Let's talk about poison

[Mogri]

Poison is, like, probably the most common status effect in any RPG, and it's also the one that's messed up most often. Generally, poison ranges somewhere between useless and annoying, and only rarely is it threatening after the first couple hours of the game.

The original Final Fantasy is a good example of this. Poison takes off 2 HP per round of combat, plus 1 HP per step out of battle. The in-battle effect amounts to nothing, and the out-of-battle effect becomes negligible as the game goes on. This is especially true because you're more likely to have ways to cure it later in the game. Poison is basically scary in the Marsh Cave and never again after that.

Certain of the later Final Fantasy games make poison deal percentage-based damage. This might be a step in the right direction, except that you're almost always able to deal more damage through more conventional methods. It's certainly not worth curing during battle in most cases. The Balk battle in FFT comes to mind - even though your whole party starts the battle poisoned, you're usually better off focusing down Balk than curing the poison.

So those are some examples of poison done wrong (in my opinion, anyway). What about some of the more threatening poisons?

D&D poison tends to damage a player's stats. This is simple and effective, but not really what I'm discussing here.

Final Fantasy XII poison deals something like 25% damage per tick. Someone correct me if I'm wrong; it's been awhile. It's actually the best method of dealing with certain enemies. The gambit system means that you usually won't have to worry about your party being poisoned, though, so it's more of an offensive tool here.

POWDER poison deals tick damage plus a larger amount on the last tick. POWDER has varying degrees of poison; Deadly Poisoned is almost assuredly fatal if you don't have poison resistance. If you do have poison resistance, you still take damage on the final tick. The various monsters deal varying degrees of poison, so it scales well throughout the game.

The Poison spell in Laggy Fantasy Tactics has a very large area of effect. You're still only dealing 1/8 damage per turn, but the AOE is so big that the total damage done by the spell can make it worth casting. This isn't a perfect solution; it gets outclassed by other spells later in the game, but this is somewhat expected of a low-level spell.

Pokemon poison comes in two varieties. The one that's worth discussing is the kind best known from Toxic. It deals increasing damage each round of combat and will eventually scale up to 100% damage if you stick around that long. This is a very cool mechanic, especially in the game it's in.

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Okay, if this gets much longer, I'll have to submit it as a Hamsterspeak article to get anyone to read the whole thing. DISCUSS.

[Baconlabs]

I recall the Mother series having pretty tame poisons. In Earthbound, it came in two flavors - light poison in the form of the common cold and sunstroke, and slightly-heavier poison in the form of nausea and... poison.
I think it ran the same problem that Final Fantasy did. Outside of Peaceful Rest Valley, the graveyard road, and the diggers' tunnel, poison is a negligible thing. In desert areas where sunstroke appears randomly to torment you, you've built up plenty of PP to cure everyone without
breaking a sweat.

Meanwhile in Mother 3, poison is even less of an issue since Healing PSI is now a cure-all and Hot Springs are everywhere. The player, however, can inflict a minor variant of poison - burns. They occur every now and then when using PK Fire and rack up a few rounds of decent residual damage.
(This also occurs when an enemy uses PK Fire and is not curable.)

Poison seems to be a perpetually minor hazard in most games. The only instance of "useful poison" I can think of is James's suds in Wandering Hamster.
EDIT: And that one cat claw that dishes out poison.

[Momoka]

I think the only games where poison is scary are Nethack (where it's stat drains and potential insta-kill), and Xenosaga (25% of you max health per turn).

I supposed the middle ground would be to have poison do more damage based on the strength of the person casting it, so it scales throughout the game.

[JSH357]

FFX has really nasty Poison. I don't think it's as bad as FFXII's, but it takes off a pretty huge chunk of HP.

[Mystic]

The first time you encounter poison in FF1 is nearly impossible to deal with. All of the enemies in that stupid cave poison you when they hit you, and it's basically guaranteed to kill your guys during that battle or on the way back. And yeah right having money to pay for the healing - always my least favorite part of the game.

I like how Disgaea did poison. It does a pretty large percentage, 20% if I recall correctly. It's one of the things you actually have to worry about even when you're in the latter stages of super level 9999.

I'm using poison quite often in my game. I'm using the non-blocking attacks for Toxic-like effects, too.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

I seem to remember Earthbound's poison/nausea being really nasty earlier in the game... they did something like 20 damage per turn, which will kill you in two turns at the very beginning of the game (though of course, they don't show up until later than that.) Like poison in most games, it's not too bad once you have a reliable way of getting rid of it, and it gets pretty useless when your HP gets really high. But until then...

Poison in roguelikes tends to be pretty dangerous, too. I know in ADoM it's pretty much a death sentence early on, unless you've managed to find poison resistance or an herb/potion that cures it, and even later it can kill you if you're not careful (multiple poisonings increase the damage, and giant swarms of spiders are very common...)

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There's actually an optional boss in Okédoké! (one of five in Chapter 4's secret area) with an attack which causes insanely huge poison damage. Pretty much the only way to survive it is either cure it immediately, or have 100+ HP so that you survive the first hit and then cure it immediately. Even if you max out your HP, there's really no way to live through more than two or maybe three hits.

Other than that, though, poison in Okédoké! usually isn't that big of a deal... though exactly how effective it is depends on who's using it.

[Twinconclusive]

Make poisons stack and you suddenly have a snowballing beast.

[Newbie Newtype]

The first time you encounter poison in FF1 is nearly impossible to deal with. All of the enemies in that stupid cave poison you when they hit you, and it's basically guaranteed to kill your guys during that battle or on the way back. And yeah right having money to pay for the healing - always my least favorite part of the game.

Dude, stock up on Pures/Antidotes.

This is common sense.

EDIT: Everyone already listed a bunch of commercial game Poisons, so OHR example: Poison was very useful in Darkmoor Dungeon.

[Bob the Hamster]

I'll be referring to this thread when I get around to implementing <a href="http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce ... tats">Plan for more flexible stats</a>

It would be pretty cool to be able to implement some other poison behaviors in the OHR than the one we have right now.

[msw188]

Did we ever get stat caps for the status affliction registers? I make poison stackable in the Tales series which makes it an awesome tool, but it gets out of hand against bosses because I can't limit the "stackability", so to speak.

[Bob the Hamster]

The way poison works right now is that you start with a poison register of 1000. Any damage that reduces the poison register below that amount is repeated as poison damage. So I guess it has an arbitrary built-in cap of 1000 (which you would reach when you knock the poison register down to 0)

So yes, when stat customization is in, it should be relatively easy to set a cap. Also, it should then become reasonable to even have different poison caps for different heroes and enemies, and maybe even to have equipment change the caps.

[Mystic]

The first time you encounter poison in FF1 is nearly impossible to deal with. All of the enemies in that stupid cave poison you when they hit you, and it's basically guaranteed to kill your guys during that battle or on the way back. And yeah right having money to pay for the healing - always my least favorite part of the game.

Dude, stock up on Pures/Antidotes.

This is common sense.

I've played and beaten (and master run) FF1 dozens of times, it's one of my favorite games. But poison (and stun, too) is still one of the major things I worry about whenever I go through it again. It's nothing like other games where you can nonchalantly buy 99 antidotes and then forget about poison as a threat for the rest of the game.

[Mogri]

EDIT: Everyone already listed a bunch of commercial game Poisons, so OHR example: Poison was very useful in Darkmoor Dungeon.

Darkmoor Dungeon had three poison spells: a single-target, inexpensive one that you could spam, a multi-target one that wasn't usually worth using, and a single-target powerful one.

Darkmoor doesn't have to worry about scaling, though. Sure, the enemies get tougher as you go, but you don't! None of your heroes really increases in power, so the poison that's good at the beginning is good at the end (and is the only way to "beat" the last boss for the bad ending, spoilers). In fact, poison is better when the enemies get tougher, since longer battles mean more time for the poison to damage the enemy.

A good alternative for poison might be to have different levels of poison. Maybe your warlock starts out with Poison1, then later learns Poison2 and Poison3. Just like how Fire1 is less useful late in the game, Poison1 won't be worth applying - you'll want to use your more powerful spells. Again, though, the enemies have to be tough enough to justify using poison over more direct methods.

And then there's snowballing poison, but as mentioned, it can be tough to balance just right.

[guo]

I would like to see poison targeting different stats, and differing types of poison in the engine. Then I can have bleeding & poison but different methods of "curing" for each, such as bandages & antidote. The "bleeding" would be a small % chain from piercing and slashing attacks.

[Newbie Newtype]

I've played and beaten (and master run) FF1 dozens of times, it's one of my favorite games. But poison (and stun, too) is still one of the major things I worry about whenever I go through it again. It's nothing like other games where you can nonchalantly buy 99 antidotes and then forget about poison as a threat for the rest of the game.

You don't even need to nonchalantly buy even 5 Antidotes in most games, it's completely pointless, especially when Healers learn Antidote spells at like, level 1.

Elfland was a learning experience.