I want to make sure I am running this correctly:
I have a (1st level) character who was bitten by a giant viper and critically failed her saving throw. She takes 1d6 poison damage and gains the drained 1 condition.
No problem.
Next round, she critically fails the save again. There is no lower stage of poison, so she repeats stage 2. This means she takes the damage again, and drops to drained 2 correct? She failed her third save as well, which should drop her to drained 3? Now she has to critically save or make 2 consecutive saves (at a -3, ouch!) to stop the poison?
The rest of the party finally killed the snake, so they can attend her with medicine checks, but she only had a +4 to fort saves to begin with, so she is still in big trouble. She has been getting healed the last two rounds to keep her on her feat, but she is probably going to drop next round, even is she makes a regular save.
When she does go down, the drained effect does nothing the dying flat check, but taking the ongoing poison damage will add 1 to the dying value each round, right?
Learning take away: Giant Vipers quite lethal to 1st level characters.
Drained, like all conditions, doesn't stack unless explicitly mentioned.
Otherwise I think what you're saying looks correct.
whew!
That is a relief. I was confused by how to have 2nd tier happen again, but it makes sense that it would just reassert the drained condition if the character had received a casting of restoration and the caster had chosen to target the condition instead of the toxin. It still a pretty lethal situation, but the character will be happy that it is not a -3!
I want to make sure I am running this correctly:
I have a (1st level) character who was bitten by a giant viper and critically failed her saving throw. She takes 1d6 poison damage and gains the drained 1 condition.
No problem.
Next round, she critically fails the save again. There is no lower stage of poison, so she repeats stage 2. This means she takes the damage again, and drops to drained 2 correct? She failed her third save as well, which should drop her to drained 3? Now she has to critically save or make 2 consecutive saves (at a -3, ouch!) to stop the poison?
The rest of the party finally killed the snake, so they can attend her with medicine checks, but she only had a +4 to fort saves to begin with, so she is still in big trouble. She has been getting healed the last two rounds to keep her on her feat, but she is probably going to drop next round, even is she makes a regular save.
When she does go down, the drained effect does nothing the dying flat check, but taking the ongoing poison damage will add 1 to the dying value each round, right?
Learning take away: Giant Vipers quite lethal to 1st level characters.
I don't think this is correct.
Conditions don't stack. She would stay at Drained 1.
As long as they keep healing her, she will recover completely after 6 rounds. It's already been 3 rounds, so she just has to whether another 3D6 poison damage at worst. She'll have to Rest 8 Hours to remove the Drained, but Drained 1 at 1st level is only 1 HP.
Giant Viper Venom (poison) Saving Throw DC 17 Fortitude; Maximum Duration 6 rounds; Stage 1 1d6 poison (1 round); Stage 2 1d6 poison and drained 1.