Poison: an anomaly in elements

[Derakon]

Any thoughts on the "poison randomly causes other status ailments" approach? I thought that far more interesting than just damage over time, myself.

[Timo Pietilä]

Any thoughts on the "poison randomly causes other status ailments" approach? I thought that far more interesting than just damage over time, myself.

I think poison should affect your stats. Reducing STR and maybe INT/WIS/CON.

[dos350]

please no, chud idea was the real thing, there is already stat drain ee~~ but im not a fanatic of it please it isnt really needing change

[Chud]

Any thoughts on the "poison randomly causes other status ailments" approach? I thought that far more interesting than just damage over time, myself.

I could get behind that, certainly. Depends on the details, of course, but there are some interesting possibilities. Nausea makes you unable to eat despite being hungry? -STR is an easy one... hallucination, periodically and of short duration, at least initially? I'm just tossing things out as they come to mind here.

Or, a variation on the food idea - you can eat, but lose your lunch regularly, so you periodically drop directly to "weak from hunger". -DEX or -CON goes along with the -STR idea. Maybe weakened immune system renders you extra vulnerable to all molds (spores)?

There are lots of possibilities.

[Derakon]

Here's my thoughts, worked out in pseudocode form:

if randint(200) < poison timer:
  switch (randint(max value below)):
    case 0, 1, 2:
      increase hallucination timer by 10 + d10
    case 3, 4, 5:
      increase confusion timer by d5
    case 6, 7, 8: 
      increase blindness timer by d5
    case 9, 10, 11:
      increase poison timer by 10
    case 11, 12:
      increase stun timer by 20
    case 13: 
      increase paralysis timer by 2
    case 14:
      drain STR, DEX, or CON by 1
    case 15: 
      induce vomiting

Obviously probabilities can be tweaked here, both for deciding whether or not to trigger an effect and deciding which effect to use. If I have some time tomorrow I'll try implementing this for real; shouldn't be too hard. Just shoehorn it in where the player takes damage over time from poison.

[dos350]

heres my thoughts in pseudocode form:

if (psnd==1){

hp--;

if (curepoison()) {psnd=0;}

}

//eeee

[MKula]

I'm just a little worried here about taking the debilitating effects of poison too far. Poison, stunning, conf, stat drain, blindness, paralysis, etc? There are quite a few uniques in the upper dungeon levels that do far less...

I might consider limiting it a bit. Maybe keep it to just hallu, blind, vomiting and para (and of course +poison timer).

[Derakon]

Another thing we could do is limit the options available based on the value of the poison timer. If your timer is less than 10 you get no effects, if it's less than 20 then you can hallucinate but nothing else, etc. So the nastier effects would only show up if you were badly poisoned.

[MKula]

Another thing we could do is limit the options available based on the value of the poison timer. If your timer is less than 10 you get no effects, if it's less than 20 then you can hallucinate but nothing else, etc. So the nastier effects would only show up if you were badly poisoned.

Aha! Now we're talking! Realistic, implementable and cool!
And it clearly differentiates between a mild case of food poisoning (a few hallucinations sounds about plausible) vs downing a full cup of arsenic (cue the I.V. unit...).

[Nile]

Something needs done for sure. I can't remember my last character that died by a poison effect. IMO, poisonous jellies, worms, and molds at early levels should be far more deadly if you are not prepared to handle the poison. Off the top of my head, maybe something like this:

-Quadruple poison counter
-Make poison damage dependent, linear or logarithmic, on poison counter
-If the poison counter is higher than X, then your character is either slowed, hallucinates, or some other side effect with a linear dependence. Maybe to-hit reduction and spell failure increase, that seems to make sense.
-CCW no longer cures all poison, but only mitigates it. That way, you must spend more than one turn to cure it unless you have a more specific remedy.

[Estie]

Reading through the suggested side effects, all this makes me suspect that it is a plot to replace the high elf as best race with the kobold.

Are you aware that what you suggest is comparable in strength to time attacks ? And that time effects occur very rarely and are avoided like the plague by everyone, while poison is about the most common element, starting at level 1 ?

Again, why do you focus on making the most feared element even more fearsome. It wont break the game if 80% of all tactics are about avoiding it, but does it make it more interesting ?

Mirkwood spiders, poison hounds are well on my "stay away from" list if I dont have poison resistance. They are deadly, and thats because of their poison attack. Who calls it weak ?

Also take into account that some of your suggestions, while increasing the game difficulty for normal games by a tiny bit, would easily double it if not more for ironman games.

[Hariolor]

I rather agree with Estie on this one.

Also, am I the only one reading here who feels that halluc is way worse than blind?

CLW cures blindness - but you need serious firepower (or to find mushrooms of clarity early) to fix halluc.

I wouldn't mind poison causing blindness most of the time, as it seems realistic. Hallucination is a really rare effect (assuming you detect/avoid/disarm traps reliably), and should probably stay that way - it's annoying and dangerous.

[Derakon]

If you look at the separate thread I made for my implementation of "poison causes other status ailments", the only status ailments that poison can cause that last longer than 1 round are stunning (10 rounds) and...more poison. Everything else is a single-round effect, and I don't think it's at all unreasonable to cause hallucination for one turn even if you have no good way of curing hallucination. After all, it'll be gone next turn regardless of what you do, just so long as you don't roll up hallucination again when the game decides what the poison does to you.

I'd rather not see the concept berated for being too hard when it's the easily-tweaked numbers that are making it hard, not the underlying implementation. If my implementation had you getting hallucination for dozens of turns then it'd probably be too nasty. As it is it's mostly an annoyance and a good source of flavor.

[Hariolor]

If you look at the separate thread I made for my implementation of "poison causes other status ailments", the only status ailments that poison can cause that last longer than 1 round are stunning (10 rounds) and...more poison. Everything else is a single-round effect, and I don't think it's at all unreasonable to cause hallucination for one turn even if you have no good way of curing hallucination. After all, it'll be gone next turn regardless of what you do, just so long as you don't roll up hallucination again when the game decides what the poison does to you.

I'd rather not see the concept berated for being too hard when it's the easily-tweaked numbers that are making it hard, not the underlying implementation. If my implementation had you getting hallucination for dozens of turns then it'd probably be too nasty. As it is it's mostly an annoyance and a good source of flavor.

I should have been more clear, I was not trying to berate the concept, that's why I made the comment here and not in the other thread - I just personally feel like blindness is a better-balanced game effect than hallucination, and thematically makes more sense as an effect of poison (many creatures IRL use poison explicitly to cause blindness. Very few cause wild hallucinations, however). With regard to your probabilities in the OP on the other thread: I'd suggest 10% blind chance, with paralysis as next highest. Obviously opinions vary.

[Estie]

If you look at the separate thread I made for my implementation of "poison causes other status ailments", the only status ailments that poison can cause that last longer than 1 round are stunning (10 rounds) and...more poison. Everything else is a single-round effect, and I don't think it's at all unreasonable to cause hallucination for one turn even if you have no good way of curing hallucination. After all, it'll be gone next turn regardless of what you do, just so long as you don't roll up hallucination again when the game decides what the poison does to you.

I'd rather not see the concept berated for being too hard when it's the easily-tweaked numbers that are making it hard, not the underlying implementation. If my implementation had you getting hallucination for dozens of turns then it'd probably be too nasty. As it is it's mostly an annoyance and a good source of flavor.

What you suggest in the other thread - namely to remove the direct damage component - indeed makes the sideffect balanceable, though I wouldnt call that a "tweak". I was just trying to point out that the damage + suggested sideffect concept seems unbalanceable to me.