New to Hero: Poisons

[Gandalf970]

Can someone walk me through how poisons work.  I am looking for poisoned weapons and perhaps ingested.  Is there a roll against it, I really didn't understand what they were saying on pages 210 in E2 and 201 in Fantasy Hero.

[Chris Goodwin]

If you're asking about something like a saving throw, most likely not unless the poison description calls for one.  Most of them have listed defenses against them.  

[Ninja-Bear]

2 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

Can someone walk me through how poisons work.  I am looking for poisoned weapons and perhaps ingested.  Is there a roll against it, I really didn't understand what they were saying on pages 210 in E2 and 201 in Fantasy Hero.

Broadly speaking poisons are built with powers and modifiers. A poison can be a Drain or a Killing attack or something else. Typically poisons have damage over time and No Normal Defense. This advantage allows you to by pass normal defenses BUT if you have the defense then you take NO damage. It’s all or nothing. So a snake venom might be NND: Defense LS: Poisons. That means no matter the dice the person with this life support is protected. The poison could be written up that you can avoid some (or all damage) if you make a CON roll. That would be a limitation on the power itself or could be a GM rule for the game. Damage overtime allows to build a powerful poison but it gives you the chance to get healed cause not all the damage is rolled at once. If you post a specific poison we walk you through it.

[Gandalf970]

Like the Death Adder poison in the Bestiary.  It does 1d6, NND damage over time, 5 increments, one every minute for 5 minutes.  There is no save you take 1d6 killing damage every minute for 5 minutes.

[bluesguy]

48 minutes ago, Gandalf970 said:

Like the Death Adder poison in the Bestiary.  It does 1d6, NND damage over time, 5 increments, one every minute for 5 minutes.  There is no save you take 1d6 killing damage every minute for 5 minutes.

Hero doesn't have a concept like 'saving throws'.  If you have the defense against the attack it will apply and if you don't then you take it full on. 

 

For instance if PC hit bad guy with their sword and the bad guy has no resistant defense the bad guy will take all the body AND all the stun.  Their natural PD won't block any of the stun from a killing attack.  The same applies for the Death Adder's poison.  If the defense is LS:  Poison and Arrogant the Ranger has LS: Poison then he will take no damage.  But poor Frito the Hobbit has no LS: Poison and so he is slowly dying.  (I had to use those names since your user ID is Gandolf970 😁 )

[Ninja-Bear]

7 hours ago, Gandalf970 said:

Like the Death Adder poison in the Bestiary.  It does 1d6, NND damage over time, 5 increments, one every minute for 5 minutes.  There is no save you take 1d6 killing damage every minute for 5 minutes.

So like I said then there is no “saving throw”. What happens is in game time, you would roll 1D6 immediately and there is no defense (unless you have Life Support: Poisons) then roll  1D6 each minute for another 4 minutes.

[Ninja-Bear]

Bluesguy they changed Stun damage with Killing Damage. You now get your PD versus Stun damage with Killing attacks however if you natural PD is higher  than the Stun rolled you take a minimum of Stun equal to Body rolled.

[Gandalf970]

Thanks Ninja-Bear and bluesguy!  This helps alot as they are fighting Darkun Assassins who are using poison and really screwing these guys up.  This forum is great and very helpful, really appreciate all the help.

[Ninja-Bear]

I’m glad to be of help.

[Ninja-Bear]

If you have the bestiary, I probably tells you how paramedics can help save you from Poison damage. And again if you want, you can have them make a CON roll to stop damage.

[Gandalf970]

Thanks again Ninja-Bear I will take these into consideration as we head into the next campaign.  

[Ninja-Bear]

1 minute ago, Gandalf970 said:

Thanks again Ninja-Bear I will take these into consideration as we head into the next campaign.  

FWIW, I looked in 4th ed Bestiary and every poison I ran across was an RKA type build. I was  thinking of a snake in the shannara series that turned the guys arm into stone. That I believe would be a transform.

[Gandalf970]

Very cool.

[Doc Democracy]

The big element in HERO that is missing in other systems is the ability of the GM to make the physics and metaphysics of a campaign world work exactly as desired.  The cost of that is a lot of upfront work and thinking time.

 

If you want all poisons to be affected by a Cure Poison spell, then you need either to make all poisons use the same mechanic OR ensure that all poisons have a common limitation (effects mitigated by use of Cure Poison).  You can then define Cure Poison as Healing, only versus poison.  Once that is in place then it does not matter whether the poison is a SPD drain, an entangle, a Killing attack or anything else, you can pro-rate the Healing as 1D6 = 1 DC of effect on whatever the poison is.

 

Doc

[bluesguy]

On 6/10/2020 at 3:14 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

Bluesguy they changed Stun damage with Killing Damage. You now get your PD versus Stun damage with Killing attacks however if you natural PD is higher  than the Stun rolled you take a minimum of Stun equal to Body rolled.

 

Umm when did that change?  Can you cite the reference because I will need that to document a new 'bug' in HCM?  LOL!

[Ninja-Bear]

When, I’m not sure but I saw it in 6th vol 2. And before you change it, double check that I read it right. Lol

[Chris Goodwin]

6e2 p. 103.

[bluesguy]

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

6e2 p. 103.

Thank you and ARGGG!

 

And how is it handled in 5e?  The way think it is?

[Chris Goodwin]

2 minutes ago, bluesguy said:

Thank you and ARGGG!

 

And how is it handled in 5e?  The way think it is?

 

Same way as all the editions before, if that's the way you think it is.  🙂  In 5th and prior, Normal PD or ED only stop the Stun from Killing Attacks if there's at least one point of Resistant PD or ED.

[Ninja-Bear]

4 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

6e2 p. 103.

Thanks Chris!

[Ninja-Bear]

FWIW, I like the new way. It makes more sense.

[pawsplay]

yeah the old way created arbitrary thresholds and make it all but mandatory to take a single point of resistance defense.

[Tech]

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Same way as all the editions before, if that's the way you think it is.  🙂  In 5th and prior, Normal PD or ED only stop the Stun from Killing Attacks if there's at least one point of Resistant PD or ED.

For 1st, 2nd and I think 3rd edition of Champions, only Damage Resistance stopped any Stun and Body. Now, he is citing Fantasy Hero so I can't vouch for that.

[bluesguy]

So I just tested HCM with 6e characters and yes I did implement it correctly.  Which probably means I implemented it correctly for 5e.

 

Sorry for hijacking this thread. 

 

Please go back to the discussions about Poisons.

[HeroGM]

IIRC Equipment 6th talks about poison [It does, pgs 204-210]. S.Long did an article describing something similar to saving throws in Digital Hero way back, it's reprinted in the first collected volume of his editorials(Heroglyphs)