Buff Poison

[Senjou]

Dear All

I am starting to DM a group of player, who already played 4 session of the purple worm adventure. Since I'm not so keen to keep going on that campaign but I would like to make it feel consistent I was thinking as starting point this:

The adventurers are in the capital, walking on the street when a strange lady, wearing purple robes, approach them and say "you approached the worm god, take the retribution for it" and trow the party some grey dust and suicide. The party will feel invigorated and have their hit point raised permanently by 50%. If they inquire about the dust (I will try to make them) they will found out that in reality is a deadly poison, invigorating at start but you will start to lose 10% Max total hp every ten day(supposing you had 100 hp after the invigoration, after 10 days they will have 90 hp, after 20 days 80 and so on) and when their hp will reach 0 they will die. This poison can be dispelled and the quest is made in order to make them dispel the poison and find something else.

What I want to ask is: Is this type of plot twist any good? Is the poison something a bad idea?

Cheers

Senjou

[Douche]

Mummies have a similar debuff/disease thing. I don't see why you can't repurpose it for plot reasons.

But mummy rot makes you roll the hit point reduction each day, instead of being a flat 10. Rolling is fun and will make them more paranoid, or be more excited when they only lose like 2 hit points that time.

[Senjou]

My idea is more like giving them a timeframe. They have to solve the potion in 100 day or they are dead. Kinda to keep them on the edge. And think about sacrifice: saving the a young woman family might take them 4 days. Would they risk doing that or not? I forgot to mention that the 50% is permanent so if they manage to solve it in let's say 30 days they would have a permanent 20% increase

[Shaofoo]

I wouldn't do this kind of thing. This will probably get you accusations of railroading.

The players should see it coming, at least if there is a rogue he should get a chance to see something will be up. And unless the group is always together you should probably only infect a couple instead of everyone and if somehow you want to say that she detonates a dust bomb that covers the entire area then you better make sure you involve the city in this as there should be some casualties. Of course this will probably involve the stuff that you want to keep away. Probably remove the HP thing and just give them X days to live without messing with the stats.

Basically I see the poison as a very bad idea, if you just affect the characters it'll seem like you are wanting them to stick to your quest or otherwise they will die and second because it is a flat HP loss then we will have characters die off first before others.

It just seems like you are punishing them for being in an adventure that you don't want to continue.

[Senjou]

If you read carefully I said 10% HP loss. If someone starts with 10 HP they will lose 1 HP every 10 day. If they start with 100hp they will lose 10 and so on. They will all have 100day to dispel the poison. There will be two way of finding the cure: an high risk ( in a sense that is a bit more tricky to get the antidote) but short time one or a "low risk" longer time one. They can decide which one they want to take. If they get the antidote they will regain HP lost from the 60 day on. Both High risk and low risk one will lead to a thickening of the plot in some way or another. Is it better?

[Douche]

Oh, I misunderstood the whole "dispel by a quest" aspect.

The thing is, there are so many spells that allow you to remove poison, curses, disease (paladins are just straight up immune to that), etc that it would just seem like baloney if you say "well, this poison is special and you can't use any of those things cuz I said so". Plus, you've got to give them a save which wouldn't guarantee that all (or any) of them are poisoned unless you make the DC incredibly high (in which case you are in fact railroading), and if they spend too much time screwing around then they're doomed - and you just ended your campaign.

I think you'd be better off poisoning one of their close friends who is an NPC. Then they will be motivated to save him, or he'll just die. You still have your plot hook, but you don't risk pissing off or dooming your players.

[Senjou]

I'm sorry it's my first time DMing. But isn't there any poison which cannot be removed by "remove poison"?

[Shaofoo]

If you read carefully I said 10% HP loss. If someone starts with 10 HP they will lose 1 HP every 10 day. If they start with 100hp they will lose 10 and so on. They will all have 100day to dispel the poison. There will be two way of finding the cure: an high risk ( in a sense that is a bit more tricky to get the antidote) but short time one or a "low risk" longer time one. They can decide which one they want to take. If they get the antidote they will regain HP lost from the 60 day on. Both High risk and low risk one will lead to a thickening of the plot in some way or another. Is it better?

The poison mechanics is the least important thing in my opinion, the mechanics as to how it works means little to the greater problem. But basically don't mess with the characters stats in the long run.

Forcing someone to a quest or their character dies might rub people the wrong way especially when they were given no chance or opportunity to prevent it. If a DM suddenly told me "Ooh btw you suddenly had dust blown in your face" and found out that I had 100 days to live unless I went on this one quest I would be very cross with them. It would be much more understandable if it was say a henchmen from a defeated BBEG doing such things but a random lady willl make it much more difficult to swallow.

You can have a beloved NPC be the one poisoned or even say that someone of nobility is poisoned and they are willing to give rewards to those that can find the cure.

Or basically make sure that the characters can have a chance to avoid it, people trained in Perception and Insight should be able to see something might be amiss, Constitution rolls should be thrown to be able to actually stave off the poison, while curing without the specific antidote is impossible you should still be able to stabilize yourself with Medicine checks to either lower or prevent the HP loss.

[FightStyles]

I'm going to go the opposite of everyone else here, kind of.

1st, I would make it a choice that the characters make that result in them getting poisoned. Instead of making it a guaranteed poison. So the lady walks up and asks for a donation to the wurm god, if the characters decline, then the lady blows the poison dust. If they accept, then the lady blows some dust, but nothing appears to happen, but they are soon to find out what it really does.

2nd, Both of the dusts should still have a CON save with a DC 18 or something which gives the characters a chance to repel the dusts.

3rd, No matter the outcome, the effects shouldn't take effect until the next morning. This will provide some mystery as who the lady is and why she blowing dust in everyone's face. Give the group a little time to go around town asking other people of the city if this is normal. They can then learn that it's not normal, just today, and there are multiple purple robed people doing this all across town. They also can find out that the Clerics of the town cannot seem to dispel the poisons, and the high priest has seen such a poison before and there is a cure, but it is special.

4th, The next day, the purple wurm god is now taking over the town, "saving" those who donated to the robed people as their skin begins to get a purple hue to it. Those who do not begin to feel the effects of poison. Those who donated will begin to turn into a purple wurm and those who didn't begin losing a point of CON score (instead of losing max HP). The high priest was able to deter the dust and escapes just as the party does. He will help the party find the cure if they can help the town afterwards in return.

5th, When they get the cure, the party's effects are erased. AKA CON score is returned to normal and the effects of the purple worm disease is removed. These should not become permanent effects unless they don't find the cure in time.

[JoeJ]

I think you'll have a lot easier time getting player buy-in if the lady does that to an NPC they care about first. Let the PCs investigate and when they get close to catching the lady, she tries to do the same to them.

[Gtdead]

If your campaign is combat heavy, I think you shouldn't do that. If the timeframe is supposed to be tight, then what's going to happen when a bunch of 10 health characters go against the big bad? You will have to add a lot of stuff just to keep them competitive.