A new(?) approach to poisoning.

[buzzkill]

The current method of poisoning, as I understand it, is a simple counter. Being poisoned increases the counter. Every turn you take a little damage, the counter decreases, and then repeat until no longer poisoned or dead.

My recent NPP death due to a *massive* (by Vanilla standards) poisoning got me thinking and I came up with a new scheme for poisoning. Here it is. Not necessarily a Vanilla idea. Variant maintainers are welcome.

My change is relatively simple, shouldn't make poisoning any more or less deadly overall, shouldn't be terribly hard to implement, and has a bit more detail/flavor to it (also maybe a little more foggy/unpredictable for the player, but such is the nature of being poisoned).

I suggest scrapping the counter and giving poison a two new attributes, potency and strength (yeah, I know, not the best descriptors, but I wanted to move away from the concept of 'duration'). Now allow the character a saving throw vs poison every turn. A successful save could negate the effects of the poison for that turn only. The higher the potency of the poison, the harder it is to save successfully. The higher the strength of the poison, the more damage it inflicts each round. Then either reduce the potency or the strength of the poison with each successful saving throw or rely on a number of consecutive successful saving throws to end the abruptly end the poisoning. Badly failed saves could inflict additional damage.

I envisioned basing the saving throw on CON and rPois, but CHA or choosing a random stat once per game (cause CON is already highly valued) might be fun too. You would just have to figure out how resilient to poison you are (once per game).

The upside, as I see it, is that poisons can be more individual, more varied from one another, and different characters would have different reactions to the same poison. If you know your character has a weak save vs. poison, it would be wise to avoid it (and vice-versa).

The whole thing is still a raw idea, but I think it's got more potential than the current system, assuming I understand the current system. Comments and criticism are welcome.

[d_m]

The idea of having poisoning operate on two axis rather than one is definitely interesting. As a less drastic change I could imagine tracking strength and duration (with duration done as the current poison counter is) and basing strength on the initial damage of the poison attack, or monster HP or something.

Anyway, interesting thought.

[nppangband]

@Buzzkill - I checked the code. I thank you for uncovering a bug with mushrooms of blindness, and deeply apologize for the manner in which you found it. ID by use is supposed to be dangerous in NPP, but not this bad.
case SV_FOOD_BLINDNESS:
{
if (!p_ptr->state.resist_blind)
{
if (inc_timed(TMD_POISONED, rand_int(200) + 200, TRUE))
{
*ident = TRUE;
}

Mushrooms of poison only increase the counter 10 + d10, BTW.

[buzzkill]

@Buzzkill - I checked the code. I thank you for uncovering a bug with mushrooms of blindness, and deeply apologize for the manner in which you found it. ID by use is supposed to be dangerous in NPP, but not this bad.

Am I the only one who runs around eating un_ID'd mushrooms?

[Derakon]

Am I the only one who runs around eating un_ID'd mushrooms?

Yes.

Look at the NPP mushroom set: Poison, Blindness, Paranoia, Confusion, Hallucination, Paralysis, Weakness, Sickness, Stupidity, Naivety, Unhealth, Disease, Cure Poison, Cure Blindness, Cure Paranoia, Cure Confusion, Cure Serious Wounds, Restore Strength, Restore Constitution, Restoring.

The ones that are actually useful are also rather difficult to ID by use and/or not worth potentially wasting. Like in real life, don't eat a mushroom unless you know what it is!

[buzzkill]

Look at the NPP mushroom set: Poison, Blindness, Paranoia, Confusion, Hallucination, Paralysis, Weakness, Sickness, Stupidity, Naivety, Unhealth, Disease, Cure Poison, Cure Blindness, Cure Paranoia, Cure Confusion, Cure Serious Wounds, Restore Strength, Restore Constitution, Restoring.

This is why one (ideally) shouldn't source dive or use spoilers. Too much information.

[Derakon]

After something like fifteen years of playing this game, I have a pretty good idea of what the mushrooms are and know better than to try eating them. I figured that all out without using spoilers. Are you expecting me to simply forget everything about the game with each new character? Or to assume that NPPAngband's mushrooms are different when the first few that I find (and ID before using) are identical to the ones Vanilla's had up until very recently?

[fizzix]

After something like fifteen years of playing this game, I have a pretty good idea of what the mushrooms are and know better than to try eating them. I figured that all out without using spoilers. Are you expecting me to simply forget everything about the game with each new character? Or to assume that NPPAngband's mushrooms are different when the first few that I find (and ID before using) are identical to the ones Vanilla's had up until very recently?

Jeez, it's called role-playing.

If your character has a Wisdom of 3, you damned well better eat the unid'd mushrooms.

[Zyphyr]

Jeez, it's called role-playing.

If your character has a Wisdom of 3, you damned well better eat the unid'd mushrooms.

Only when you are hungry, and even then not if you are playing a race with primarily carnivorous tendencies with other foods available.

[Derakon]

Anyway, back to the original topic, I still like my idea of having poison cause one-turn status ailments instead of dealing damage. That seems far more interesting, not to mention plausible, than the tired old RPG trope of having it just do damage. Everything in the game does damage. Having a few mechanics that "hurt" you in other ways makes things more interesting.

[nppangband]

Anyway, back to the original topic, I still like my idea of having poison cause one-turn status ailments instead of dealing damage. That seems far more interesting, not to mention plausible, than the tired old RPG trope of having it just do damage. Everything in the game does damage. Having a few mechanics that "hurt" you in other ways makes things more interesting.

Do you mean things like poison could weaken or slow the player, or increase their spell failure rate, or reduce the number of blows they get from a weapon in combat?

[Derakon]

What I had written simply had a chance each turn of applying a random status ailment that lasted a single turn, with the selection of ailments depending on how badly poisoned the character was. I made a thread which has the patch. I didn't include slowing, but stunning increases the player's spell fail rate, and there is a (rare) chance for a physical stat to be drained. Directly changing the blows/round seems a bit weird to me.

[buzzkill]

BTW, what I outlined in this post was meant mainly to apply to ingested poisons (which would be expanded), not necessarily breath weapons.

Anyhow I was thinking some more today and came up with a plan that's even better. In short is will allow poison to act like poison. Without an antidote such as cure poison, or a highly poison resistant character, more powerful poisons will wreak havoc with you for a prolonged period of time, during which time a variety status ailments may be triggered, possible repeated vomiting, and variable HP loss. Also the possibility of the poison getting stronger rather than weaker over time (slow onset but still deadly without a cure or significant healing).

I going to try to flesh it out a little before I post it here, lest it get shot down prematurely.

[will_asher]

Anyhow I was thinking some more today and came up with a plan that's even better. In short is will allow poison to act like poison. Without an antidote such as cure poison, or a highly poison resistant character, more powerful poisons will wreak havoc with you for a prolonged period of time, during which time a variety status ailments may be triggered, possible repeated vomiting, and variable HP loss. Also the possibility of the poison getting stronger rather than weaker over time (slow onset but still deadly without a cure or significant healing).

I going to try to flesh it out a little before I post it here, lest it get shot down prematurely.

sounds promising so far.

BTW, what I outlined in this post was meant mainly to apply to ingested poisons (which would be expanded), not necessarily breath weapons.

I'm thinking of possibily separating poison into two things:

type1: "poison" from potions, mushrooms or melee from the bites of monsters such as a giant spider, viper or baslilsk. This would be the type of thing you are describing now.

type2: maybe call it "infection" and call the breath "toxic gas", from breath weapons, some other poisonous mosnters (imps, poison vines, poisonous hydras), and melee from monsters with poisoned weapons (assassin, Harowen). Probably would work like poison works currently.