Poison?

[torilen]

Hmm - lots of good thoughts on the ruling of poison and damage here.
I must say, I like all of the ideas presented. Cyndi's is good...it is nice and simple. You either
have something to heal it now, or you take the damage as normal (am I reading that right?)

I like the original ruling, also - heal it with a anti venom or whatever, or wait until between
quests to heal it. Although, that adds a lot of undue pressure for the rest of the quest, as you'll
always be down that amount if you don't have the right potion to heal it during the quest.

What am I saying - my system does that too - you either have an anti-venom or a healer who can
cure poison, or you wait until after the quest when you would have access to it.
Ignore me - not thinking through what I type first.
(which would beg the question...do I know where the backspace button is?? hehehehe)

Dresden - I like your idea a lot - though it would kind of complicate things...but let me ask - does the hero make
that roll every round, or just the turn in which he is poisoned?
I do something similar, except I have the hero roll against their remaining Body Points...kind of an equivalent to
D&D's constitution check, sort of. If they don't make the roll, they take the damage stated in the quest notes.

[cynthialee]

Cyndi's is good...it is nice and simple. You either
have something to heal it now, or you take the damage as normal (am I reading that right?)

Yes.

[dresdendoll]

Dresden - I like your idea a lot - though it would kind of complicate things...but let me ask - does the hero make
that roll every round, or just the turn in which he is poisoned?
I do something similar, except I have the hero roll against their remaining Body Points...kind of an equivalent to
D&D's constitution check, sort of. If they don't make the roll, they take the damage stated in the quest notes.

It's not as complicated as it sounds, once the hero has been wounded I just tell them "You're poisoned, level X"

And yeah they roll against the poison damage at the beginning of each of their turns until cured. Poisonous monsters are a thing to be feared in my game.

[WittyDroog]

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I think the best way to implement poison is how some other RPGs have done in the past.

I'm introducing creatures and traps which have a "Poison" quality representing venom, toxins, disease, etc. For example a zombie might have "Poison 1". What this means is that when attacked by something with the poison quality it deals a minimum amount of damage equal to the poison quality regardless what is rolled in defence. To combat this, players may immediately drink an antidote (which given the heightened instances of poison I'm lowering the cost of antidotes greatly so they can have a couple on them for this case, also that drinking an antidote will make the player immune to that monster/trap type for the duration of the combat encounter).

I never thought of this to specifically deal with this issue, it was originally thought up as a way to differentiate Undead more from other monster types.

[GimmeYerGold]

Glad this topic was presented! I'm considering if it's worth keeping the "poison" type of traps and their associated potions, quills, etc. for the sake of the flavor, or if simplifies things to just resort back to standard body damage, and remove those extra cards and items from the decks.

Another option to differentiate poison damage I've tried is to have poison subtract mind points instead of body points, and the anti-poison items restore mind points...

I've done this in some quests, and when a mind point-subtracting trap is sprung, and I tell the hero to subtract mind point damage, they're relieved! Like it's no big deal. If there's not a chaos spellcaster lurking around who preys on low mind points, then I guess it's not a problem for them, but if there is...

[Goblin-King]

Re-reading this old topic, I'm thinking the best way to explain the point of poison is that it's something that lowers you max BP.
A couple of poison damage can severely cripple a hero more than just regular damage.
The dwarf who normally has 7 BP but now only has 5 due to poison, will have to be at a very risky 1 BP to fully gain the benefits of a healing potion or spell.
That's a big deal in my opinion.

[mitchiemasha]

I now have a vision of a random skeleton hand coming out of a chest wielding an axe... HMMMM!

I like the idea of, have the antidote now or take the damage, this makes real world sense. Other ideas overdo it. As for standard HQ rules, i'm definitely with Goblin king, the idea didn't exist til KK so the earlier poision isn't... or, Daedalus, that particular poison is susceptible to standard healing effects.

During a Quest, the Body-Point damage from
a poisoned needle or poisoned dart may only
be healed by Venom Antidote. Otherwise
Body Point damage from poison is restored
between Quests.

Yes to that.

Any kind of losing BP per turn until healed is going to be way too tragic for Heroes such as the wizard.

[SirRick]

I like Goblin-King's idea as well for poison. I think when i start a game again i will implement this idea. The temporary reduced max BP will give heroes a reason keep a few anit-poison quills and antidote potions on hand if they dont want to wait till the end of the quest to be fully healed. Its another thing for very advanced heroes to spend their money on too.

[Redav]

In Kellar's Keep, Quest 4.... There's a chest which has a poison dart in it.

This chest is trapped with a poison dart. If a Hero searches for treasure before the trap has been disarmed, he will lose 2 Body Points.

So, if someone has the Venom Antidote, they can heal it. But what about if they don't? How do you rule on this? I'm inclined to say it's not healable until the potion is used, but there's no rule that I've found for the difference between healing damage and healing poison damage.

Is the Venom Antidote part of the vanilla KK? Base HQ doesn't strike me as a game detailed enough to worry about poison. I'd expect (I don't have the quest book at hand) it mentions poison to simply explain why this dart trap causes twice as much damage as usual.

[slev]

This could be quite easy to track is you use "wound" markers. Give them out as damage is inflicted. Poisn Wound markers are a different colour. They can only be healed with anti-poison. This actually allows the poison to be healed later in the quest too, but only with the right type of healing.

Alternatively, you could go with Descent 1st ed's system, and give Wound markers AND Poison markers at the same time. Healing takes away Poison markers first, making it harder to heal poison, but poison in of itself is unlikley to kill you.

As for me, I just have poison as an additional damage effect (along with heat and cold) which some figures are more or less suseptable to and which some effects are better or worse at preventing.