Red poison a little strong?

[Baldu]

Had a game end today when a char with 78 hp quaff-id-ed a potion which turned out to be strong poison. It was the first time I quaffed one with no cure potion but I did have a wounds potion so figured I was safe id-ing my unknown potion since it was the only bad one left. Anyway, it ate through my 78 hp, natural regen and also the ~15hp from a heal wounds and I still had light red poison when I died. I guess I probably rolled a really high amount of poison damage on quaff but that seems like an immense amount of damage to still be red poisoned.

Weird that after all that time playing crawl it's the first time I notice just how much damage strong poison does but had to ask if a high end roll should really be this high.

This was on webtiles 0.11 .

[Davion Fuxa]

Sometimes poison does a little bit of damage and sometimes a lot. In your case you simple just got unlucky on how much damage it outputted on you.

Just a good reason to keep Cure Potions handy before you go around quaffing anything.

[crate]

Strong poison potions are pretty lethal unless you have a way to cure it. There are poison miscasts that are even worse ... basically a delayed instadeath unless you have some way to cure the poison.

[tasonir]

my current dumb as rocks troll who isn't learning any major type of magic decided to pick up some level 2 spells for utility. I put one level into poison magic, and with a int of around 12 or so, cure poison has ~20% miscast. I've used it around a dozen times. I recommend it highly

[Grimm]

I realise this is probably clustering illusion but poison did seem to get notably stronger over the last twelve months or so.

[yogaFLAME]

??quaff id

[nicolae]

my current dumb as rocks troll who isn't learning any major type of magic decided to pick up some level 2 spells for utility. I put one level into poison magic, and with a int of around 12 or so, cure poison has ~20% miscast. I've used it around a dozen times. I recommend it highly

I have an level 16 MiBe going and I have a rod of venom around mostly just for the Cure Poison. (Though the other spells are coming in handy for Spider too.)

[ebarrett]

100% player fault, as usual when people complain about losing a character.

[XuaXua]

I realise this is probably clustering illusion but poison did seem to get notably stronger over the last twelve months or so.

It's always clustering illusion.

[ebarrett]

What happened over the last twelve months or so is that telling everyone rPois is useless has become a bit of a fad so everyone gets poisoned a lot more often.

[KoboldLord]

What happened over the last twelve months or so is that telling everyone rPois is useless has become a bit of a fad so everyone gets poisoned a lot more often.

Yes, when skilled players say that rPois isn't an especially important resistance because it usually isn't fatal and there are plenty of potions of curing for when it otherwise would be fatal, that makes it totally their fault when a player decides to shotgun lethal poisons with no curing available. These two situations are exactly equivalent.

To the OP: If potions of strong poison can't kill you from full health if you don't burn curing to deal with them, then they are completely pointless and should be removed because they don't serve any function ever. By the time they can generate, there is no reasonable game situation that calls for quaffing random potions in unsafe circumstances, so they have to be relevant even in safe circumstances.

[ebarrett]

What happened over the last twelve months or so is that telling everyone rPois is useless has become a bit of a fad so everyone gets poisoned a lot more often.

Yes, when skilled players say that rPois isn't an especially important resistance because it usually isn't fatal and there are plenty of potions of curing for when it otherwise would be fatal, that makes it totally their fault when a player decides to shotgun lethal poisons with no curing available. These two situations are exactly equivalent.

Read again, snarkmaster wannabe - that post refers to Grimm's comment which XuaXua quoted. My thoughts on the OP's woes had already been exposed a couple posts before it.

[twelwe]

i claim the title `snark master`

I'll ask the question the OP hinted at: why do strong poison potions exist in the game? Like acquirement, I don't think I've ever seen one spawn sub-D:6, so the natural assumption is that they exist only to extend the `punishment` of quaff-ID. For those self indulgent enough to claim intellect superiority via smart identify scroll usage, the first strong poison potion ultimately consumes one scroll of identification instead of one potion of curing. This consumable drag serves one purpose now that evaporation is gone. If the quaff-ID lesson needs to be extended late in the game, something more drastic and punishing needs to take its place. Instant statrot from a potion of decay sounded appealing to me. Surely something more effective in teaching the error of quaff-ID could exist... a potion that reduces regeneration would cause both food and piety loss for someone willing to wait out the effect; it accomplishes exactly what strong poison does - reduced the effective HP of a character for a significant amount of time.

[varsovie]

If the quaff-ID lesson needs to be extended late in the game

Then don't identifies other potions of the same type you find on the ground.

Anyway why do we have pot of poison and pot of strong poison? It's like the traps, we have dart trap, then arrow trap, then spear traps... At least traps can damage opponents and be a source of ammunitions. Pot are only harmfull, and then only very early when you got unlucky and have no choice to quaff-id without enough precautions.

My proposal, get ryde of bad potions or find a way do make them relevant past first blind/no precaution/last chance quaff.

[Baldu]

I guess I didn't explain myself well enough with my first post. I though that since potions of poison seem to do something like 30-50 damage that strong poison would do 60-100 damage, but it seems it can do 150-200 damage. Perhaps it could use a name change from potion of strong poison to potion of mortal/deadly poison.

[njvack]

Well... it doesn't matter too much what they're called. You're not gonna quaff 'em unless you're quaff-id'ing them.

The utility of "bad potions" is really for another thread.

[Baldu]

Their description says:
----------------------------
a potion of strong poison.

A terribly venomous potion.

“‘poison’ is a harsh word. I prefer ‘potion of shut the hell up’”
-Oglaf, bowdlerized
----------------------------

What crate said earlier:

Strong poison potions are pretty lethal unless you have a way to cure it ... ... basically a delayed instadeath unless you have some way to cure the poison.

is significantly more accurate now that i have finally tested it. Potion of lethal poison seems like a pretty accurate name since it looks like it can do about 200 damage.

[varsovie]

If it could induce a curare-like effect at least the potion would be different than "potion of nonetheless lethal poison since you quaffed it on D2".

[BlackSheep]

OR we could all just take to heart the lesson that was handed to you and not quaff-ID potions without the means of curing undesired effects...