Poison: an anomaly in elements

[Therem Harth]

On a related note, do potions of salt water still cure poisoning? I know this is a fantasy game, but that totally doesn't make sense.

[Derakon]

I really liked the suggestion that high poison counters should have a chance each turn of confusing, stunning, blinding, causing hallucinations, or inducing vomiting. I'd much prefer that over just doing more damage.

[Twilight]

On a related note, do potions of salt water still cure poisoning? I know this is a fantasy game, but that totally doesn't make sense.

Well - the logic, as you probably know, was that salt water induces vomiting up the poison, but OTOH almost all poisoning is administered in other ways in angband (breath, wounds ...).

[Timo Pietilä]

Gas could be the damage type with poison being the associated status effect. rGas reduces damage from gas breaths and prevents being poisoned from them. rPoison prevents being poisoned from any source (perhaps you could introduce more poison bolts from monsters as well as stinking cloud).

You could call that "breathe poison gas" instead of just "breathe poison". Inhaling and just being exposed to poisonous gas hurts immediately and effect lasts for some duration.

Problem with "poison" is reality. We all know what "poison" is and that it isn't any single thing. Some are instantly fatal or affect severely fast, some are slow, some are easy to cure, some nearly impossible to cure. Some affect thru skin, some need to be ingested, some inhaled, some need to get in bloodstream etc. Nothing really fits in Angband.

Resistant to one poison doesn't really mean that you resist all poisons.

[EpicMan]

How about changing confusion breaths to psionics, a kind of mind zap that hurts you and confuses you. Of course, we already have mind blast (or is that not in V?), so maybe that is too similar.

[Therem Harth]

Problem with "poison" is reality. We all know what "poison" is and that it isn't any single thing. Some are instantly fatal or affect severely fast, some are slow, some are easy to cure, some nearly impossible to cure. Some affect thru skin, some need to be ingested, some inhaled, some need to get in bloodstream etc. Nothing really fits in Angband.

Hmm...

Welcome to Duneband: the only variant with 50 different kinds of poison!

How about changing confusion breaths to psionics, a kind of mind zap that hurts you and confuses you. Of course, we already have mind blast (or is that not in V?), so maybe that is too similar.

Which could have the interesting side effect of causing temporary ESP. That'd be cool.

[Chud]

How about changing poison so that instead of wearing off, it gets worse over time, a bit like hunger?

- C*W does not cure it, but buys you time by healing
- At first it does no damage, just prevents regeneration, then after awhile it does 1HP every several turns, gradually accelerating if left untreated, until eventually it kills you if you can't cure it.

Not so much because this reflects how real poisons actually work (it doesn't, of course, for the vast majority of them), but just because it might be entertaining. Or call it something else if it's too incongruous a behavior for poison... which variant is it that has slime infections? Just a passing idea...

[MKula]

I agree that poison as a whole needs some work.

I like the idea of a poison counter not unlike cuts, with more poison increasing the counter, which then increases the dmg/turn.

I always imagined the initial damage caused by a poison to be relatively weak; the real problem is the after-effects (i.e. the theoretical poison counter). How about this:

- Getting hit by a poison attack causes damage with an extremely low damage cap but adds to the poison counter. This damage should be un-resistable (or maybe 2/3 with rPois?).
- Ignoring other factors for now, the poison counter doesn't decrease with time, but rather increases, meaning it progressively gets worse. The rate at which the counter increases depends on how severe the poison is. So, the worse the poison, the worse it gets, and faster.
-Every turn you get a save to naturally resist the poison/reduce the counter/etc. With rPois, you get a better save/2 saves per turn/etc.

This way, like was mentioned before, the poison gets worse over time. Also, like was mentioned before, spells like Slow Poison become quite useful by having an effect quite visible to the player.

[dos350]

hi chud, i like your idea! hooo!~ it is about the only good change idea ive heard of im sorry, but if that was to be how poison was, please~ not like that for all poison!! only serious stuff?!! but is good idea, it would be adding intensity to game, ee!

[Sirridan]

!Neutralize poison, Mushrooms of purging, !salt water all become more useful if chud or MKula's suggestions come into play...

Right now they aren't so great, honestly I chuck them after IDing, I've never had to carry neutralize poison because I had !ccw, there are maybe 3 or 4 instances where If I happened to have or see one I'd drink it just so I don't waste CCW, but I never devoted a slot to it.

[dos350]

on another note one time i was poisoned heavily on a lvl about 20 mage and was out of all potions, i escaped to stair and was on 0 hp when i remembered cure poison spell, ee!

[EpicMan]

Not to beat a long-dead horse, but keep in mind casters have a neutralize poison spell, so after the early game this will only affect warriors (or is NP only a priest/paladin spell? In that case it's probably ok).

The problem with most minigame elements in Angband (food, id, etc) is that they are designed to make certain objects desirable or required, and magic in Angband replaces most types of consumables. One of the good aspects of ID-by-use is that it does not require everything to be IDed using a scroll,

[MKula]

Not to beat a long-dead horse, but keep in mind casters have a neutralize poison spell, so after the early game this will only affect warriors (or is NP only a priest/paladin spell? In that case it's probably ok).

Well then if this line of poison changes were to be implemented, it would appear the Neutralize Poison spell (yes, mages have it too) would need some tweaks of its own.
Perhaps increase its level requirements (or remove the spell completely) to keep poison at least semi-dangerous until deeper levels?

[Estie]

1. Whatever side effects poison might be given, they will only matter untill the resistance is covered by equipment.

2. Poison resistance already is among the top priority resists (if not the top resist) and usually gets covered asap, even at the cost of a ring slot.

So is there a point in inflating the poison-side-effect minigame ?

[buzzkill]

So is there a point in inflating the poison-side-effect minigame ?

Yes. Angband is but a series of parallel mini-games. It's the mini-games that make the whole concept interesting, and even that's a stretch at times.

Poison as a breath attack works (as well as any), currently poison as a status effect doesn't.

After a little thinking I came up with (inspired by ideas already posted here)...

1. Split current poison behavior into two statuses, 'Poisoning' and 'Illness'.
2. 'Illness' would occupy the low end of the poison counter (0-60) and cause 3, 2 or 1 HP damage/turn and will eventually go away on it's own within 30 turns. Max damage from (a single bout of maximum) Illness = 60 HP damage.
3. 'Poisoning' would occupy the higher end of the scale (60+), and once achieved, it would continue to add to itself. Once 'Poisoned' you will continue to take ever increasing HP damage/turn (incrementing +1/10 turns) until the 'Poisoning' is reduced to an 'Illness', cured entirely, or results in death.

A. I'm hoping that this scheme will result in 'Illness' being an early/mid game problem with things almost as usual.
B. Being 'Poisoned' should be a mid/late game problem, when character are better able to deal with it.

As usual, I'm not real sure about the specific numbers, but I think the concept is fairly good.

In any case, if nothing else, I think that early game poison could use a little boost.