Poison damage and condition

[stoutstien]

Has anyone found a way to make them relevant? I was thinking of making a diseased condition that some spells can cause to help with 90% of the game just being flat out immune to poison.

[Fiskco]

I'm not familiar with the poison resistances of different creatures, is it that they are immune to the poisoned condition, or the poison damage?
if it's the poisoned condition that isn't sticking, mayeb look for a poison that deals more poison damage.
if it's an immunity to poison damage, try llooking for poisons why have other effects, like making the target frightened or paralyzed for the duration.

if you really want to reflavor the poisoned condition, take a look at the bestow curse spell and consider re-flavoring some of those as poisons as apposed to curses.

[Aett_Thorn]

I feel like the hyperbole isn’t really helping your case here. Yes, there are a fair amount of creatures that are resistant or immune to poison, but 90% is exaggerating. Even if 90% of creatures in the MM were immune, that doesn’t mean that 90% of creatures you’ll be facing will be immune. Remember that most of the humanoid races, including humans which you might have to fight a lot, aren’t resistant to poison at all, so you can still use it a fair amount.

A lot of high-level monsters have some resistance to it, but at that level, the characters should have options to deal with those creatures.

If you still need a way around it, as a DM, I would say that you could add poison to the list for Elemental Adept, and allow your players to get around poison resistance at least.

[JNAProductions]

I feel like the hyperbole isn’t really helping your case here. Yes, there are a fair amount of creatures that are resistant or immune to poison, but 90% is exaggerating. Even if 90% of creatures in the MM were immune, that doesn’t mean that 90% of creatures you’ll be facing will be immune. Remember that most of the humanoid races, including humans which you might have to fight a lot, aren’t resistant to poison at all, so you can still use it a fair amount.

A lot of high-level monsters have some resistance to it, but at that level, the characters should have options to deal with those creatures.

If you still need a way around it, as a DM, I would say that you could add poison to the list for Elemental Adept, and allow your players to get around poison resistance at least.

Eh...

There are 95 monsters in the Monster Manual alone that immune to Poison. While I agree 90% is hyperbole, there's a flarking HUGE amount of monsters that are immune to Poison. It's really not good.

[stoutstien]

I feel like the hyperbole isn’t really helping your case here. Yes, there are a fair amount of creatures that are resistant or immune to poison, but 90% is exaggerating. Even if 90% of creatures in the MM were immune, that doesn’t mean that 90% of creatures you’ll be facing will be immune. Remember that most of the humanoid races, including humans which you might have to fight a lot, aren’t resistant to poison at all, so you can still use it a fair amount.

A lot of high-level monsters have some resistance to it, but at that level, the characters should have options to deal with those creatures.

If you still need a way around it, as a DM, I would say that you could add poison to the list for Elemental Adept, and allow your players to get around poison resistance at least.
Actually 90% is low-ball and resistance is rare so elemental adept doesn't help.
even a campaign where you never meet a poison immune creature it's still the weakest damage type.
Targets cons and usually involves landing an attack roll first,No save for half.
Then we have protection form poison. A lv 2, hour long buff, that completely shuts down the whole damage type. No concentration required.
I think the problem is they made the poison condition too strong and to make up for that they made it unapplicable most the time.

[Fiskco]

I've go a little story about the poisoned condition and the immunity issue.

About a year ago I was playing a home-brew Dark sun campaign (it's 5e, but post magic-apocalyptic setting) with a bard named Gallard who specialized in making poisons and shooting them using a blowgun. it's worth noting that in dark sun, the DM had houseruled that bards didn't get spells, but instead got poison making abilities instead.

The issue soon became apparent that with the majority of the monsters being resistant or immune to poison, I was spending 50-150 GP on making different poisons, and my blowgun only dealing one point of damage on hit. I stuck with it though, because the one time I did hit with poison it was a really effective tactic (I paralyzed the main BBEG and did 2d10 poison damage, and the barbarian went to town to finish them off).

I still had fun, despite being borderline useless in combat. but poison immunities can be a real problem to poison centered characters.

[JackPhoenix]

Eh...

There are 95 monsters in the Monster Manual alone that immune to Poison. While I agree 90% is hyperbole, there's a flarking HUGE amount of monsters that are immune to Poison. It's really not good.

There's 461 entries in the MM. That means the actual percentage is about 20%. It's still a lot, especially as very common enemies, undead and fiends, belong there, but it's still nowhere near the hyperbole.

[Mordaedil]

It's also worth noting that while a lot of monsters end up having a matter of resistance or immunity, most opposition to the player are measured in humanoids or beasts. Monsters are usually special case, in my experience, while groups of bandits, orcs and bears are far more common encounters.

[Dungeon-noob]

I've spent some time pondering this issue before, and my 2 cents can bee summed up as thus: while there are a lot of immune creatures in the MM, the pure number would indicate that it is quite often still viable.

What makes this less the case however, is which creatures are immune: some very common mooks like undead, most of or entire types of creatures such as fiends, constructs or elementals, and many, many of the big boss monsters like liches, high level fiends and all yuan-ti. All of these are creatures that are much more likely to see play, compared to remorhazes, ankhegs, bulletes, grell or such.

Combined with the fact that in can be difficult to assess whether something will be immune based on description and the immunity is so common, poison is an uncharacteristicly difficult damage type to play with, and even more so to specialize in.

[stoutstien]

It's also worth noting that while a lot of monsters end up having a matter of resistance or immunity, most opposition to the player are measured in humanoids or beasts. Monsters are usually special case, in my experience, while groups of bandits, orcs and bears are far more common encounters.
I read this wrong and thought you typed orc bandits on bears.

[PhantomSoul]

There's 461 entries in the MM. That means the actual percentage is about 20%. It's still a lot, especially as very common enemies, undead and fiends, belong there, but it's still nowhere near the hyperbole.

The number's not only much lower, but since the creatures are typically predictably poison-immune (either intuitively or fairly quickly through gameplay experience), you probably won't "waste" your poison damage since you'll often figure out you probably want to use another type. And if you've got access to poison damage, you've almost certainly got access to non-poison damage. (Lacking non-poison damage while having poison damage would probably be a character choice, at which point you should expect lacking versatility going in... but you can whack something with a stick to help get around that anyway, whereas creatures resistant/immune to typical weapon damage will cause the typical-weapon-damage dealers more of a problem since they're less likely to have had the samr level of access to versatility.)

That said, if you say "I'm going to make a poison-focused character" and the campaign is entirely against undead, the DM should probably say/hint that you might want to save that character for another campaign.

[Dungeon-noob]

The number's not only much lower, but since the creatures are typically predictably poison-immune (either intuitively or fairly quickly through gameplay experience), you probably won't "waste" your poison damage since you'll often figure out you probably want to use another type. Snip
I don't quite agree. Having looked through the entire manual, there were plenty of entries where i either expected it and didn't find it, or didn't expect it and it was there. So i'd say poison damage is the type most likely to be "wasted", if you're actually using it.

[stoutstien]

The number's not only much lower, but since the creatures are typically predictably poison-immune (either intuitively or fairly quickly through gameplay experience), you probably won't "waste" your poison damage since you'll often figure out you probably want to use another type. And if you've got access to poison damage, you've almost certainly got access to non-poison damage. (Lacking non-poison damage while having poison damage would probably be a character choice, at which point you should expect lacking versatility going in... but you can whack something with a stick to help get around that anyway, whereas creatures resistant/immune to typical weapon damage will cause the typical-weapon-damage dealers more of a problem since they're less likely to have had the samr level of access to versatility.)

That said, if you say "I'm going to make a poison-focused character" and the campaign is entirely against undead, the DM should probably say/hint that you might want to save that character for another campaign.
The problem with the predictability defense is its not universal to other effects.
Zombies are immune to poison but not: frightened, exhaustion, charm, or psychic
Actually going through MM alot of undead
Devils and demons seem right but lower CR could have had just resistance.
Modrons can be poisoned even being constructs but most players won't try due to "predictability" same for oozes
Some plant based NPCs have immunity (myconid) but other don't (shambling mound)
All this would be fine if every poison based spell wasn't in the running for worse spell per level.
Ray of sickness-
Ray of enfeeblement*
Stinky cloud
Blight*
Cloud kill
Horrid wilting*
*Honorable mentions for being the right style but still rubbish.

[PhantomSoul]

I don't quite agree. Having looked through the entire manual, there were plenty of entries where i either expected it and didn't find it, or didn't expect it and it was there. So i'd say poison damage is the type most likely to be "wasted", if you're actually using it.

I ran the numbers based on what I had in a readable format -- 393 monsters --, and it lined up nicely with my feelings: you can pretty much predict by creature type whether poison damage is a good idea or not (forgot to check the immunity at the same time, but I'd suspect it's a similar type of predictability just with lower numbers for some creature types).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10k6_cEsClzW4IzjJMPo5eNjz3F6UtlFU

Cases where it's less clear statistically are still generally pretty predictable in-game, at least after having played a little (looking at the elementals in particular). The question of whether it's effective overall also seems pretty intuitive: constructs, undead and fiends are things you won't tend to want to try poisoning unless you have a good reason otherwise.

_____
Assumption note: It didn't really come up here, but I'd rate the "I assumed it would be immune but it wasn't" mistake very differently from the "I assumed it wouldn't be immune but it was" mistake, since only the second is likely to actually waste your turn and resource, whereas the first you might just be less optimal for (without that feeling of "oh, that did nothing...").

[Chronos]

If we're looking at the usefulness of poison damage, then the creatures that you think would be immune but aren't are nearly as bad as the ones that you'd think would be immune and actually are. If in one fight you go "Oh, zombies, I won't even bother with poison", and in another fight you go "Oh, modrons, I won't even bother with poison", then the net effect in both fights is the same: Poison was worthless, and you had to fall back on something else, and this remains true even though modrons are not, in fact, immune.

[PhantomSoul]

If we're looking at the usefulness of poison damage, then the creatures that you think would be immune but aren't are nearly as bad as the ones that you'd think would be immune and actually are. If in one fight you go "Oh, zombies, I won't even bother with poison", and in another fight you go "Oh, modrons, I won't even bother with poison", then the net effect in both fights is the same: Poison was worthless, and you had to fall back on something else, and this remains true even though modrons are not, in fact, immune.

I partly agree, but not wholly because you'll likely be dealing equivalent damage or close given you're probably going to use another type that does normal damage (and the false positives seem like a pretty minor issue, at least from the sample I used -- that might not be representative of what you encounter in a campaign, though). It commonly being Constitution Saving Throws to resist Poison might be much more of an issue (at least by reputation of which monster saving throws are more beneficial to target).

[Dungeon-noob]

If we're looking at the usefulness of poison damage, then the creatures that you think would be immune but aren't are nearly as bad as the ones that you'd think would be immune and actually are. If in one fight you go "Oh, zombies, I won't even bother with poison", and in another fight you go "Oh, modrons, I won't even bother with poison", then the net effect in both fights is the same: Poison was worthless, and you had to fall back on something else, and this remains true even though modrons are not, in fact, immune.
^ all of this guy. Considering poison is the most resisted type already, anyone who's going to be using it will quickly have to start judging whether or not to use it. If you can't use it half the time, even if it only wouldn't have worked a quarter of the time, then that still means that poison damage only performs half the time. And there isn't much you can do about it, other then overcompensating and trying it on everything and thus wasting damage and turns, or learning the MM by heart, which is bad metagaming. Knowledge skills just don't cover it, and it leads to poison damage performing worse then "the numbers" would show.

With once again the point that a lot of the immune creatures are likely to be common to campaign mainstays, leading to them taking up more screentime and giving poison damage less room to matter, poison just. isn't. worth. it.

[Unoriginal]

You could also homebrew that the creature is only immune to its own kind's poison damage & condition, if you consider it to be that much of a problem.

Personally I would not do it, but it's a possibility.

[stoutstien]

Some ideas for buff/change poison based spells.
Ray of sickness- attack roll for 2d8 poison damage and poisoned until end of targets next turn. Upcast increase damage by 1d8 per level. If cast with a 5th lv slot or higher the spell now does disease damage and causes the disease condition.

Ray of enfeeblement- you can recast the Ray as an action as long as you maintain concentration. Upcast will increase duration by one minute per slot.

Stink cloud - area is difficult terrain and target(s) must repeat save for one round after leaving the spell effect.

Blight-??

Cloud kill - applies the poison condition to any target that starts it's turn within in the spell effect.

Contagion- the ettra did a lot to fix this already other than I'd apply the disease condition vs poison untill three passed saves.

*Disease- same condition as poison but must pass 2 saves to remove it.

[Dr. Cliché]

To my mind, poison simply isn't viable as a standard attack.

Instead, I'd tend to view it as a tool for assassination/intrigue plots and/or for times when you have significant information and prep time.

In terms of spells, I don't rate Poison Spray (though I actually think the pitiful range is the biggest issue), and I'd generally view other, non-Cantrip poison spells as being the purview of wizards and druids, as opposed to classes like sorcerers (who really can't afford to have potentially 'dead spells' on their list).

[stoutstien]

To my mind, poison simply isn't viable as a standard attack.

Instead, I'd tend to view it as a tool for assassination/intrigue plots and/or for times when you have significant information and prep time.

In terms of spells, I don't rate Poison Spray (though I actually think the pitiful range is the biggest issue), and I'd generally view other, non-Cantrip poison spells as being the purview of wizards and druids, as opposed to classes like sorcerers (who really can't afford to have potentially 'dead spells' on their list).
Which is sad because is such a good flavor for damage.