Poison Rant

[JellyPooga]

Why are the DC's for naturally occuring poisons (like a vipers venomous bite) so abyssmally low? I mean, the DC for a tiny/small viper is 10...10? wtf? 50% of the time the average guy is completely unaffected by being bitten by the average venomous snake? Is it me or is something about that somewhat iffy? I know the abstract nature of D&D combat means that not every "hit" means actual contact with ones foe, so part of the low DC could be representative of that, but still...

And another thing, as a tendency, bigger critters are less venomous than small ones (they don't develop stronger venom because they have a more powerful bite/sting/whatever...just take a look at scorpions and spiders; pretty much all the big ones are the less venomous ones). So why is it that the DC for poison is based on HD; a fact that means that bigger things (with higher HD) have more potent poison than smaller things, when it should be vice-versa? Something of an inconsistency I feel...either that or they just didn't put an awful lot of thought into the whole poison business, full stop.

Anyways, I've been wanting to get that off of my chest for a while now...rant over (unless someone pokes me into another one/continuing, of course )

[Kalirren]

Behold the meta-balance: the balance of (game balance vs. verisimilitude). You're right, of course. Poison is something little things do better than big things.

If you want to do something about it, then join the club of people who are fed up with the notion of "game balance" at all. I for one have been wanting to scrap large chunks of the d20 system to replace it with something with more verisimilitude, a system that can lend itself to more universes than the normal D&D universe where 99% of the population is unaware that magic exists and where the PCs are complete outsiders to typical society and vice versa. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that our notions of common sense and our observations of our own magic-less universe should still hold in a universe that has magic if no magic is involved in the specific circumstance.

[Yuki Akuma]

If you want to do something about it, then join the club of people who are fed up with the notion of "game balance" at all. I for one have been wanting to scrap large chunks of the d20 system to replace it with something with more verisimilitude, a system that can lend itself to more universes than the normal D&D universe where 99% of the population is unaware that magic exists and where the PCs are complete outsiders to typical society and vice versa. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that our notions of common sense and our observations of our own magic-less universe should still hold in a universe that has magic if no magic is involved in the specific circumstance.

...Great, go play World of Darkness. Or, even better, World of Darkness: Dark Ages.

D&D is not like that, I'm sorry. D&D is a game first and a roleplaying exercise second.



..Why would a game set in a (very loose) simulation of a deeply superstitious period of European history have an average commoner who doesn't believe in magic and the supernatural?

[Wraithy]

the D&D view of poison is terribly escue (I've probably spelt it wrong "ess-kyuu")
because of this waste of potential briliance I would either recommend rebuilding the system or ignoring it as a whole (wyverns just got nerfed)

[Kalirren]

^^

Oh, I -have- played with/under the White Wolf systems. But the combat system in White Wolf just doesn't scale well. (That might just have been because I played Vampire, though, tbh.) D&D is better in general for the combat, and since many things our group runs/plays regularly involve combat, our group still uses D&D. We just have to work with it.

Totally agreed, though, that the D&D system itself was designed to be played as a contextless adventure game. The entirety of playtesting was all combat, and it shows. 2e came closer to moving away from the hack'n'slash of D&D because it was less precise and further abstracted than 3e.

^^ response to edit:

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that setting or that type of peasant mentality. D&D works just fine for the pseudo-medieval, not-very-detailed adventure setting for which it was designed. What I'm complaining about is that 1) artifacts of the D&D system don't correspond well to actual human experience, and 2) the level of power that is supposedly achievable by mortals is far in excess of anything common sense would dictate. (I don't mean magic. Skills at 9HD, full ranks are crazy. Forget 20th level.) As a result, the system itself, along with its power levels, tends to wreck with my suspension of disbelief and my faith in the coherence of world context. In contrast, better-abstracted systems (like some aspects of WW or CoC) do far better in describing a whole host of different settings and environments, but suck at depictions of combat.

[Storm Bringer]

Why are the DC's for naturally occuring poisons (like a vipers venomous bite) so abyssmally low? I mean, the DC for a tiny/small viper is 10...10? wtf? 50% of the time the average guy is completely unaffected by being bitten by the average venomous snake? Is it me or is something about that somewhat iffy? I know the abstract nature of D&D combat means that not every "hit" means actual contact with ones foe, so part of the low DC could be representative of that, but still...

DnD only tracks effect that directly relate to the characters combat ability or skill ranks. If someone makes their fort save, they have either not been injected with enough posion to have a combat trackable effect or that were able to nufflify the posion without it affecting the combat prowess. this isn't actaully the same as 'completely unaffected', just 'no effect on combat ability'.

They may spend the next week with a monster headache and stiff joints, the area may swell, turn an alarming shade, then die down agian sometime later. The character may puke the next morning 'off camera'. None of this is sufficent to affect his skill as a combatant, so the system isn't tracking it.

[Yuki Akuma]

^^

Oh, I -have- played with/under the White Wolf systems. But the combat system in White Wolf just doesn't scale well. (That might just have been because I played Vampire, though, tbh.) D&D is better in general for the combat, and since many things our group runs/plays regularly involve combat, our group still uses D&D. We just have to work with it.

Totally agreed, though, that the D&D system itself was designed to be played as a contextless adventure game. The entirety of playtesting was all combat, and it shows. 2e came closer to moving away from the hack'n'slash of D&D because it was less precise and further abstracted than 3e.

How about D20 Modern: D20 Past with D20 Modern: Urban Arcana?

[Fax Celestis]

I for one have been wanting to scrap large chunks of the d20 system to replace it with something with more verisimilitude, a system that can lend itself to more universes than the normal D&D universe where 99% of the population is unaware that magic exists and where the PCs are complete outsiders to typical society and vice versa. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that our notions of common sense and our observations of our own magic-less universe should still hold in a universe that has magic if no magic is involved in the specific circumstance.

Commoner: "There is no magic!"
Adept: "Oh really."
Sorceror: "Did he just say that?"
Paladin: "I think he did."
Wizard: "Fool."
Druid: "Psst. Wanna see something cool?" *turns into a bear*
Gnome: "Well then, I guess my Spell-Like Abilities are unknown to the world at large."

[Rachel Lorelei]

^^

Oh, I -have- played with/under the White Wolf systems. But the combat system in White Wolf just doesn't scale well. (That might just have been because I played Vampire, though, tbh.) D&D is better in general for the combat, and since many things our group runs/plays regularly involve combat, our group still uses D&D. We just have to work with it.

Totally agreed, though, that the D&D system itself was designed to be played as a contextless adventure game. The entirety of playtesting was all combat, and it shows. 2e came closer to moving away from the hack'n'slash of D&D because it was less precise and further abstracted than 3e.

White Wolf characters can be twinked to high heaven, but nowhere near as badly as D&D ones. NewWoD combat has some issues, but D&D has far, far more and bigger ones.

[Chronos]

To put it into perspective, 95% of folks who get bit by a rattlesnake (probably a good representative of "typical poisonous snake") recover fully without treatment. Yes, there are snakes more dangerous than rattlesnakes in the world, but there are also snakes with higher save DCs.

[Kalirren]

I suppose I should clarify my own thoughts about the combat system being "better" despite all the extra twinkiness that we know about. As we all know, D&D combat was in fact playtested with one particular group - blaster wizard, skillmonkey rogue, healbot cleric, and generic fighter. Of course if you go outside these paradigms the system is sunk right from the get-go. Our group is aware of this, and generally doesn't do this. By RAW a 3rd-level (or was it 5th-level?) caster with Dark Speech (Fiendish Codex I) can make a Hive mind out of the swarm summoned by Summon Swarm and give it 83rd-level sorcerer spellcasting or some such craziness. Corollary: powergaming is easy. Seek twinkiness and you shall find twinkiness.

That said, our group has still found that combat in D&D proceeds faster, easier, and for some reason is generally more fun than that in WW. Maybe it's just me, or our group. I have no counterargument if someone thinks otherwise. I can only think to attribute the difference to the different systems, since it was the same group with the same level of power-gaming tendency, etc.

Similarly, our group seems to agree that in general, the WW skill model provides for a better world, and definitely a more coherent set of interactions between characters. Again, it might just be our group; have your groups given you a different idea?

And for the record, I've never played d20 Modern/Urban Arcana. I confess ignorance. Our group never bothered getting copies of the source material. It might end up being what I'm looking for.

[Anxe]

The entire rules for poison suck in D&D. I'd suggest making your own. Poison does have immediate effects, but the secondary effects are more like 1 other ability damage every 10 minutes than a bunch in the next minute.

[AtomicKitKat]

the D&D view of poison is terribly escue (I've probably spelt it wrong "ess-kyuu")
because of this waste of potential briliance I would either recommend rebuilding the system or ignoring it as a whole (wyverns just got nerfed)

Askew. Pronounced A-skew. Basically just a fancy "old school" way to say something is skewed.

[TheOOB]

Remember that the vast majority of people never get above level 5 or so, which means even with a 12-14 DC, the poison can be nasty if not deadly. Poison DCs are also low for a game mechanics reason. People rarely get one dose of poison in isolation, you get shanked by both the assassins poisoned blades, the grand viser slipped several doses into your wine over night, the five giant scorpions sting you twice each. If the DCs where high, not even a barbarian could survive all that many poisonings.

[Leicontis]

Many venomous creatures don't evnenomate the target every time they strike, and the amount of venom delivered often varies (it's a precious commodity, so they don't want to waste any).

That said, it is certainly true that the D&D poison system is relatively inaccurate. In many poisons, their full effects take much longer than one minute to kick in. Ricin takes hours or days to kill at low doses. Smaller creatures do tend to have stronger poisons.

The backwards scaling of poisons can be explained by both in-game and out-of-game reasons. In-game, most super-sized vipers, spiders, scorpions, etc. are that size due at least in part to the magicalness of the setting. Their venom may not have scaled down in power as quickly as the dosage scaled up. Also, they will often end up fighting creatures with greater resistance to poison and that pose a greater physical threat, so they need more powerful poison. Out-of-game, creatures need to scale resonably in power to make for appropriate challenges for PCs. If poison scales down as quickly as physical power scales up, then all scorpions, regardless of size and HD, would have about the same CR. Am I the only one that thinks a 5th-level party fighting a bunch of Tiny monstrous spiders would be kinda lame?

[Quietus]

DnD only tracks effect that directly relate to the characters combat ability or skill ranks. If someone makes their fort save, they have either not been injected with enough posion to have a combat trackable effect or that were able to nufflify the posion without it affecting the combat prowess. this isn't actaully the same as 'completely unaffected', just 'no effect on combat ability'.

They may spend the next week with a monster headache and stiff joints, the area may swell, turn an alarming shade, then die down agian sometime later. The character may puke the next morning 'off camera'. None of this is sufficent to affect his skill as a combatant, so the system isn't tracking it.

An EXCELLENT way of describing it, thank you.

[its_all_ogre]

in the real world most of the bigger snakes are constrictors anyway. also in the real world the bigger spiders and scorpions do not actually eat prey much bigger than their smaller brethren.
in dnd a colossal scorpion would not be eating rats, it would be eating.....herd animals, giants and the gods only know what else! generally whatever they can catch in the case of vermin.

besides stop comparing a fantasy settings animals with the real world. as i point out to my players 'you may know that carnivorous animals generally feed upon large amounts of herbivores, but in this world they do not, therefore this is a normal state and nothing your character would find odd.'

[HidaTsuzua]

3rd edition D&D has odd poison rules. I believe it's a response to the ubiquitous "save or die" poisons of 2nd edition. As for the size/poison effect, remember giant scorpions shouldn't get that big in the first place. There's a lot of systems in arthropods that doesn't scale well (respiratory and exoskeleton especially). Therefore, if you buy big bugs, buy giant poison too.

As for White Wolf, there's a ton of issues there. Like how they're no vampires in Washington DC (vampires can go berserk in traffic), crazed sniper werewolves (hitting well means tactics go out the window), and in the old world of darkness, why do mages adventure?

[ArmorArmadillo]

Short, Concise Answer: It's game balance (And yes, it's important even if you think it deosn't good enough job), you shouldn't expect things to work in a way that makes poisons useless in combat so as to conform to how it really works.

Long, Playing Along Answer: Evolution depends on environment. In the real world, large creature's have weaker venom because they were large enough that they were no longer threatened by as many creatures. However, in a world with dire creatures, wandering monsters, and dangerous gangs of sword and spell toting adventurers more potent, fast-acting poisons were extremely valuable in terms of survival and therefore developed differently.

[Ceridan]

Why are the DC's for naturally occuring poisons (like a vipers venomous bite) so abyssmally low? I mean, the DC for a tiny/small viper is 10...10? wtf? 50% of the time the average guy is completely unaffected by being bitten by the average venomous snake? Is it me or is something about that somewhat iffy? I know the abstract nature of D&D combat means that not every "hit" means actual contact with ones foe, so part of the low DC could be representative of that, but still...

And another thing, as a tendency, bigger critters are less venomous than small ones (they don't develop stronger venom because they have a more powerful bite/sting/whatever...just take a look at scorpions and spiders; pretty much all the big ones are the less venomous ones). So why is it that the DC for poison is based on HD; a fact that means that bigger things (with higher HD) have more potent poison than smaller things, when it should be vice-versa? Something of an inconsistency I feel...either that or they just didn't put an awful lot of thought into the whole poison business, full stop.

Anyways, I've been wanting to get that off of my chest for a while now...rant over (unless someone pokes me into another one/continuing, of course )

I have not read of a variety of spider or scorpion that is capable of killing with one bite/sting unless you had an alergic reaction the the vennom. On the other hand there are a plethera of snakes, that are larger than any spider or scorpion, that can kill with a single injection.

For example: Black widow
The bite is like a pin prick but causes pain within a few minutes of the attack. The pain spreads rapidly to arms, legs, chest, back, and abdomen. Chills, vomiting, difficult respiration, profuse perspiration, delirium, partial paralysis, violent abdominal cramps and spasms may occur within a few hours of the bite. The victim usually recovers in 2 to 5 days; about 5% of all black widow attacks are fatal.

Next example: Black Mamba
Black mamba venom contains powerful, rapid-acting neurotoxins and cardiotoxins, including calciseptine. Its bite delivers about 100-120 mg of venom on average, however it can deliver up to 400 mg of venom; 10 to 15 mg is deadly to a human adult. The initial symptom of the bite is local pain in the bite area, although not as severe as snakes with hemotoxins. The victim then experiences a tingling sensation in the extremities, drooping eyelids (eyelid ptosis), tunnel vision, sweating, excessive salivation, and lack of muscle control (specifically the mouth and tongue). If the victim does not receive medical attention, symptoms rapidly progress to nausea, shortness of breath, confusion, and paralysis. Eventually, the victim experiences convulsions, respiratory failure, and coma, and dies due to suffocation resulting from paralysis of the muscles used for breathing. Without treatment the mortality rate is 100%, the highest among all venomous snakes in the world.

Now, as to why a huge death stalker (yellow scorpion also called Leiurus Quinquestriatus) scorpion's venom is more damaging, in game terms, than that of tiny scorpion is simple. Volume. The huge death stalker scorpion delivers several orders of magnitude more venom than the tiny one.

Yes several types of scorpions, snakes, and spiders should have a much higher save DC than they do. Some should even be save or die. That said no player would want her/his heroic charactor killed by a bug while traveling from point A to piont B.

Imagine if you will:
The mighty adventurers return. Tell me how you managed to slay the fell dragon Araxalon. I assume that Morgan died valiantly battling the beast. What!? You say he was killed by a snake bite while releaving himself in the woods? It must have been an enormous snake? No. It was only a foot and a half long? Well now, let us say he was slain battling the Dragon shall we?

[Beleriphon]

Am I the only one that thinks a 5th-level party fighting a bunch of Tiny monstrous spiders would be kinda lame?

Or better yet, the Fine sized black widow with poison so deadly it kills instantly, but because it only does 1 damage it can't get past the mage's stonskin spell.

[Saph]

A 1st-level commoner has an average fort save of +0. So the chance of him failing a DC 10 Fortitude save is 45%. Poison forces two saves, so he'll have to make a second save 1 minute after the first.

Let's assume the commoner has a Con of 10. To kill him, the poison has to reduce his Con to 0. A viper's poison does 1d6 Con damage. So, for him to die, he has to fail both Fort saves and the two d6s have to come up a total of 10, 11, or 12. The probability of that is 1/6.

So the probability of an average 1st-level Commoner with Con 10, if untreated, being killed by the bite of a Tiny viper is:

9/20 x 9/20 x 1/6 = 81/2400 = 0.03375 = ~3%.

Now, I'm no expert on snake poison, but that figure doesn't sound all that unrealistic to me. The vast majority of poisonous creatures in the real world aren't all that dangerous to humans, and even the ones that have a reputation for lethality still have a pretty low fatality rate per bite. There are a few exceptions (mostly in Australia or Africa), but they're rare.

D&D's an American game. The most well-known poisonous snake in America is the rattlesnake. It's just a guess, but that 3% figure might not be all that far off the actual mortality rate of untreated rattlesnake bites. If anything, poison in D&D is actually more dangerous than in real life, as it kills you within 1 minute tops, while most real poisons take much longer than that.

D&D is unrealistic in some ways, but I have the feeling that this may not be one of them.

- Saph

[bugsysservant]

Hmmm... I see your point, but I think you fail to understand just how big colossal is. When you are bit by a sixty foot tall spider, the venom delivered will not be in mg, it will be in gallons. Yes, the actual poison is less toxic, but so much of it is delivered that it doesn't make any difference.

Plus, its not like people can't survive poison IRL. Look at how Rasputin died, for example.

Edit: Saph, just a little nitpick, but your math is wrong. To fail the first save and take 4-6 con. damage imposes a penalty on the second save. The percent death is actually over 4, which is probably a bit closer to the American norm. Anyway, the average con. damage taken is 3.325, which is a serious dent in a person's health. Most poisons won't kill you, but to reducing your health is pretty realistic. This represents the time you would have to spend feabily bed ridden in order to recover from a single bite. And if the snake bites you more than that, it only gets worse. After two bites, you've lost over 7 con., and after three, you're dead, at negative two constitution.

[Beleriphon]

Plus, its not like people can't survive poison IRL. Look at how Rasputin died, for example.

According to the BPRD he's still not dead. :)