a poison, and you get saves against the "initial" effect. Huh? The "heightened" effect sort of makes sense, but it doesn't suggest "what happens if you suffer additional doses" on its own. And it falls in-between two things that happen on a single dose. So I'd propose a change to the following order and terminology:

• Exposure Effect - what happens if you get exposed to the poison in a bad way.
• Initial Effect - what happens if you fail your fort save when you are exposed.
• Peak Effect - (time to reach peak effect) what happens if you fail your fort save after the onset time.
• Additional Dose Effect - what happens if you get an extra dose of the poison while suffering from one already. Also, clarity on whether it resets the exposure effect duration or not would be nice.

Wording could of course be tweaked, but something more evocative than the current terms and placed in order of effect would be helpful. Anyway, my 10sp. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 18:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I will make some clarification, some of the wording is vague because I accidentally closed my browser when making it, forcing me to redo it from scratch with a subpar wording. --Leziad 19:08, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

balmz likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.

Very nice concept, makes poison more useful, love the threshold idea, one thought, i recall in 2e and earlier and 4e and later they had a poison damage type which was gone in 3e oddly, could we readd that to the rules but as nonlethal damage? i recall that most things immune to poison are immune to nonlethal damage, the nonlethal damage is meant to also show that the poison is not good for your body.