Recent Poison Updates Questions

[Riev]

I'm telling you right now... if I'm playing someone who can poison your blade? I'm charging you a cart load of coin for it. Every time.

You want peraine on your blade "just in case and it wears off every RL month? Prepare to pay a couple large every RL month just for my time.

Damnit.

[Armaddict]

They might fall out of fashion altogether (for assassinations and 'just in case') if you make it hard enough, which seems to be part of the purpose. It's already vastly easier to use someone with AI str and a big club than any sort of poison. There's not much of a niche for assassin-like PCs anymore because brute force is just better at everything.

Never quite true.  Kind of a supply and demand sort of effect comes into play for poison.  The less prepared for poisons you are, the more effective they are in doing what you need.  The non-lethal poisons pretty much disappeared directly because of the ease of finding cures for them.  The lethal ones became in demand because they are harder to cure consistently, leading to the big gripe of instant death to poison (it was a legitimate gripe).  Now both cures and poisons are supposed to be harder to use.  If they fall completely out of favor, people stop preparing for them, which makes them more viable again.

Brute force has its place, and is generally a more 'enjoyable' conflict because it's not locked in as instant.  Even with a big fucking hammer and a free hit due to surprise attack, the advantage quickly shifts to the defender because the RNG on being 'reel locked' is relatively small, allowing the defender to react while the attacker is stunned out.  It's the opposite with poisons.  Poisons enable a surprise attack to build an advantage that carries over into the rest of the altercation.  Brute force is actually far more reliable by depending on a bash to open the fight than it is the free first attack.

Brute force has its place, but is also sometimes completely non-viable due to environment setting or circumstance.

Honestly, these are just shallow beginnings of the deep whirlpool that is actually running a successful assassination.  Plans are a real thing that vastly improve chances of success, and they need to be build to be non-specific enough to allow for differences in circumstance, while still specific enough to build off of a built advantage.

I'm in favor of poison changes because it makes these things deeper.  Will people still die quickly to things?  Yes.  But it will require a lot more than the simplicity of 'I just keep this knife here for the next time someone needs to die' and 'I don't need to worry about this anymore because I bought one of this item'.  You should see just as much efficacy possible, but that efficacy will have more moving parts to it than before, hopefully leading to more interesting preparations and deadlines and contingencies.

This is, of course, all anecdotal and rhetorical.  It remains to be seen what -actual- impact this will have, but I do understand and agree with the premise.

[Agent_137]

if i have to coordinate with a PC to get a good poison and even if I keep it on me, it fades in real life weeks... that is really unfun maintenance grind nonsense.

Are you getting it for "just in case"?

Or are you getting it for an identified need, i.e. you intend to use it?

I think the burden looks a lot more intimdiating for the first than the second.  As it should?

Maybe that seems extreme, but consider this.  Currently, there are players where their "just in case" poison is peraine.  M*****FU****G Peraine.

Will this change make that go away?  We can hope.  Your "just in case" poison may be bloodburn, or grishen or something.  For your identified need like an assassination you may try to get a high potency peraine/heramide/whatever so you have a much better chance of success.  That seems much more balanced than folks having a peraine blade just in case.

I agree with the goal of increasing time to kill by reducing the usage of poisons, especially peraine and heramide, on just-in-case blades and arrows.

I agree with the goal of un-trivializing access to poison and cures in clans by forcing them to degrade when lying around in a storeroom.

I don't agree with changes that cause PCs to lose things they keep in their pockets that they had to work really hard for. Even PCs with brew and poison will need to go to great lengths to prepare cures and poisons. And an accomplished hunter should be prepared with a variety of cures and poison pastes, no?  What is the witcher without his potions or the batman without his tool belt?

[Armaddict]

What is the witcher without his potions or the batman without his tool belt?

Interestingly, this could be something to expand on as the changes develop; perhaps cures in vials would keep far longer than tablets, but they are heavier, require more to make, and take up more space.  Perhaps different poisons could have different ingredients added to the mix that lower potency, or change the poison effect altogether, to make it keep longer.

This is basically the beginnings of actual alchemy that makes sense.  Tradeoffs, specific herbs being useful for this or that, and a knowledge base that goes deeper.

[Doublepalli]

Witchers can kill 10 men without potions. At once.

[Veselka]

As a habitual owner of peraine "just in case" belt knives for 20 years, shots fired. Also, totally support these changes.

I'd kind of like to see a sort of alchemy between poisons and even cures. Maybe some of the more deadly or interesting combinations are achieved through substance interaction rather than delivery.

Maybe some poisons are more or less effective depending on the liquid or food type they are in. Maybe Grishen when combined with Ocotillo wine creates a delayed but very potent enhancing effect. Maybe if you smoke Thodeliv afterwards it creates a heramide like effect, and your assassin knows you always enjoy a smoke of sweet after dinner.

Anyways — I appreciate that poisons are becoming more complex and less predictable. I like they won't last forever. I always felt getting a peraine blade was a "achievement unlocked" moment that was more meta than it should be in actuality.

[Dresan]

Again overall I like all the changes.

We'll need to wait to see how good common poison becomes, but cure potency does seem to help balance that fact you need two or three people with the right skills to make good use of certain deadly poison. Consistantly carrying full sets of strong potent cures might be reserved for people who truely fear assasination.  It is kinda funny that only the new proposed subclass physician seems to be the best choice for advanced poison making.

If there is anything I don't like its that learning the recipes might promote cheating. I really hope its not so complicated to figure out that people need staff telling them or know someone willing to share an ooc list.

On a side note, i know dwarves are strong but  a bit more so now after this change?

From the dwarf helpfiles:

Some composition of their bodies and minds tends to make dwarves highly resistant to magick of all kinds, and their high endurance usually renders them virtually (or literally) immune to poisons

[Nao]

Chedya (the natural version) seems to lose potency extremely fast, literally less than a RL week before it's useless. Is that working as intended?

[Halaster]

Chedya (the natural version) seems to lose potency extremely fast, literally less than a RL week before it's useless. Is that working as intended?

No, should be fixed for NEW ones you gather from the wild.  If you lost any prematurely, put in a request.

[mansa]

Regarding Poison and Cure Degradation.

Is the degradation design linear?
eg - It takes 500 hours to drop from level 3 to level 2, and 500 hours to drop from level 2 to level 1, and 500 hours to be removed from level 1.

Or is the degradation designed differently between the levels?
eg - It takes 500 hours to drop from level 3 to level 2, and 750 hours to drop from level 2 to level 1, and 1000 hours to be removed from level 1.

[Halaster]

Regarding Poison and Cure Degradation.

Is the degradation design linear?
eg - It takes 500 hours to drop from level 3 to level 2, and 500 hours to drop from level 2 to level 1, and 500 hours to be removed from level 1.

Or is the degradation designed differently between the levels?
eg - It takes 500 hours to drop from level 3 to level 2, and 750 hours to drop from level 2 to level 1, and 1000 hours to be removed from level 1.

It's not linear, so more sorta like the 2nd one.

[Nao]

How long are the current natural grishen poisons and crafted jars supposed to last, on a rough scale? Hours, days, weeks, months?

[Halaster]

How long are the current natural grishen poisons and crafted jars supposed to last, on a rough scale? Hours, days, weeks, months?

Crafted jars of paste and vials of poison are in weeks to months, depending on the poison type and potency (the higher, the longer, so that means with higher skill your poisons will last longer).

The raw ingredient poison object, like say an animal gland, days to weeks depending on what it is and the poison type.

Again, the only one utilizing the new system is Grishen for now.

[Riev]

Like other decay items, is this 'halted' if the items are on a logged out character?

[dunecrawler]

How long are the current natural grishen poisons and crafted jars supposed to last, on a rough scale? Hours, days, weeks, months?

Crafted jars of paste and vials of poison are in weeks to months, depending on the poison type and potency (the higher, the longer, so that means with higher skill your poisons will last longer).

The raw ingredient poison object, like say an animal gland, days to weeks depending on what it is and the poison type.

Again, the only one utilizing the new system is Grishen for now.

I think the timer on the jar items is off and it's decaying too quickly. I'll do some more testing to double-check.

[Halcyon]

Lit torches are losing duration while logged off.  I would test if the poisons are as well.

[dunecrawler]

Lit torches are losing duration while logged off.  I would test if the poisons are as well.

It has been less than three hours, I don't think that's it.

[Brokkr]

Believe poison timers are RL time based, not logged in time.

[dunecrawler]

I was wrong about the timer, but something else is wrong. I put in a bug report with the details.

[Halaster]

Like other decay items, is this 'halted' if the items are on a logged out character?

No, they continue to degrade even while you're logged out.  That's why I raised the timeframe a bit more than I had originally intended.

[betweenford]

How are poison saves gonna work now, in combination with poison immunity and higher potency poisons?

[Halaster]

How are poison saves gonna work now, in combination with poison immunity and higher potency poisons?

I haven't touched immunity at all so far.

Saves will not make you just ignore a poison any longer, it will just make you suffer a lowered potency.  In that regard, poisons are going to become more harmful.  But, lesser potency poisons aren't typically going to be lethal, unless of course you're already in bad shape.  That is not in place yet, we're still on the "old" system.  I'll make an announcement and more details when that happens.

[Nao]

Should the recent terradin changes existing and fairly fresh terradin items in game? Should they show up as
inert poison with an inert, shiny sheen or does that mean they're decayed? Or have they been deprecated altogether? The terradin helpfile suggests a different source now.

[Halaster]

Should the recent terradin changes existing and fairly fresh terradin items in game? Should they show up as
inert poison with an inert, shiny sheen or does that mean they're decayed? Or have they been deprecated altogether? The terradin helpfile suggests a different source now.

It's the same source, I copied the "rotting fruits and molds" verbatim from the old help file, just went into more detail "found in the more green areas of the world".

Inert means they have decayed.  It's possible you have some old ones that didn't update properly.  Feel free to put in a request (or hit me up) and I'll replace them.  The -intent- was that existing ones would start with a proper timer, but something must have gone wrong.

[betweenford]

Don't peraine items decay too, per the previous system?