Two ideas for Poison and Disease. Nothing urgent, we've got plenty on our docket. This is something that came to me while looking at spell effects and I feel they would better round out how the maladies translate to something useful/dangerous in our gameworld.

Currently, neither are really threatening. They are always fortitude rolls and even if you fail, the actual effects can be removed by something like a potion of lesser restoration. As hazards for adventurers, they're hardly anything to worry about and as weapons to use in PvP and PvE they are a horrendous choice to anything that would force a fortitude roll(Death, Blindness, Ability/level drain). With both of my suggestions, while the actual effects are still removed by stuff like lesser restoration, the fact that you're still either poisoned or diseased begins to mean something for both you and your party.

Poison: While in the Poisoned condition, the subject takes 5% of their Max HP as damage every 6 seconds. This stops after the secondary roll(1 minute, 50% HP).

Disease: While in the Diseased condition, nearby allied creatures also roll against the disease each round. After 1 minute, this roll only happens once every hour(2 min).

I'm not sure about the implementation of either of these, if we'd have to modify each disease and poison script individually(unfeasible for all but the most popular ones), or if there's a general script we can modify for each condition. In any case, my reasoning follows.

Poison becomes an eminent threat, whether you can negate the ability damage or not. Trotting along after having been poisoned is a bit harder to do. It's also not solved by a heal potion, unless you want to wait until you got down to 50%, which is dangerous, or heal every other couple of rounds to negate it, which is costly in both time and resources. You've failed a fort roll, so by all rights, you should be suffering somehow, considering what else could have happened to you: death, petrification, or harm. For PvE, it's a usable tool to negate high regenerating creatures or simply to have some constant damage on a foe over time.

Disease becomes a threat to large crowds, both allied and enemy. For your party, traveling with an untreated sick person is serious risk. Even if they survive the first minute around you, every now and then you're going to cough, sneeze, vomit, or otherwise force your friends to come in contact with the disease. If you can't heal your ally, you're faced with the dilemma of keeping your distance and having them be rushed down by enemies alone, or weathering the sickness with them. For PvE, infecting one target opens the door to calamity among the ranks. Every round for a minute, the mob is saving against succumbing to the disease. The risk/reward of beating one opponent's fortitude roll pays off over time by enemies falling sick left and right and then infecting other enemies as well.

Edit: Math fix.

Edit Edit: Let's just all agree I can't math after midnight. I had it right the first time.

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Funny you should mention poisons. I was thinking recently that poisons are really mediocre on Amia and could use some sort of love, either by way of custom poisons (built by assassins or whomever) to changes like this.

I like this idea.

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bad man

This would make hunting in areas like the Shekats, the quagmires, the goblins, Anhk snakes, and any other mildly poisonous area almost impossible, since if you got poisoned twice by fluke numbers, you'd be eating 100% of your HP over the next 60 seconds with no way to stop it except to just be immune to it, and immunity whoring is not what we should be encouraging more of on Amia.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Poisons should be worthwhile though. Not too long ago, I tried to utilize poison use on one of my fellows that had the feat and after looking around and trying out what I found, I was very disappointed. It didn't last very long after application and didn't do anything meaningful. Maybe boost them in the hands of assassins or the like.

While I like the disease contagion idea, we must be careful doing anything like that as one highbie returning to Cordor with a nasty infection could end up creating a newbie bloodbath that lasts and lasts...

I do not really think "immunity whoring" is that big a concern as curing both disease and poison is relatively cheap and simple honestly.

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Rashad the Azure, Zakharan Merchant-lord Most Fair and Master of the Desert Wind
Loremaster Tukson Devers, Oghmanyte Wrestler of Knowledge and Child of the Passive Voice

(No tells for Rashad while I'm playing other characters please.)

Right on time, Tormak contrives the worst possible scenario.

I kid.

As with any change, we'd have to look at and re-balance currents areas that use the feature we're changing. That's balance 101: no change is made in a vacuum. There's no reason to assume we wouldn't dial back or adjust areas that use poison and disease. A major reason it's so prevalent in those areas is because it's a laughable hazard you can throw around without worrying about. It's a fort roll(5% chance of it working in any instance for most PC's), and its effects are completely ignored by a Lesser Restore potion or Bubbly Potion. Scary stuff, amirite.

I'm pretty sure you can't be diseased or poisoned again if you're already under one of the conditions. If not, it would be easy enough to make the script check if you're already under the effect and not reapply it should it fail, a la Melf's Acid Arrow. There would be no stacking of DoT, that would be stupid. You're poisoned, once, twice, doesn't matter, it would only apply once and abate after the first minute. Even then, the effect would be tied to the actual poisoned condition(when your lil HP bar goes green). After that minute, you still can't be "re" poisoned and take DoT, as you're still poisoned in the first place, until you're cured.



There's your ways to stop the damage. You'd have to remove the actual Poisoned condition, not just treat the symptoms.

So to Recap:

-DoT would not stack. You wouldn't experience the DoT again until after you had cured the poison and got poisoned a second time
-Areas that have poisonous creatures would be adjusted as needed.
-Folk could immunity whore if they want, but it would be much easier just to carry a few Cure items or have a buddy who heals when visiting venomous/diseased dungeons.

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Curing is harder than preventing, and more expensive to boot.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

It's a good point to raise about the implications this has about pve mobs. poison is already killer on stats if it hits your con in low grinding.

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bad man

One thing I don't like about poisons is simply that they don't stack. If you, for example put a poison on a weapon, even if you did DC 60, I don't think I'd take it neccessarily, because I get a single proc off it in PvP (you really should die within 60 seconds in PvP). That singpe proc now did what? Reduce their abilities tiny bit. You are immune to poison while poisoned. So, I'd actually suggest that that would still be true if we do the ticking damage. Of course, Healkits would remove it too, but you always take 'only' that 50% damage.