Poison effect

[Sar]

That was fixed some time ago.

[johlstei]

Shoot I'm poisoned time to put on my ponderous hat.

[galehar]

how about something like this:
each level of poison increases the duration by about 40 aut (somewhat randomized, +/- 10 aut), but it is stepdowned(50). When duration is decreased, you take duration/10 damage, but it is scaled to the duration so with higher poison you take more damage per turn. Not sure about the scaling formula, maybe the inverse of the stepdown.

[duvessa]

So basically the same as the current situation except you can closely determine the damage with a calculator and list of spoilers? Not sure what you're even trying to improve there.

[galehar]

Well, it reduces the duration greatly and also increases the damage. The results can be seen in the spreadsheet now. With a step of 40, it looks pretty good I think.

edit: except total damage is wrong and it's much deadlier. But I think I'm on the right track and it just needs more tinkering.

re-edit: I've reduced the damage per turn, and it looks much saner now.
Rere-edit: also, the new formula reduces variance a lot.

[jejorda2]

I'd favor something like weakness that decreases some combination of spell power, ranged attacks, melee attacks, and evocations while in effect. You're just less effective while poisoned, so you might need to run and try again. Of course, we already have weakness. Lowering AC, EV, and MR while poisoned could work, too. Something to make it harder to stay in a fight, but not harder to get away.

[Mumcon]

Well, personally I don't see any of that as a problem and this isn't the goal of the thread to address that. There have been countless discussions about the poison magic school and high level poison spells, I'd rather avoid derailing the thread with yet another one.

I understand where you're coming from. Even if someone started a conversation over my remarks, I would see no reason to respond to them, because as far as I'm concerned, past threads have already completely settled these issues. I just decided to make those remarks as a component of my overall post about the way the poison status works.

I like the new formula in the spreadsheet. I would be somewhat interested in seeing columns like "Total damage minus avg healed over duration for level 13 human" for both the new formula and the old one, but I can already see that at around 5 levels of poison, the new formula does less total damage, and I expect that a level or two beyond that, regeneration doesn't make a difference. You've said that the duration will be somewhat randomized, and in a way that appears less easy to understand mathematically than the current 1/8 chance, so all I will say is that I hope that the code (whether by itself or by comments) is explanatory. Lair runes seem like they'd be less of a death sentence to formicids, but I'd like to hope this will also succeed in making being poisoned something players really think about.

[Kalma]

Many snake venoms immobilize the prey so paralysis/slow/slowM would fit flavor.

Wasps, bees and ants mark the target with pheromones.

[galehar]

I would be somewhat interested in seeing columns like "Total damage minus avg healed over duration for level 13 human" for both the new formula and the old one, but I can already see that at around 5 levels of poison, the new formula does less total damage, and I expect that a level or two beyond that, regeneration doesn't make a difference.

I don't think I'll bother to do that. Basically, in the new formula the duration is too short for regeneration to have a significant effect.

You've said that the duration will be somewhat randomized, and in a way that appears less easy to understand mathematically than the current 1/8 chance, so all I will say is that I hope that the code (whether by itself or by comments) is explanatory.

The randomization itself is simple. I'm thinking of using random_range(30, 50). Then, a stepdown is applied which is just a logarithm. Here is the code for the stepdown function:

  Code:

double stepdown(double value, double step)
{
    return step * log2(1 + value / step);
}

I'm not sure about the step, I think the duration increases a bit too slowly. I'll keep experimenting.

Lair runes seem like they'd be less of a death sentence to formicids, but I'd like to hope this will also succeed in making being poisoned something players really think about.

I don't know why you're saying that, the changes I propose make poison more threatening and less tedious. Poison vulnerability will be looked at too. There are 3 knobs to tweak the vulnerability: increase damage of poison attack (someone suggested reducing it from +100% to +50%), increase chance of getting poisoned, increase damage of poison status (haven't looked at the last 2 yet)

[tompliss]

the problem with the current poison vulnerability was that it gives twice as many poison levels (and doubling the initialy poison attack damage). It means a total damage multiplied by 3 to 4. Comparing this to the rF- or the rC- and their 50% increased damage, it seems too much...

I think simplifying the poison vulnerability to a single effect (a 50% damage increase, or a lower attack damage threshold to be poisonned) should keep the poison vulnerability relevant without killing characters too easily...

[Bloax]

Currently, with rPois- you can get up to red poison from two adder bites.

Take a guess at how hard it is to get bitten by an adder that many times, and then what your chances of survival are with some 24 maxhp if you're lucky.
edit: than is not that

[galehar]

maybe +50% damage from attack and and +50% poison level. It's simple and consistent with other elemental vulnerabilities.

edit: the stepdown and stepup functions were wrong in the spreadsheet. It's fixed now (hopefully) and I like how duration scales. Damage seems good too.

[rebthor]

I'd favor something like weakness that decreases some combination of spell power, ranged attacks, melee attacks, and evocations while in effect. You're just less effective while poisoned, so you might need to run and try again. Of course, we already have weakness. Lowering AC, EV, and MR while poisoned could work, too. Something to make it harder to stay in a fight, but not harder to get away.

We already have draining. I'd rather not see more of it.

[Mumcon]

Lair runes seem like they'd be less of a death sentence to formicids, but I'd like to hope this will also succeed in making being poisoned something players really think about.

I don't know why you're saying that, the changes I propose make poison more threatening and less tedious. Poison vulnerability will be looked at too. There are 3 knobs to tweak the vulnerability: increase damage of poison attack (someone suggested reducing it from +100% to +50%), increase chance of getting poisoned, increase damage of poison status (haven't looked at the last 2 yet)

It's my misunderstanding. Thank you for pointing it out again (I didn't catch what you meant earlier). Basically, I had thought that parts of your formula might have been intended to lower total damage taken by formicids compared to the current formula. I couldn't visualize how it would work in practice with the current numbers (that's why I used the tentative phrase "seem like") but I had figured you would tweak things as necessary while playtesting. Obviously I don't have to stretch my imagination anymore now that you've said your current proposed formula is totally unrelated to the concerns about formicids.

[Siegurt]

What if poison did cumulative combat damage, but did no damage over time?

i.e. every time you were hit with a poison attack you took an amount of damage proportional to the poison level you were at (say d(poisonlevel) damage) and got your poison level raised, but when you weren't taking poison damage poison did nothing (except decay)

It would be (quite) relevant to combat proper, it would retain it's current "Getting light poison is no big deal, but getting into the red can be dangerous" kind of thing, and it would make poison-kiting not a thing, while still retaining it's peculiar poison-y flavor.

Since it would no longer do OOC damage, you could rest it off with one '5' rather than having to restart resting every time you took damage from it.

[tompliss]

That would be similar to a "multiple monster constriction" damage, then ?

[Siegurt]

I suppose if you were being attacked by multiple poisoning critters at a time, it would be sort of like a multiple-creature-construction, also the status would last for some time after you'd killed the poisoner so if you faced multiple poisoners in a row it'd be kind of like a series of 'serial constrictors' in that case. Also it's active (rather than constriction, which is passive) so if a critter hits you with a poison spit attack, then hits you with a weapon, you don't take poison damage from the weapon hit (unless it's a venom weapon of course) but if they then hit you with another poison spit attack you'll take the cumulative damage.

So I guess the answer is "It's sort of like it in a weird way, but not really exactly."

[omegonthesane]

Deterministic poison damage seems like the best way to go with this. I've lost too many characters to hammering 5 never knowing if the RNG will permit them to keep their last HP - Q?Yes deaths are less bad than noncombat deaths IMO.

If you're in the yellow with poison, you have no way of telling in-game if that's going to be a minor annoyance or an outright death; if your whole health bar is purple with poison, you have a deadline, and players can do deadlines.

[galehar]

Pubby is working on a patch for deterministic poison damage. Looks promising.