Player poison

[njvack]

In a thread about Barachians:

So why don't you put a mild poison resistance trait, like: they can be poisoned but can't DIE from it. It stops at 1HP.

I got to thinking: why can the PC die from poison at all? It's really frustrating to wind up lethally poisoned and not have any !curing, and doesn't present any particular choices (unless you count remembering unusual tricks to temporarily gain HP as choices). And in the majority of fights where you *do* get poisoned, it's such a small HP tax that you just finish the fight and then rest a bit longer. So, what if:

* Player poison works much faster (eg, 5% of maxhp per turn per level of poison)
* Player poison is shorter duration
* Player poison will never directly kill you, but will leave you at 1HP.

So: getting poisoned is a big deal if and only if there are monsters around that can otherwise damage you.

I'm feeling like there's some important downside to this that I can't think of right now...?

[syringe]

Either you can't directly kill monsters with poison which is frustrating, or the player is distractingly inconsistent from monsters. Wouldn't your instincts be to heal wounds to keep from dying to poison? On the other hand, player/monster poisoning is wildly different anyway.

[njvack]

Yeah, I imagine player and monster poison would keep being very different.

[VeryAngryFelid]

So: getting poisoned is a big deal if and only if there are monsters around that can otherwise damage you.

I'm feeling like there's some important downside to this that I can't think of right now...?

This new poison system would be yet another great reason to lure monsters before fighting them.

[bel]

It seems to be a good idea. I can't think of any obvious drawbacks.

Most poisonous things are fast, so luring isn't much of a problem (or at least, it's less of a problem than normal). Naga monsters are the most important exception, though there's a lot of luring in Snake anyway, and Snake has a fairly high density of monsters, so perhaps it's ok.

Adders, Black Mambas and Spiny Frogs might need to be toned down a bit.

[Shard1697]

So: getting poisoned is a big deal if and only if there are monsters around that can otherwise damage you.

I'm feeling like there's some important downside to this that I can't think of right now...?

This new poison system would be yet another great reason to lure monsters before fighting them.

How would it be more of a reason to lure monsters than what we have now?

[Sprucery]

Currently, if you get lethally poisoned but win the fight, you quaff curing so you don't die from poison. Then you retreat maybe a bit to a safe spot to regen to full. With this new system you would retreat upstairs and wait it out there because you couldn't die from it. So in this situation you would retreat further and possibly wait longer.

That's the only downside I can think of and maybe it's not such a big deal. Possibly it's almost a non-issue if the new poisoning duration would be short enough, I don't know. And maybe you would quaff curing anyway because hanging around with 1 HP wouldn't feel very comfortable...

[Shard1697]

Pressing 5 once more in the rare situation where you are fully poisoned, but also win the fight and have a curing potion(so, basically just swamp dragons or green dracs sometimes) is not a big deal.

also, maybe remove curing potions if poison can no longer be lethal. That way with new non-lethal poison, adders will be more balanced, and lategame poison will actually matter more because you can't just quaff it away and maybe once in a blue moon that will matter in a fight. and then tarantulas will be awful to fight for everyone not just mummies which can accelerate the tarantula rework I believe in my heart of hearts to come one day

[njvack]

Two other alterations I could imagine to this scheme:

1: Poison damage works somewhat like flaying — when the poison wears off, you regain poisoned HP either immediately or very quickly (say, at the same rate you'd lose it with a level of poison). The game would need to track poison damage separately, and weird things might happen if you combine poison and flaying, so maybe this is too complicated.
2: Poison damage temporarily reduces maxhp, so you can't !HW your way out of it. Again, this might be too mechanically complicated.

[KoboldLord]

Let it work like straight-up torment, only on a delay of a few turns. If it would for some reason inconvenience you to lose half your hit points, then you can use the consumable to clear the status effect and avoid the damage. Outside of battle, tap 5 to handle it. In a challenging battle, it could possibly deal enough damage to be relevant. As a bonus, players can get accustomed to the torment mechanic earlier.

Player poison and monster poison being different is a non-issue, but most ways for players to inflict poison should probably also be removed for unrelated reasons.

[VeryAngryFelid]

How would it be more of a reason to lure monsters than what we have now?

Currently I don't lure adders, I throw things at them. With new system I would always lure them, I almost always die to their poison, not to their melee. Also in new system you can just equip a plate armour and laugh at the adder with its 6-16 max HP and 5 max damage (3 max damage actually, thanks to GDR).

[njvack]

Let it work like straight-up torment, only on a delay of a few turns. If it would for some reason inconvenience you to lose half your hit points, then you can use the consumable to clear the status effect and avoid the damage. Outside of battle, tap 5 to handle it. In a challenging battle, it could possibly deal enough damage to be relevant. As a bonus, players can get accustomed to the torment mechanic earlier.

I know I already thanked for this, but the more I think about it the more I like it.

[pseudopseudonymous]

some opposing arguments:

1. being lethally poisoned creates interesting emergency situations.

2. It makes poison scarier from RP/atmosphere perspective

3. This poison would be more dangerous in a random way. Whether or not another monster is present is something you can't generally control, and which it is tedious to control. This would encourage luring of every poison type monster to fight them alone.

4. annoyance factor of monster wandering in to kill you at 1hp is worse than annoyance factor of being lethally poisoned

[njvack]

Yeah, the things I like better about KL's idea are:

* Poison leaving you at 1HP is hard-ish to communicate, and there's very little in Crawl that works remotely like that (Pain and...?). Halving your HP is common and important to learn.
* Poison leaving you at 1HP means some jerk kobold can walk in and one-shot with a rock while you while you're resting off poison, which is dumb.

Being lethally poisoned doesn't normally create special emergencies, IMO. It just says "time to quaff curing" unless you don't have curing in which case there a few weird tricks you can know that can still save your life maybe.