Resolving poisons with primary and secondary effects

[Wolf Munroe]

Ok, I don't know if this has been asked before. I looked at the first dozen or so results for poison and didn't see it so here goes:

When applying a poison, I get that additional doses add to the DC and the duration of the effect, but how does it work if the poison has a different primary and secondary effect?

Take for instance shadow essence.
injury DC 17 1/rd. for 6 rds, 1 Str drain/1d2 Str, 1 save, 250 gp

Now I have an NPC hit a PC with a dart coated in shadow essence.
He fails his DC 17 save so he takes 1 Str drain as the primary effect.

On the next round:
The character fails his save, he's still poisoned and takes 1d2 Str damage. (Does he make the save on his turns or the creature's turns? I assume at the start of his turns.)

Then he gets hit with shadow essence again. He fails his DC 17 save again so the DC of the poison increases to 19 and the duration increases to 9 rounds (8 remaining). Does he also take 1 Str drain as a primary effect of the second dose, or does only the first dose have a primary effect?

[Wolf Munroe]

So, how should primary effects be handled on subsequent doses of poison?

[Shadowlord]

All the effects of a second dose of the same poison are pretty spelled out. A second round of primary effects is not listed. I would say only the first dose has a primary effect.

[Wolf Munroe]

Shadowlord wrote:

All the effects of a second dose of the same poison are pretty spelled out. A second round of primary effects is not listed. I would say only the first dose has a primary effect.

Thanks.

That makes sense.

It will be easier on my players this way than how I was thinking I should do it.

[Darthslash]

On the second round, when he gets hit again by shadow essence, his save for that dose of poison would be DC 19, because he is already suffering from 1 dose of poison. If he fails this save, his save to cure is DC 19 like you wrote. But if he happened to make this save from the second dose of poison, then his cure DC would go back to DC 17.

Anytime your affected by poison, and you get hit with more, you add +2 to the save DC to resist that dosing of poison.