Magical Poison damage

[Galithar]

Prompted by recent discussions on the weakness of poison as a damage type I've been thinking about how to make poison more attractive as a damage type for players.

What are the playgrounds thoughts on differentiating mundane and magical poison just like there is for BPS?

My thought is that at a point (maybe high level abilities, spells, whatever) poison can become magical in nature and bypass resistance or immunity.

This would require wide scale modification to stat blocks that would indicate who/what is immune/resistant only to mundane poison. Probably not something I would ever expect or ask for in core, but as homebrew?

So my questions are:
1. Would you as a player be interested in the possibility of specializing in poison damage if you could create magical poison that wouldn't be affected by most creatures immunity?

2. Is there any way you think this could unbalance damage types in favor of poison?

3. Would this be best used as a feat that allows creating magical poison under specific conditions, while still limiting spells to conjuring non-magical poison so that action economy can be used as a major limiting factor? Are there even any spells that cause enough poison damage for this to be a concern?

4. Should magical poison remove immunity, or for most creatures instead allow it to treat immunity as resistance instead?

5. Would the differentiating of mundane and magical poison make sense to you in an in-universe sense?

Any input is welcome of course!

[Greywander]

My main concern is having a damage type that just outright ignores resistance and immunity. Of course it's going to unbalance things in favor of this new magical poison type. You mean I can just do full damage all the time and never worry about resistance or immunity? What is even the point in being resistant or immune to poison then? Otherwise, you're basically creating a new damage type, and now you have to go through the MM and figure out which monsters should be resistant, immune, or vulnerable to your new damage type, which is probably more work than you or anyone else is willing to do.

I think a much simpler fix would be a feature that allows you to swap poison damage for necrotic. Or maybe acid. Either of these would make poison abilities much more viable.

[xyianth]

Honestly, I think it all depends on what you really want to achieve. Poison has a number of mechanical problems that make it unpopular both in magical and non-magical forms. Everyone knows that poison as a damage type is ineffective against nearly a third of all monsters. While adding in some mechanical way to address this shortcoming would help, it would really only benefit a small number of spells and abilities by itself.

Even if there were no creatures immune/resistant to poison, I still wouldn't use it as my primary schtick. The two poison based cantrips are garbage even if you change their damage type to something else. Infestation does d6 damage, targets the statistically worst save, and has a rider effect that is pretty much never helpful. Poison spray does d12 damage in point blank range and targets the same terrible save with no rider effects. Ray of sickness is an okay 1st level spell, but only because the poisoned condition is decent, it is not like the spell's damage or other qualities are impressive. Higher level spells rarely interplay with poison either, so trying to make a poison themed caster pretty much ends with 1st level spells. Even the cloak of flies invocation is worse than it has any right being. As far as mundane poison goes, it drains money and time like crazy just to spend a bonus action to deal damage that booming blade adds for free.

In my mind, poison is just poorly thought out in 5e and the only real way to address it is by making a homebrew class, subclass, or chain of feats that greatly expand on what poison can do. Adding a means to bypass immunity/resistance is a good start, but poison should be more than a few extra dice of damage and a status condition. If poisons could add different rider effects in addition to or in place of damage, that would help a lot.

[Galithar]

My main concern is having a damage type that just outright ignores resistance and immunity. Of course it's going to unbalance things in favor of this new magical poison type. You mean I can just do full damage all the time and never worry about resistance or immunity? What is even the point in being resistant or immune to poison then? Otherwise, you're basically creating a new damage type, and now you have to go through the MM and figure out which monsters should be resistant, immune, or vulnerable to your new damage type, which is probably more work than you or anyone else is willing to do.

I think a much simpler fix would be a feature that allows you to swap poison damage for necrotic. Or maybe acid. Either of these would make poison abilities much more viable.

A actually addressed a lot of what you said already.

WHY would it unbalance things? Force is already a damage type that is almost entirely bereft of resistance and immunity. What poison effects would be so powerful that it would tip things so favorably for poison over force or radiant?

The point of the resistance or immunity would be identical to the point of resistance or immunity to nonmagical BPS. Not ALL poison would bypass. Second the idea of treating immunity as resistance was presented already.

I think damage swapping is more umbalancing then giving value to the existing damage. Necrotic, Acid and poison are probably not resisted by the same creatures, bypassing immunity/resistance AND allowing it to trigger any ability triggered by necrotic or acid damage. Honestly I don't know if this is actually an issue or not I don't know what abilities exist off of this trigger other than Elemental Adept Acid. It's just another possibility for issues, including with not yet released content.

And yes, as I stated it would require going through every MM entry used to determine if it should be poison immune or non-magical poison immune etc.
Not easily doable for the whole book, but VERY easy for a DM to do on the fly each time they pull one of those stat blocks to use. You just see the resistance/immunity and then decided whether magical should bypass it or not before you put it into an encounter plan.


Honestly, I think it all depends on what you really want to achieve. Poison has a number of mechanical problems that make it unpopular both in magical and non-magical forms. Everyone knows that poison as a damage type is ineffective against nearly a third of all monsters. While adding in some mechanical way to address this shortcoming would help, it would really only benefit a small number of spells and abilities by itself.

Even if there were no creatures immune/resistant to poison, I still wouldn't use it as my primary schtick. The two poison based cantrips are garbage even if you change their damage type to something else. Infestation does d6 damage, targets the statistically worst save, and has a rider effect that is pretty much never helpful. Poison spray does d12 damage in point blank range and targets the same terrible save with no rider effects. Ray of sickness is an okay 1st level spell, but only because the poisoned condition is decent, it is not like the spell's damage or other qualities are impressive. Higher level spells rarely interplay with poison either, so trying to make a poison themed caster pretty much ends with 1st level spells. Even the cloak of flies invocation is worse than it has any right being. As far as mundane poison goes, it drains money and time like crazy just to spend a bonus action to deal damage that booming blade adds for free.

In my mind, poison is just poorly thought out in 5e and the only real way to address it is by making a homebrew class, subclass, or chain of feats that greatly expand on what poison can do. Adding a means to bypass immunity/resistance is a good start, but poison should be more than a few extra dice of damage and a status condition. If poisons could add different rider effects in addition to or in place of damage, that would help a lot.

So i think what you're discussing might be a symptom of poison not being good to begin with. So every UA I have seen that had a strong poison ability people bash it as underpowered and useless. Some of these abilities get damage type changes or aren't printed in official because if this feedback. So part of the reason that poison is so bad, is because poison is so bad.

It's a good point to consider for homebrew though. Would I have to make a bunch of poison damage spells/abilities in addition to making the damage type more reliable? I think you're right that they would both be needed to make the damage type truly appealing for a player to focus on.

Maybe do the opposite of what Greywander suggested? A feature that allows swapping poison damage IN instead of out. I still don't like the concept of damage swapping on the fly for the reasons I discussed above. Since it's homebrew I can do whatever I want though, like allowing the damage swap to be made permanent when learning a spell etc.

Wonder if I can find a list of all PC options that deal poison damage?

[DwarfFighter]

Is there a problem that a many creatures are immune to poison damage?

I can understand the disappointment of players that rely on poison when facing enemies who will ignore that, but exactly how does the game improve if you can poison an Undead or a Construct?

-DF

[Galithar]

Is there a problem that a many creatures are immune to poison damage?

I can understand the disappointment of players that rely on poison when facing enemies who will ignore that, but exactly how does the game improve if you can poison an Undead or a Construct?

-DF

I don't have the link right now, but LudicSavant (follow playgrounder) put together a spreadsheet that showed (if memory serves me) 199 MM creatures that are immune to poison. This is a far greater number of immunities than any other damage type.

The improvement is admittedly slight. It allows a player that wants to have the schtick of using poison to not feel constantly useless in combat. It's not easy to do this with the current numbers of by the book creatures that are immune. This of course becomes irrelevant if you are in a game that doesn’t use those enemies.

It's almost more to open the door for someone who wants the RP of using poison to feel more valid in combat. I don't THINK there are any abilities that allowing the player to do this would make this overpowered. If there were people would talk about them more I think. The only really powerful poison I know if Purple Worm Venom. Obviously that one is greatly DM gated for access so it becomes a non-issue.

[Unoriginal]

Is there a problem that a many creatures are immune to poison damage?

I can understand the disappointment of players that rely on poison when facing enemies who will ignore that, but exactly how does the game improve if you can poison an Undead or a Construct?

-DF

IF I wanted to change the poison immunity thing, I would do it that way:

-Creatures that can't be poisoned because there is nothing to poison stay immune

-Creatures which are born or have acquired poison immunity stay immune

-Creatures that were classified as immune to poison because they have poison themselves become resistant instead, with a special trait to make them immune to their own species's poison only.

That way it's believable and make the Poisober feat relevant.

"Your poison won't work 'cause you're not using magic" will NOT help anyone wanting to use poisons.

[JackPhoenix]

IF I wanted to change the poison immunity thing, I would do it that way:

-Creatures that can't be poisoned because there is nothing to poison stay immune

-Creatures which are born or have acquired poison immunity stay immune

-Creatures that were classified as immune to poison because they have poison themselves become resistant instead, with a special trait to make them immune to their own species's poison only.

That way it's believable and make the Poisober feat relevant.

"Your poison won't work 'cause you're not using magic" will NOT help anyone wanting to use poisons.

That ultimately won't change much. Most of those immunities are undead, constructs, elementals and devils, which would still be immune. Other than that, there are green dragons, grung and yuan-ti, all of which falls under the 2nd point. If you exclude all those, the list of creatures that have both poison immunity and poison attacks shrinks to few non-devil fiends (including demon princes).

[Unoriginal]

That ultimately won't change much. Most of those immunities are undead, constructs, elementals and devils, which would still be immune. Other than that, there are green dragons, grung and yuan-ti, all of which falls under the 2nd point. If you exclude all those, the list of creatures that have both poison immunity and poison attacks shrinks to few non-devil fiends (including demon princes).

Green Dragons, Grung and Yuan-ti are all typical cases of "they have a poison so the designers made them immune to poison", so they fall under the third point.

Second point is more for creatures likes the Poison Troll.

[J-H]

I don't support adding it mechanically, although I do think we need a couple of higher-level poison spells that aren't clouds.

If you're fighting Aztec Aaracokra, stay out


I have an artifact-tier short sword designed for assassination in my game, which the party hasn't found yet.
One of its characteristics is:

True Poison. When you strike a target, it takes 2d12 poison damage or acid damage, whichever it is less resistant or more vulnerable to.

[MoiMagnus]

There is already the acid and necrotic damage type.
(1) Mundane acid and mundane poison are already pretty similar (both are substances that destroy living being through various chemical ways), and acid is able to affect nonliving things too.
(2) Necrotic damage and magical poison are also pretty similar too. Both are the materialisation of the concept of "death", and attack the essence of life itself.

Want to buff some poison effect? Just upgrade it to acid damage or necrotic damage.

[DwarfFighter]

Would it perhaps make sense to have a PCs poison abilities apply to dealing acid damage instead? I'm not sure what the relevant abilities are, but poison and acid are both substances you want to apply to the target in some way, so many of the techniques could conceivably apply to a fantastical acidic substance without too great a suspension of disbelief.

Edit: What he said:


Want to buff some poison effect? Just upgrade it to acid damage or necrotic damage.

-DF

[stoutstien]

IMO poison is to much of a catch all type that should be broken up into poison, toxic, and banes.

[Jerrykhor]

I dont want magical poison because it adds unnecessary complexity to the game, and its also very confusing. And there's the logic of 'why not magical fire, ice, lightning and thunder too?' Magical Force obviously will make 0 sense.

Poison damage definitely could use some buffing, but not this way.

[Nifft]

I feel like poison spells are fine as-is. They're balanced by their risk / reward ratio -- the risk is that you don't know how many of your enemies will be immune, and the reward is higher average damage.

What non-spell poison effects do you see regularly at your table?