Topic: Poisons too slow to take effect?

[Hurin]

Here's a question I've always wanted to ask: are Rolemaster poisons too slow to really have much effect?

If you look on the old RM2 character law poison chart (1989 edition), you see a bunch of poisons, their effects and the time it takes for these effects to occur. Now, the fastest acting poison is the mild nerve poison, which takes only 1-10 rounds. Most poisons take MUCH longer to take effect, and even the more severe effects of the nerve poison won't take effect for 2-50 rounds. Now think about that for a second: if the sever effects don't kick in, on average, until around 25 rounds have passed, the poison really isn't effective in combat (I doubt many combats in Rolemaster last 25+ rounds).

So it would seem poisons are only of very limited use in combat.

On the other hand, there are some poisons listed in another section of Character Law (Enchanted Herbs, breads and poisons) that seem to suggest they take immediate affect. Acaana, for example, is a nerve poision that 'kills instantly'. Well how exactly can it 'kill instantly' if the more severe effects of nerve poisons don't take effect until 2-50 rounds have passed?

Just wondering how everyone handles this problem.

Cheers

[Langthorne]

Most combats only last a few rounds, so you are right that the effects of poison don't really affect the combat itself. This is a good reflection of real life - even very deadly snake bites can take quite a while to take effect.

Sometimes a poison that starts to take effect once the players think the danger has passed can be very interesting to play.

If you have a character who wants to use poison they should try to choose the right poison for each job eg kill slowly through ingestion, weaken gradually through guerrilla tactics, dead with one strike (very rare and expensive poison)

Another thing that is not generally covered (to my knowledge) is that certain 'real' poisons are only fatal in certain species eg certain scorpion poison not being a problem for cats, but highly toxic for humans. I guess we could take different RR modifiers for different races as being part of the equation, with the rest being GM world specific

[Marc R]

A nasty fast acting nerve agent would have taken all the drama out of the last scene in Hamlet. . . .

Some poisons are really fast, but mostly modern agents, most pre-modern poisons should take minutes to take effect. . . and if you think about it, having a cloud of poison gas that kills in seconds courts a TPK.

[Greyaxe]

In my game everyone saves vs poison as if they were level one and arcana does kill instantly, Hamlet be dammed and very very dead.  I love poisons in combat they are a great equalizers making assassins with daggers a real threat in combat because they invariably have poison on their tip.  One should also remember the very act of using poison is scary because more often than not no one has an antidote.  The role-playing can be very dramatic when someone knows they are poisoned, or is aware someone is using poison against them.

[jolt]

Most assassins didn't want fast acting poisons as they typically wanted to be be somewhere far away when it took effect.  Also, the longer it took the poison to take effect, the harder it was to trace back where it came from.

Poison coated weapons usually took the form of darts and whatnot which were designed to strike exposed flesh.  And since most early poisons were organic/naturally occuring the efficacy of a coated weapon only lasted so long and even a thick shirt could cause a large percentage of the poison to rub or flek off.  If you really wanted to poison someone way back when, you usually tried to introduce it into the food or water supplies.  Coating a weapon for battle was, normally, not very effective; especially when heavy armors were still in prominence.

In an adventuring context, carrying around any type of contact poison is fairly dangerous.  Dangerous poisons had to be in sealed containers and once the seal was broken, you certainly would put it back in your pack or pouch.  The D&D notion of carrying around a "vial" of poison that you would dip your dagger into is fairly ludicrous.

Most fantasy game assassins aren't really assassins at all, just stealthy fighters.  An assassin who gets caught up in a whirling melee has already screwed up somehow.  In an ambush, you don't need poison; a slit throat or three knife thrusts to the back are pretty effective.  Of course, with "magic" poison you can come up with pretty much anything you want.  I try to avoid magic poisons though as it becomes pretty easy for a low-mid spellcaster to poison an entire towns/cities water or food supply with no one being the wiser.

[Marc R]

Almost all the "Instant" toxins are aeresols or gasses. . . .the circulatory system just doesn't work fast enough to kill you in seconds. . .and contact poisons usually need to soak through a semi permeable layer of skin.

Most of the dangerous pre-chemical laboratory toxins are all venoms of one sort or another. . .and I cannot think of any reptile, arachnid or bug that can kill you that fast. (Even things like Sea Krait or Blowfish Venom require minutes to incapacitate or kill you.) I know people who were bitten by Copperheads, Rattlers, Black Widows and Brown Recluses and all of them survived to make it to a hospital and a source of antivenom. (Of them, only the rattlesnake bitten man would have died untreated, he ended up loosing two fingers and spending a month in the hospital. . .but he walked a mile to his truck, and drove 10+ miles to a hospital delerious and in excrutiating pain.) I'm sure our australian members must have some snake stories. . . .

Watch a national geographic with blowguns with treefrog venom used on monkeys or other arboreals. . .they run away after being shot, the hunters chase after them on the ground, and collect the body when the monkey falls out of the tree minutes later.

Animal sourced toxins are usually protien based and need to be kept in airtight containers or refrigerated or they degrade in hours.

Plant based toxins, like Cynide or Castor bean toxins keep better, also very nasty. . .but also take some time. . .the most rapid form of death coming from inhalation of powdered toxin. (The entire surface of your lung is a better entry to the circulatory system than any dagger wound.)

The only instant incapacitating, near instant death toxins are all relatively modern, laboratory creations. . .and any party carrying around a sealed jar of alchemically created VX gas is in for problems. . .how would you use it? You willing to risk accidental breakage? Once you use it, you'd need to evacuate the area until there was a lot of rainfall to wash the nasty away. . . .there's reasons why people don't tend to casually use compounds like that. . .powder or gas toxins that poisonous are dropped from planes they are so dangerous to the attacker. . .and a weapon coating toxin that deadly would likely have deadly dust effects. . .an assassin creaping around in a haz-mat moon suit?

Plenty of RPGs downplay poison because it's often contrary to fun, in how it strikes down the weak and the strong. . .but RM seems to handle it fairly well. . .and with the various luck or Con based RR methods, they offer a broad range of lethality. . .but I think the system has the speed of effect pretty close to reality.

[dutch206]

Think of the abused wife, who poisons her husband through his food.  White Oleander would kill in a single serving, but arsenic would kill slowly, over the course of several months.  Revenge is dish best served cold.

[markc]

 You should take a look at the jackjumper ant. The show on the discovery channle was very good.

 I also think that in RM there should be some magical means to inject poison. Sort of a if the blade hits and draws blood then the poison is dispensed from a receptical to the blade to the victom. Or some usch thing but then again almost everyone would use poison and have spells to detect it.

MDC

[Usdrothek]

I'm sure our australian members must have some snake stories. . . .

Most organic poisons take some minutes to begin taking effect and some hours to experience significant symptoms. Many people here is South OZ get bitten by the Eastern Brown snake, the second most poisonous snake in the world. Even then the poisoned individual can (and usually does) last for several hours before treatment.

A major factor in the speed of poison syptom onset is due to the route of transmission through the body. Most toxins delivered by bite/stinger etc, get desposited in muscle tissue. The toxin then travels throughout the body using the lymphatic system, which is powered by muscle contraction, a slow process. Infact, travel from a peripheral site like the foot may take 4-5 hours to reach the thoracic duct and enter the blood stream. This is why immobilisation of the poison site (bandage)  is encoraged.

I think a long period before onset is quite realistic for organic/ animal toxins. The effects of Inorganic poisons on the other hand can be quite rapid!

[Hurin]

Interesting. I'm learning a lot!

So, if I understand how most of you handle it in game terms, you use the standard times and such (i.e., the longer times) for most standard poisons, and view the few 'instant' or 'immediate' poisons in the other section of Character/Campaign law as special/magic and fast-acting poisons?

That's kind of the way I was doing it, but I just wanted to make sure.

The information that some of you provided on rattlesnake venom, natrual toxins, etc., was really quite interesting; thanks for that!

[Langthorne]

On the topic of snake bites in Australia:

http://www.darwinawards.com/stupid/stupid1999-18.html

[Langthorne]

apparently snake venom is not generally 'poisonous' if ingested, so should not rightly be called a poison.

Poison for 'ingestion'

Venom for 'injection'

Maybe someone with specialist knowledge could clear up the terminology?

[Cormac Doyle]

In the study of Toxicology, a substance that causes morbidity (injury/illness) is a Toxin. terms such as Venom or Poison are not assigned specific meanings.

As an example ... Botulism (a bacteria) produces a toxin (also commonly called botulism) that if injected or ingested in large quantities can kill; this same toxin is used to paralyse the muscles of the face ... "BoTox"

[Marc R]

In a broader sense it gets even more ill defined. . .most medicines and many foods are toxic in large doses, but beneficial in small doses. (A lot of biomedical research is made of natural toxins to see if they have medical uses)

So really what constitutes a toxin is kind of vague. . .like if someone does a "tox screen" test on your blood it will show many drugs, medicines, food by products and "poisons". . .

So to a degree, "Toxin" can be even more broadly defined as any chemical agent that has any effect on the chemical, mechanical or electrial processes of the body, the only compounds that are cleanly "non toxic" would be non irritating inert substances. (Like say a small amount of injested clay vs irritating inerts like asbestos, fiberglass, ground glass or the like)

So technically Asprin is a toxin, it's just a useful one with useful effects as long as you don't over do dosage or take it too often.

[Dreven1]

We have an interesting way to play with poisons.
 
I am actually fond of the DND poisons and way of doing this really.  I like instant effects if poisoned.  It just makes for better game play and mechanics.  I do agree that a slow acting poison, placed at the right time, will definitely make for a dramatic scene! (E.g. ?HURRY we have to rush BLOAK924 to the HEALER FAST or he will die!? hehe...)

However, most of my poisons (and you will have to decide this from all the poison lists throughout our gaming books and community) will have either a hit point affect e.g. 2d20 hit points, 3d10 hit points, etc? OR they will have an incapacitating affect e.g. stunned for 2d4 rounds, stun without parry for 1d4 rounds, paralyzed for d10 rounds, Blinded for 1d4 minutes, etc. I have found this is just faster and more efficient?

If it is a particularly nasty poison (like something that will turn you into stone in 1d100 hours) then I will give a resistance roll, plot out the time, let the Players roll a Skill: Diagnostics roll to see how much time the Character has left, you know the usual gambit of things before the eventual solidity of the character.