Poison Update

[Dresan]

Poison needs to change.

There are a few problems:

1. Poisons are either too strong or too weak.
2. Poisons are found, not made. Once the knowledge spreads, the staff have to go in to change things around to try to 'balance' the game out.
3. IC knowledge for both poisons and cures is mostly spread OOCly. Making both poisons and cures very common and lackluster.

In my mind, poison making should be a crafting skill. There should be less encounters with powerful poisons in nature, and rubbing glands or crap on weapons you got from just skinning something or picked off the ground needs to go away. The potency of the poison should be tied with the skill. Equally the potency of the cure should be tied to skill. Those with the skill should be able to assess how good a cure or poison is based on quality.

Peraine and heramine should go away. But Bloodburn, Grishen, skellebane should be GREATLY strengthened. On top of that, cures should not actually instantly cure you, instead they should half the duration and effect in most cases depending on the quality of that cure. Skellebane should be strengthened the most, but the duration should be decreased to 30 mins. Skellebane should take effect instantly, and prevent looking at anything direction and cause of much much higher chance of running the wrong way or move at all regardless of any additional skills. However, a cure would decrease the effects to 15 mins and of course, it should not effect your ability to fight.

The above means that cures will still be great to have, and should save your life if you take them early enough, but having a stack of cures doesn't make poisons any less scary, nor does the ability to e;e;e;e;w;eat cure automatically save your life under certain situations. At the same time poisons alone won't immediately win any fights for you like peraine and heramide, but certainly turn things in your favor if you have the skill or know someone that does and have additional skills to back them up.

All clans should have NPC that can teach you how to make any cure for a price. Certain clans should also have an NPC that can teach you how to make poisons for a price. The game needs to do more to avoid adding 'IC knowledge' to the game where the only way to find out is OOC means. (staff having to step in to tell you, even through animations, is ooc in my books)

[Fredd]

2. Poisons are found, not made. Once the knowledge spreads, the staff have to go in to change things around to try to 'balance' the game out.

I invite you to reread help brew.

[mansa]

2. Poisons are found, not made. Once the knowledge spreads, the staff have to go in to change things around to try to 'balance' the game out.

I invite you to reread help brew.

The primary way to poison weapons is to find a poison item in the world, and then apply it to your weapons.
You cannot brew a poison and then apply it to your weapons.  Applying it to weapons is the issue.

[Riev]

On a recent character I can't talk about yet, I specifically made them with the intention of using the brewed poisons. Its possibly my playtimes never meshed up, but I found people were not interested in the brewed poisons at all.

The advantage of brewed poison is that ANYONE can poison someone's food/water. You don't need the poison skill, just the item.
The disadvantage is that very few people use poisons in this manner. Its main usage is being applied to weapons.

I cannot imagine how it would feel if brewed poisons could be applied to weapons by someone WITHOUT the poison skill.
I would HOPE those poisons would become very cost prohibitive, because letting a 0-day PC apply the strongest poisons to their weapon because they found a vial could become quite upsetting.

I think if we shifted more towards "that creature's glands are USED in a brew process to make a poison", I could get behind that. I could also get behind needing the poison skill @ Master to use a poison vial on a weapon. After all, it requires more than "dump this on your blade and its poisoned forever" kind of expertise, no?

[Armaddict]

After all, it requires more than "dump this on your blade and its poisoned forever" kind of expertise, no?

I don't think it is, honestly (but that doesn't mean I don't think it should be for gameplay purposes).  Really, having a 'poison' skill is really centrally focused on PvP in Arm, when in reality, I'd think poison as a skill would be very based not just on knowledge, mixes, proportions, bases, and basically the beginnings of chemistry, but also knowing how to deal with it in the wild.

It's a little weird that which affects of poisons tell everyone which type of poison, just through common knowledge.  It's weird that it's just common knowledge what has cures and what doesn't.  This would -all- be under the purview of poisoning in a realistic setting.  If we could find some way of expanding THAT part of poisoning, then that would be a single-handed change to how poisons interact with players; imagine NOT being able to tell which poison that snake gave you, or how to combat it, or what effect it was actually having on your health or whether it would kill you or not.  Imagine NOT knowing which plants had poisons that could enter your body through mere skin contact, when you're out in a hunting group. You'd be looking for someone who knew about poisons so fast.

The fact that we don't have that latter part is what balances out the restriction on poisons that are presented as 'necessity', despite the utilitarianism of using poisons in the first place.

[X-D]

It is no secret I do not like the way poisons work.

There are also very few suggestions in this thread I would be for...few here and there, But I am not going to call out on either side.

If I had my way I would aim for creative poisons with utility.

Almost no poison would be an outright death sentence.

IE...

Peraine, Gone.
Heramide, Drastic rework
Bloodburn, Minor rework.

I would make it so that ALL poisons took some time to even begin working.

IRL, there are NO natural poisons that work instantly....Some are very fast, minutes to notice affect...minutes to death.

I would make cures take time to begin working as well. Both would have a ramp up and peak effectiveness.

Potency of crafted cures and poisons would be based on skill. But even a novice cure would have some affect on even a master brewed poison.

Now, types/examples of what I mean by creative/utility.

Heramide: Rework to a fast acting narcolepsy, Get hit with it, in a few seconds if master level, minutes if lower, chance to get dizzy, Means you stop action, fall off mount, possibly fall down, A bit later the chance to fall asleep starts to hit, But only for a second. As the poison runs its course, at peak you might be falling asleep and waking up a couple times a minute.

New poison: Call it, Oh, Numb-hand (I know, somebody could do better) Hit with it, hands and feet begin to lose feeling, as it progresses You lose the ability to pick things up, eventually to hold or manipulate anything at all. But also your unarmed damage goes up because you cannot feel when you are hurting yourself.

Grishen: It should just be slow. As in it slows all metabolic processes, At peak you would essentially be a sloth, You certainly would not want to ride, sloth reaction time, How many rooms traveled before you manage to stop the mount? (but have possible helpful uses)

Bloodburn should return to doing actual damage, The amount should not be huge. But your natural healing slows and eventually stops, This effect should last a while (not like RL days or anything, say 2-3 game days) During this time, you will only slowly heal while bandaged and resting. The cure of course simply reduces the time.

I think somebody mentioned one for blinding, I like that, but one should never go fully blind. At peak they see blurs and faint shapes and can still make out directions.

I would leave Skell mostly as is.

Terradin, I would get rid of the puke to death. I think I would make it one of the few poisons that could kill somebody. But it would be through starvation/dehydration, and take a reasonable length of time.

I would also make ones that give say:
Tinnitus

Night blindness

Light sensitive, Basically blind during the day or in any well lit area, but better vision at night.

Vertigo: No climbing for you, In fact, going up at all might be rather hard.

Agoraphobia: Have it be random on which one hits you, open spaces, crowds etc.

Anyway, That is what I have.

[roughneck]

Bloodburn: Combat utility poison. Near immediate onset. Have it do 50-60 hp max. Impedes healing or max HP until cured.

Perraine: Change to much slower onset, and the paralysis should make you go limp instead of rigid, laying on the ground in a helpless puddle.

Grishen: I like X-D's idea.

Heramide: Medium onset, drowsiness that leads to in and out of consciousness.

Terradin: I never understood how you puke to death, but there's no shitting involved!? Get with the program.

[Armaddict]

I just hope these changes actually make things better / more fun. In my opinion the cure changes just made a hassle. It's also going to be annoying that staff and their pcs will know all the ins and outs of this system and the rest of us,  those without staff buddies anyway,  will be in the dark. I hope the help files don't try and hide stuff or certain subguilds will get special access to a more detailed helpfile.

The cure changes are actually exactly what a lot of the playerbase asked for, but working within an existing system as best able.

As far as knowledge, that's actually a large part of the problem.  It'd be neat if we added some element of randomization to herbalism that was not the same as making knowledge useless, that made it the SKILL and not game knowledge that made poisoning and poison cures useful.

[Dune Bunny]

I'd like to see the Brew and Poison skills have an assess appendage to a cure to tell/hint at what it cures.

ass -v Excedrin
-It is a cure.
-It has a white tint.
-This is product placement.
-It would be useful against headaches.

This could be tied to the skill level on whether one would know or not. A novice brew likely wouldn't give information on a heramide cure, and so forth. This might give brewers, or "honest" poisoners a means of making a few extra bucks with chaotic Byn and Militia folks that toss all their oddly colored and shapes capsules in one bag, and then delete their text file of what does what. 

(I know Analyze more or less does the same thing via ingredients required for the craft, but seeing a verified result through assess just seems superior to me, especially through ease of use.)

As for poisons overall, I primarily think (as I've said before about most herbs) that finding them/ingredients shouldn't be so simple. Have spawns randomized over an area, with each room having a chance to spawn something, or nothing.

-Burp Leaves can be found only in the SW Red Desert.
-Fart Blossoms are also found here.
-This area has X amount of rooms.
-Each room has a 60% chance to spawn nothing. 25% chance to spawn Fart Blossoms. 15% chance to spawn Burp Leaves.

This would kill the whole idea of 'I need X. Let me grab my mount...'
e e e e e e e e n n e e e e n e e
'pick x'
w w s w w w w s s w w w w w w w w.
"I'll teach that stuck up aide to spam walk past me, mwahaha!"

[Nao]

I just hope these changes actually make things better / more fun. In my opinion the cure changes just made a hassle. It's also going to be annoying that staff and their pcs will know all the ins and outs of this system and the rest of us,  those without staff buddies anyway,  will be in the dark. I hope the help files don't try and hide stuff or certain subguilds will get special access to a more detailed helpfile.

The cure changes are actually exactly what a lot of the playerbase asked for, but working within an existing system as best able.

As far as knowledge, that's actually a large part of the problem.  It'd be neat if we added some element of randomization to herbalism that was not the same as making knowledge useless, that made it the SKILL and not game knowledge that made poisoning and poison cures useful.

We tend to suggest more complex, realistic mechanics and assume it will be really cool, but a lot of the time it just turns out to be tedious and distracts from RP because you need to 'grind' instead of spending your time roleplaying.

[Halaster]

As far as knowledge, that's actually a large part of the problem.  It'd be neat if we added some element of randomization...

So this is what got me thinking about an overhaul in the first place - people using OOC knowledge from friends, or past characters, or whatever to know exactly where to go get poisons and how.  Originally my plan was just to deal with availability, but now I think it's going to be a bigger project.   But in terms of availability I do plan to add in radomization where things are found.  Instead of "the turd fruit that gives grishen is found 3e2n of the road", it will be "the turd fruit is found in the Grey Forest", and it randomly loads around there making people go look for it.  Less potent things will be more available and easier to find, more potent things will not.

I'm also thinking of doing something where having the poisoning skill makes it easier to find them or spot them from a distance, or something.  I'd like to somehow incorporate the poisoning skill in the gathering process to a lesser degree.

[Riev]

Can you tie "skinned" poison items into the poisoning skill and/or skinning? Like, if you understand a terradin-bug's anatomy, you can skin the gland, but if you understand the poison applications, you also have a decent chance?


What if, on the cures side of the discussion AND the poisons, that there's an efficacy rating tied to skill and dice rolls, like most other skills. Like, you know that a dandelion and an oak leaf will make a bloodburn cure IN MOST CASES, but if you're not good enough or aren't using tools, its got a chance of not being useful. It still assesses as the right cure, it still shows (whatever it shows) that its a proper cure, but maybe it doesn't work "as well"?

I know that would require having a whole new variable and interactions, but it might satisfy a lot of concerns. Crafted poisons have higher efficacy than skinned poisons, but skinned poisons are still usable. Cures can be super effective if made by a master apothecary with tools, but even a novice can make something that will stop the pain of bloodburn for a little bit.

[Armaddict]

As far as knowledge, that's actually a large part of the problem.  It'd be neat if we added some element of randomization...

So this is what got me thinking about an overhaul in the first place - people using OOC knowledge from friends, or past characters, or whatever to know exactly where to go get poisons and how.  Originally my plan was just to deal with availability, but now I think it's going to be a bigger project.   But in terms of availability I do plan to add in radomization where things are found.  Instead of "the turd fruit that gives grishen is found 3e2n of the road", it will be "the turd fruit is found in the Grey Forest", and it randomly loads around there making people go look for it.  Less potent things will be more available and easier to find, more potent things will not.

I'm also thinking of doing something where having the poisoning skill makes it easier to find them or spot them from a distance, or something.  I'd like to somehow incorporate the poisoning skill in the gathering process to a lesser degree.

I don't care what everyone says about you, you're great.

ETA:  Maybe to incorporate the poison...maybe just because you pick the leaf doesn't mean you got the poison.  Just because you got the gland, doesn't mean you got the poison.  You can't tell.  The poisoner can tell.  'Harvesting' poison isn't as easy as 'I found the thing!'.  It's 'I found the thing!' + 'I know about the thing!' + 'I know how to harvest the thing!' + 'I can tell I got the thing!'.  Just a chance that what you do harvest is benign, based off your poisoning or brew skill or both.

[Brytta Léofa]

Hal, "SimDesert for plants" sounds like a great change. Roleplay-wise, the experience should certainly be "look in the right area," not "look at coordinate x,y."

I suggest that the plant density should increase in most areas if you're randomizing locations. Otherwise players will have to spend much more stamina just to come up with anything at all, and big stamina sinks are a drag for the most part.

Exceptions: Rare/dangerous plants should stay rare. Some areas already have high plant density that maybe doesn't need to increase.

[mansa]

My wish is that the game is explicit with "What is this item I have?" - if you are skilled enough.


examples:

assess -v poison.gland
This is poison!

versus

assess -v poison.gland
This is grishen poison!


and

analyze tablet
You taste this tablet, and it is made of cold, hot

versus
analyze tablet
You taste this tablet, and it is made of cold, hot
This tablet cures grishen

[Tisiphone]

the post is right above this one, go read it

I'd love this. Especially if it were skill-gated. At lower skills you could see material information, while at higher you could see coded usefulness.

Then, an only half-serious suggestion: make flavour combinations change effects based on clan.

[Patuk]

As far as knowledge, that's actually a large part of the problem.  It'd be neat if we added some element of randomization...

So this is what got me thinking about an overhaul in the first place - people using OOC knowledge from friends, or past characters, or whatever to know exactly where to go get poisons and how.  Originally my plan was just to deal with availability, but now I think it's going to be a bigger project.   But in terms of availability I do plan to add in radomization where things are found.  Instead of "the turd fruit that gives grishen is found 3e2n of the road", it will be "the turd fruit is found in the Grey Forest", and it randomly loads around there making people go look for it.  Less potent things will be more available and easier to find, more potent things will not.

I'm also thinking of doing something where having the poisoning skill makes it easier to find them or spot them from a distance, or something.  I'd like to somehow incorporate the poisoning skill in the gathering process to a lesser degree.

If you want to incorporate poison skill mattering in finding some, you caaaaan try adding a forage poison command, perhaps.

[ShaiHulud]

Having an interest and some experience with the topics, I'd like to suggest this. There are herbs used for varied bandages/poultices already, combinations and such. Perhaps expanding their usefulness and creation. (using more herbs and plants) Different herbed wraps that combat or aid to deal with the varied and perhaps new taints?

To add, randomizing locations of taints is a great change. Like done with trees now I'd suspect.  Zoned, findable, but not always growing the same place.

[Halaster]

Closing this thread out soon, so if you're blood is burning with ideas post them before it's too late.

[Halaster]

Removed a post that had nothing to do with poisons.

[Dan]

The ability to craft safer versions for the purpose of micro-dosing and building immunity would be kinda cool.

[Riev]

The ability to craft safer versions for the purpose of micro-dosing and building immunity would be kinda cool.

Literal quote from Shalooonsh:

"So. To be clear... you -purposefully- drank this whole vial of <poison>?"
... Uh. Yeah. For Science?
"... Alright so here's what you're going to do for the next few days you play...."

[LindseyBalboa]

More deadly poisons.

More non-deadly poisons.

More poisons with visible effects.

More poisons. Zalanthas is a world that's trying to kill everyone all the time anyway, bring on the variety.

[Dan]

The ability to craft safer versions for the purpose of micro-dosing and building immunity would be kinda cool.

Literal quote from Shalooonsh:

"So. To be clear... you -purposefully- drank this whole vial of <poison>?"
... Uh. Yeah. For Science?
"... Alright so here's what you're going to do for the next few days you play...."

Micro-dosing! Maybe must be made by only a poisoner + medical class combo.

Minor sidebar on that- certain poison crafts may require different combinations of class and subclass.

[Dresan]

Alright since this thread is closing soon I'm posting ideas/summaries of how I respectfully believe the system would work best:

1. Peraine and heramide should be removed. But Bloodburn, Grishen, skellebane should be strengthened. Terradin should be somewhat weaker and rather short lived.

2, Skellebain should take immediate effect. Those effects should include going the wrong direction way much more often regardless of any skills, and additionly the player would be unfocused(unable to look at anything directly). It should also be instant but short lived (half an IC day at most), even shorter duration with cure or mash so its dangerous but not really annoying. Abiet scary, much more paranoia seeing things more akin of creatures walking in and attacking you or arrows/knives/darts flying in and hitting you in various. Is it the poison or is it real? A player shouldn't be able to tell until its over, the messages looking real. It'll be an intense couple of minutes either way without someone you trust to talk to you. 

3. Poisons in nature should be much MUCH weaker or none existant with exception to remote dangerous animals. (Maybe Zalantians became hardy to common snake poisons a long time ago*shrug*)

4. Poison players need to be worried about should be crafted. However the players who can craft them, should not be the best person to apply them.

5. Crafted poisons should be dibilitating but not deadly.

-Blood burn as an example(numbers can be played with) would do only 60 damage, but 10-15 damage a tick depending on potency/endurance. Taking a cure reduces damage by 50 percent and slows tick time, it would do nothing about the after effects of being poisoned(no hp recovery at the level of the damage taken), taking a mash reduces damage by 75% and help the person recover quickly from the after effects.

-Grishen should have almost similar effects as blood burn but to both stamina and stun instead, and have an after effect that would last much longer that make even walking in the city, wilderness(moreso) or fighting slightly tiresome on your stam as well, not to mention prevent you from recovering stam and stun completely. Again dangerous EVEN with cures/mashes but not really deadly by themselves.

-Terradin- Two or three waterskin and some extra food should be all that is needed to get a hardy human/dwarf through this ordeal. It should last only about an IC day. shorter with cures, with no lasting effects. It should only dangerous if you have no access to food or water in a timely manner.

-Lastly poison damage would still not stack but you can get poisoned again while still suffering from after effects which again would last quite a noticable amount of time( 2-3 IC days of logged in time), maybe a bit more than currently without taking mash

6. Split current brewing and create a new skill called skill Poison brewing. These poisons would still need to be applied by the poison skill. This is the breakdown of how the skills would change:

-Brewing- creates cures and mashes(along with other nice things,etc). Quality of cure goes up based on mastery of skill. Quality = potency. Max potency for cures reduces poison damage at 50%. Cures should decay, a very slow decay, as they decay they lose some quality/potency.  Assess knowledge if stuff in hand is a viable cure ingredient.
-Poison brewing- creates poisons in vials or in sacks that need to be applied to weapons. Quality of the poison goes up based on mastery of the skill. Quality= potency. Poison sacks should decay within a reasonable amount of time and as they decay they lose quality/potency. Assess knowledge if the stuff in hand is a viable poison ingredient.
-Poisoning skill- applies poison to a weapon. Poisons on weapons decay after a certain amount of time. With max skill it should be about two IC days or so. Greater poisoning skill should also increase  likelyhood poison takes effect (at max level, a player should be able to poison dwarves reliably). Assess should also allow someone with this skill to determine if someone is suffering from or has been poisoned and is still suffering from the after affects.

Lastly brew and poison brew should also allow you to forage for those ingredients in wilderness(on top of the ones you can find/hunt) and even some sewer/city environments. Where more remote and dangerous= easier to find and chance of better quality. Finding quality incredients should improve success when crafting(it would still fail noticably at master with poor ingredients), but potency, that should be based on skill imo reducing any significant need for OOC information spreading in this regard.

7. The players who are good at making poison should not be good at applying it and taking advantage of it. Miscreant/stalker would get poison making at current brew making levels but should trade poisioning skill with infiltrator/scouts. In short to take full advantage of poisons to murder someone without the right mundane subguilds it takes a two player job. Someone to make the poison and someone else with the skills to make the most of it. Cures are still very useful if poisoned or at risk of being poisoned.  Vendors can still sell cures but they should be much more expensive than they are now. After all people with no enemies who walk on the beaten path shouldn't be at risk of poison, and remember poison alone won't ever kill you.   

Overall I believe if some or all the changes above were to occur it would increase playability options for players, making poisons a useful tool to open up RP opportunities while at the same time not making it one sided or fustrating for anyone on the recieving end like the current system.