Poison Saves

[Shaudius]

So I'm just starting to run through some stuff that has creatures that poison, and I want to make sure I'm understanding the rules involving poison correctly.

Suppose you have a creature who when it hits with its bite causes a DC 11 injury poison on the dexterity track with one save to cure. This has the entry 1 save per round for 6 rounds (the Kaukariki from Dead Suns 2 Alien Archives.)

The dexterity track is Healthy—Sluggish—Stiffened—Staggered—Immobile—Dead

So suppose I am hit by this creature, I fail my initial save, I am now sluggish.

On by following round, I attempt my save versus this disease and fail, I am now stiffened.

There are now two things that can happen if the creature hits me again:

1) It hits me again and I fail my save. Because poisons stack doses, I am now poisoned with 2 doses (and I take damage from this poisoning as well.) I am also now Staggered.

2) It hits me again and I make my save versus the second dosing. Am I now cured since I made my save versus a poison which requires 1 save to cure, or am I simply only once poisoned and not twice. I'm 99% sure its the former, but I just want to include this in the effort for completeness.

In the case of (1), now on to my next round, I am currently staggered, I have to now attempt 2 saves because I have two doses of poison inside me. "If a victim is exposed to multiple doses of the same poison, she must attempt a separate save for each dose and progresses to the next state on the poison track with each failed save."

Suppose I make one of these saves and fail the other, am I cured and back to healthy? Or since I failed against one of the doses am I now Immobile, with one dose of poison inside of me.

All and all this seems really powerful, yes you can make the saves, but since creatures have such high attack rolls in Starfinder a group of even a couple creatures with a poison effect seems incredibly deadly due to its tracking nature and poison dose stacking (much more deadly than disease which seems to not stack doses.)

[Metaphysician]

IIRC, you track each poisoning separately, so saving versus a new dose doesn't cure you, it just ends the effect of the second dose.

Yes, this means poison is nasty. Try not to fail poison saves, and have medical care available.

[Noven]

Yeah, poison is brutal.

[rook1138]

when planning my operative, I saw the "inoculated" exploit and was like "eh"
then i trekked through the jungle and ran in to murder monkeys.
yeah, that was my 4th lvl exploit.

As for the initial question, it sounds like 1) is correct

pg 415
"If a victim is exposed to multiple doses of the same poison, she must attempt a separate save for each dose and progresses to the next state on the poison track with each failed save."

so RAW, if you're hit with the same poison enough times in a single round, you could die in that round, when you or an ally haven't had time to do anything. which sucks and seems a little OP. (but, also sorta makes sense if you've been injected with a liter of poison over 4.2 seconds...). I may house rule this a little, but not 100% sure how.

[Metaphysician]

I imagine if your injected with that many doses of poison in a single round, the HP damage would be a bigger concern. After all, you take that damage regardless of a successful save.

Seriously, don't get swarmed by poisonous critters. And for GMs, don't throw giant swarms of poisonous critters at PCs.

[jozh]

jozh casts raise thread.

Poison has been sticking in my brain recently, and so I jumped into the book, but I still have questions. Perhaps this has already been discussed to death elsewhere, but my search efforts only revealed this thread to me.

Shaudius wrote:

Suppose I make one of these saves and fail the other, am I cured and back to healthy? Or since I failed against one of the doses am I now Immobile, with one dose of poison inside of me.

For this part of your post, I think that you are now immobile. Even if you had made both saving throws, I think you'd still be at staggered, and not back to healthy. Here's why I think that (emphasis added).

Core Rulebook wrote:

Curing an Affliction: <snip> Poisons and drugs work differently—fulfilling the cure condition (or reaching the end of a poison’s duration) removes a poison from the victim’s system, but she remains at the same step on the track and recovers gradually. For every day of bed rest (or two nights of normal rest), a victim moves one step toward healthy. This rate of recovery is doubled by successful Medicine checks (see Long-Term Care on page 143), though tenacious poisons might require a longer recovery period.

Thoughts?

[trollbill]

Yes. This was a major pain for the PCs when running part 2 of Dead Suns. Poison in Starfinder seems exceptionally harsh against PC, especially considering the rest of the system isn't. One of the bigger problems is the high Attack bonuses most monsters have. In most SF battles, the high PC HP/SP and the high monster attack bonuses tend to wash. But not when it comes to poison. Especially considering the party doesn't have easy access to Remove Affliction until level 7. Poison doesn't just lay low PCs for a few encounters. It can lay them low for days. Quite frankly I am hoping they errata the Curing an Affliction section of the rules for poisons and drugs.