Poison Playtest Stumbling and Questions

[Archade]

Hi guys,

So last night, my underwater player characters fought the dreaded silt eels, which had bites with poison, doing DC 11 1d6/1d6 Constitution. So, I attempted my best to adapt it to Pathfinder poison rules. After the session, I re-read the poison rules, and it seems I may have mis-run it, so I have questions for clarification.

1) I did the silt eel poison as DC 11, 1 Con (6 rounds). Is that a fair conversion?

2) I re-read the poison rules, and in Pathfinder Alpha 3 it says Cure (1 save). Does that mean if a character makes the first save, the poison is done, and if they fail their first save, they take 1 point of Con damage, and must save again next round? I didn't do this, and made them make all 6 saves, which was pretty nasty.

At the end of combat, there were 4 rounds of poison left. So I went around the table and asked for 4 saves -- let me tell you, the 4 saves even at DC 11 were potent, and a number of characters lost a point or two of Con. What has everyone else found from the round-by-round saves?

[hogarth]

From the document:
"With most afflictions, if a number of saving throws are made consecutively, the affliction is removed and no further saves are necessary."

So for the poison, one (consecutive) save is enough to cure the affliction.

[JoelF847]

1) I think that's a fair conversion. Most of the poisons in alpha seem to use 1 less than the maximum, so that 1d6 would become 5 saves for 1 each. I'm not 100% sure why that is, but don't think using 6 saves would be a problem, especially since you do stop making saves after you make one.

As for poison in play, the one time it's come up for me so far was great - in this case because one of the characters drank a poisoned drink, and it led to several rounds of everyone else scrambling around trying to figure out what had happened and what to do about it, instead of 1 round of some ability damage followed by a 1 minute break - the tension was high until a save was finally made, and I think the players figured out that having poison remedies (neutralize poison and antitoxin) would now be a good idea.

[Archade]

Yes, antitoxin is becoming important with these new rules ...

[Denmark]

Since poison is being fixed up in Pathfinder, perhaps some dosage clarification could be given?

I mean, let's say I have ten archers with poisoned arrows. If they all hit with the same poison, is that ten poisonings? With ten saves per round, tracking each poisoning? Now, if ten arrows with the same poison doesn't multiply the damage or saves, how about ten arrows where each arrow has a different poison? That would pretty clearly require tracking ten different poisons, right? One poison doesn't push out another, I wouldn't think.

And then here's another problem: a dose is a dose, right? But shouldn't it take less to poison a small creature, and more to poison a large creature? Does it really take the same amount of poison to coat a halfling's dagger and to coat a titan's longsword?

Have these matters already been dealt with elsewhere such that we can just adopt an existing solution?

[Rynthief]

As for multiple hits from the same poison, I have ruled in the past that each additional dose adds +2 to the DC to resist the poison. This ended up working really well with the Drow sleep poison in question, not sure how well it would work with damaging poisons.

As a playtest note, I really like the new affliction rules but as written they seem to be a little unclear. I recently converted over the Yethazmari from PF#5 (I think) and just had it do the normal damage. Maybe a conversion guide or a breakdown of the difference between the three types.

Ryn, who likes that poison and disease are now scary

[Ixancoatl]

Finally! Poison that should scare the crap out of everyone! I mean, it's *poison* for pete's sake!

lol

And yes, based on my readings of PFRPG poison rules, your conversion and assumptions seem accurate.

[Denmark]

I've considered the +2 as well. I think that that might actually be the best way to deal with it.

That also makes it fairly easy to handle large creatures and weapons. Poison can be doubled or quadrupled up on larger implements. As long as the weapon and the target are larger, you get +2 on the DC (so cloud giants use up large quantities of poison on their blades, but they also exact much higher DCs upon their targets).

Also, how about letting a single dose cover two blades at a -2 on each? If you hit with both, the +2 returns the dose to its original strength. Thus, a tiny fey that gets some poison off a human can make it go further, although with less effect.

If proposing a rule, I'd run it like this:

Denmark wrote:

When suffering from more than one dose of the same poison, add +2 to the DC of the weakest poison dose for each additional dose if the result is greater than the strongest dose. Otherwise ignore the lesser doses.

For example, if you are bitten by three medium monstrous spiders (DC 12), the DC for the poison is 16. If a medium (DC 12) and a huge (DC 16) monstrous spider bite, the DC remains at 16, because 12 + 2 is not greater. If, however, three medium (DC 12) and a huge (DC 16) monstrous spider bite, the DC is 18.

The implements of a creature larger than medium can hold twice as many doses per category. Large implements hold two doses, huge implements hold four doses, and so forth.

Thoughts? My rules writing definitely needs to be worked on . . .