During the time when I was subscriber to Dragon, there was an article entitled "Taking the Sting Out of Poison." Written by Chris Landsea, it appeared in issue #84 (January 1984) and was itself something of a follow-up to a previous article "Poison: From AA to XX" by Charles Sagui. Sagui's article appeared in issue #32 (December 1979), which was before I was even aware of the existence of Dragon, let alone a regular reader. However, I was nevertheless familiar with it, because it had been reprinted in Best of Dragon Vol. II. As I mentioned recently, I was a huge fan of Best of Dragon and can still remember many of the articles included in these volumes, including Sagui's.
I bring this up as a bit of background to an inchoate thought I've been having lately regarding poison in Dungeons & Dragons. Now, I've never really had a problem with save or die mechanics and have, in fact, defended them in the past. I'm still not opposed to them in principle, but I've been thinking a lot about hit points and what they're supposed to represent in D&D. If we are supposed to believe, as Gary Gygax suggests in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, that only a small portion of a character's hit point total represents his "actual ability to withstand physical punishment" with the rest being a measure of his "skill in combat ... "sixth sense" ... sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection," why does the character's ability to survive most poisons come down to a single roll of the dice? Would it not, in keeping with the Gygaxian understanding of hit points, make more sense if poison dealt damage and a saving throw, if used at all, served to mitigate the amount of the damage?
As I thought about this more, I dimly remembered that the the much-beloved D&D Rules Cyclopedia included the following optional way of dealing with poison:
I don't know; I'm still pondering this. No doubt some will think I'm going soft in my old age and perhaps that's true. I can only say that I've been spending more time reading other RPGs roughly contemporaneous with D&D and AD&D, like Gamma World and RuneQuest, among others, and looking at how they handle deadly effects like poison. There's quite a range of approaches and some of them strike me as worthy of serious consideration. That's in addition to my aforementioned questions about the interface between such effects, hit points, and saving throws. As always, I appreciate hearing others' thoughts on this matter.
Well, this is interesting timing. I have just completed the first draft of an adventure packed full of monsters with poison attacks. Having so many with save-or-die attacks does seem a bit brutal, and so I wonder if the damage is more suitable. Something to consider, thanks!
ReplyDeleteAs I recall from that late Basic module B10, the move is more toward poison doing damage instead of a "save or die" effect.
ReplyDeleteWhile you can debate the value of pursuing realism in a fantasy game, the plain fact is that very few real-world animals have venoms that can kill a human being with any speed, if at all. There are more creatures that can inject venom that will be lethal over time without treatment, and many that could kill you if you received multiple doses but will only make you ill otherwise. The vast majority of poisonous animals will make a healthy adult human nauseated and weak, or half-crippled with pain, but they won't kill - and certainly not in the somewhat variable length of a D&D combat round.
ReplyDeleteI'd contend that most animal venom shouldn't do damage at all. It should apply a significant penalty to all activities (like, say, a 50% chance of failing at anything that requires a roll, tested separately from the normal chance of success). Some might even render the victim completely helpless (which is close to being dead in practical terms) for some duration and handicapped for some time thereafter. Being repeatedly bitten/stung makes venoms more dangerous, and some animal venoms can be refined into more dangerous forms.
Now, poisons on traps made by sapient creatures are likely to be as lethal as they can make them, and they'll likely try to use ones that have long "shelf lives" to minimize the need for trap upkeep. Similarly, fantastic creatures with reputations for being deadly poisonous are much more likely to be flat-out lethal or do HP damage that can easily kill a normal man (but perhaps not a hero). But normal-ish critters? Not so much, with rare (and often well-known) exceptions.
Also note that creatures that use poison as a defense rather than solely as a hunting tool are often vividly colored to discourage predation. That's true even of some venomous predators (eg coral snakes) - and some non-poisonous creatures will evolve to mimic that kind of coloration.
I agree with this approach, less because of realism than because dealing with an incapacitated PC is more interesting than dealing with a dead one.
DeleteYou can download my take with Majestic Wilderlands Herbs and Potions. All the poisons are nuanced in their effects including the deadliest.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MW%20Herbs%20and%20Potions%20Rev_02.pdf
I've been using the RC rule ever since I first read it, I think Basic Fantasy by Chris Gonnermann does the same, or uses a similar rule.
ReplyDeletePoison is still very, very scary.
I will say that I like and have used the Rules Cyclopedia variant rule for poison, but I also like to add a bit of a complicating twist: depending on the nature of the source, poison comes in two varieties, fast-acting and slow-acting. The fast-acting poison works as described in the RC, inflicting 1d6 damage per monster hit die (or trap dungeon level or whatever), save for half, all in one fell swoop, either immediately or after some short onset time (probably measured in rounds or minutes).
ReplyDeleteSlow acting poison, meanwhile, inflicts 1d10 points of damage per monster hit die or dungeon level of the source, but gradually, at a pace of 1d10 points per turn or perhaps even hour (again, save for half). The greater damage potential is thus balanced out by the increased opportunity on the part of players to find some way to slow or halt the poison.
I've been thinking about this a bit, especially in regard to combat. If extra hp do represent luck and agility and skill, you would think that having a high dex or wis would give you extra hit points to represent skill and luck, rather than change your armor class. But then, falling damage starts to make a lot less sense (not that it ever made a lot of sense!)
ReplyDeleteJames, thank you for the passage from the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. I wonder if something like that doesn't go all the way back to this rather hard to understand passage about saving throws from pp. 20-21 of the Men & Magic booklet in the 1974 D&D boxed set:
ReplyDelete"Scoring the total indicated above (or scoring higher) means the weapon has no effect (death ray, polymorph, paralization, stone, or spell) or one-half effect (poison scoring one-half of the total possible hit damage and dragon's breath scoring one-half of its full damage)."
Judges Guild used a damage system, but it was not based on hit dice, it was merely an increasing number of points per round based on the lethality of the creature. The most lethal was the purple worm venom, which dealt 9 points of damage each round for 9 rounds, half if you made your save (halve the damage, not the time). The effects were delayed 9 to 0 rounds of "onset time." You could also, if the save was failed, suffer from half actions, illness, paralyzation, or coma.
ReplyDeleteThere was also an intermediate article on poisons in Dragon #59, "Poison: The Toxins of Cerilon", by Larry DiTillio—more well-known for his contributions to Chaosium games and Different Worlds magazine—which detailed the poisons of the author's campaign setting. It was one of a couple of articles that DiTillio wrote detailing elements of his setting, the other being "The Glyphs of Cerilon" from issue #50, covering various Glyphs of Warding from the setting. Whether either or both of the Land Squid from issue #39's Dragon's Bestiary or the adventure "Chagmat" in issue #63 are from his setting is an open question, though I'd imagine they probably were.
ReplyDeleteI am reading "The Toxins of Cerilon" now, actually. I never read it back in the day, since it came out just slightly before I began to read Dragon.
DeleteOf the three, I think that I like "Taking the Sting…" best, but all of them usefully point toward a setting-specific set of poisons and how to rate them in game terms, if the DM wasn't happy with the set in the DMG.
DeleteRules Cyclopedia is awesome! Except for the art. But everything else about it is top notch... you could do worse than using it as the basis for a D&D campaign.
ReplyDeleteI think that Save or Die is reasonable for poison from giant creatures... if there's a scorpion the size of an elephant then I probably don't want to get stung by that thing. If you do 1d6 poison damage per HD that seems fine too (the bigger the monster, the worse the poison since there's more of it) but why save for half in that instance? I say it's either/or: you Save vs Poison or die, or you take d6/HD poison damage. After all, the DM could roll all 1s on the damage dice (the stinger over-penetrated and got less poison in you).
How about a hybrid system?
ReplyDelete1d6 poison damage per hit die of monster (save for half damage), but if you miss your save with a roll of "1" then death. A 5% chance of death is just enough to make you sweat that dice roll..
There's at least a couple of snakes in Australia where I live (King Brown & various Taipan species) that can (not always, but can) kill within 30-45 minutes.
ReplyDeleteCollapse comes well before that, in as little as 2 minutes. Then you just lay there incapacitated & dying for a while.
So it's always seemed ok to me how poison works in D&D & giant spiders killing in a combat round or two.
A lot of things do HP dmg. There's a good reason so many people are freaked out by snakes, & wasps etc. PC's should be too!
I like the idea of poison damage being tracked separately like subdual damage if you go the d6/HD route. But what about the other rules like slow poison & neutralize poison? Slow poison only makes sense if you play by the 2d6 rounds onset and 2 turns of coma before death rules.
ReplyDeleteI find "save for half damage" problematic as it often means that low-level characters have almost no chance.
ReplyDeleteI like poison to be a scary save-or-die effect -- and if it's telegraphed by a creature's coloration, then the players can decide what to do about it...
I agree, having a successful save still lead to death due to half damage still being more than enough to kill you sounds disappointing. Maybe in addition to halving damage, a successful save also limits damage so at least 1 hp remains?
DeletePoison use by monsters is a great equalizer. It keep even high-level characters on their toes. It's a mistake to eliminate lethal poison from the game IMO, but sometimes less poisonous effects (just damage) are appropriate.
ReplyDeleteI always winged it as "save vs no/or little damage" as opposed to half damage, and any poison that would outright kill you, I would still roll 1d100 points of damage and would be on the floor writhing in pain for a number of rounds.
ReplyDeleteThese days, I'm a bit more likely to defer periodically to my d100 table for this: Vile Venoms & Terrible Toxins. Occasionally a "race against time" or "search for a cure" is more interesting than instant death or mundane damage.
ReplyDeleteI liked / used hp damage for poisons, but a save was for half damage capped at half the characters hp. If a low level character made his save having him drop dead anyway always struck me as a bit unfair.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. If anything is save or die in D&D, it should be falling damage. Headfirst onto pointy rocks is the great equalizer. Yet that is rarely or never a save-or-die effect.
ReplyDeleteI like the way D&D 3E handles poison. It does ability damage to the character that can cause all sorts of difficulties including death. It gives a tangible effect to the poison but it is not usually lethal. Although, it can be.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...full week since this post, think that's the longest I've ever seen here without anything new. You all right, James?
ReplyDeleteI'm fine, just taking some time off after a very intensely stressful start to the week that's left me a bit exhausted. Barring another unforeseen event, I should resume posts next week.
DeleteStress relief is more important than blogging, to be sure. Stay well.
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