Topic: Poison in RMC

[magritte@shaw.ca]

It's a long time since I've played Rolemaster and I can't recall dealing with poison much, but I was looking at the RMC rules and if I'm understanding them correctly, poison seems awfully ineffective.  Take Acaana for example--a level 10 poison that kills instantly and is one of the most expensive poisons in the book.  Sounds devastating, except that since death is necessarily an extreme effect, you have to fail your resistance roll by 101 or more. Even for a 1st level character, that's only going to happen about 4% of the time, while 16% of the time, there'll be no effect at all. A 10th level character is unlikely to suffer more than moderate effects from Acaana.

I do see in Creatures and Treasures a discussion of luck-based and constitution-based poisons roll, but I don't see any indication in character law that indicates the type of poison resistance roll.  Obviously, you could treat the poisons as all-or-nothing and say a reaction role failure kills, but that's not very satisfying and contradicts the rule that "treat the stated effect as extreme".

As it stands it seems like Trusa is far more effective than Acaana, despite its cheap price and lower level, because a failure of only 21 is needed to kill--granted it's not instant, but it's still pretty fast.

What am I missing?   

[Dax]

IMO a failed RR gainst Acaana (even 1 point) results in full effect - kills instantly.

The effect description with mild, moderate, severe and extreme are for general poisons; if you know a snake injects an unamed respiratory poison.

If you are going that way some of the poison seems overpowered.
Perhaps with named poison the GM should go general a way like failed by 21+ full effect, and mild/moderate effects even with a successful RR.

And maybe Acaana doesn't know any effect other than full effect:
"Your RR was successful, you have to burp once..."

[Marc R]

The Con and Luck based options are there as options.

Any or all poisons may be resolved via level based RR, Luck or Con, at the GMs discretion.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

There are two main sections in Character Law.

1) The Herb/Poison List -- Items on this have their described effects take place when the target fails the RR. Unless the description states otherwise (such as for Wek-baas), there is  no gradient effect based on how well or how badly they resist.

2) Section 10.11 Poisons -- This is a more general discussion of poisons, and is meant to be used more in conjunction with the creatures from Creatures & Treasures, whose poisons are listed in the manner of "5th level Reduction Poison" and so forth.

Creatures & Treasures
In C&T, There is a small chapter on Poisons, this is meant to expand upon the information found in Character Law. Lordmiller is incorrect in calling the Con and Luck based methods new options, they aren't options at all, at least not in the sense of other options in RMC. If they were options, they would be marked as such (like the two options actually given in C&T). These are essentially just new methods of handling/resolving poisons. More tools for the GM. 

However, IIRC, there are no creatures in C&T that actually use these two new methods. They are included for you to use, if you like, in creatures that you create. Hence the tables on page 148 for randomly determining the type of poison.

Unless a creature's description says otherwise (or you as GM change it), poisons use level based RRs.

[magritte@shaw.ca]

Thanks for the clarification, although in some ways having no gradational effect makes the named poisons less colorful than  the standard ones.j...the onset of mild, moderate and severe effects has great dramatic potential.

[Marc R]

If you find that you like the variety of graduated effects, you can add them to toxins that don't have them by using the examples given. The lethal poisons are easiest, in that you can just decide which category you feel they fit into, and then apply the severity based results for that poison type.

So just make Lethal Toxin A a nerve poison, and apply the results for nerve poison, with the lethal result from the poison table being the extreme result.

For the non lethal toxins, I select a basic type of toxin and use the time to effect of that poison type, then I've gone one of two ways:

A) Make the max (non lethal) result of the poison the Extreme result, then create the lesser results (Often I use 50% effect for Severe, 25% effect for moderate, and then a weak result for mild like "dizzy" or "nausea" with action penalties.)

B) Make the max (non lethal) result the Severe result, and have the Extreme result be lethal (Even non-lethal poisons like anesthetics can kill), then make the moderate result a 50% effect and the mild result a weak result per above.

I used to use A, but then switched to B later, since at the time the PCs were using a lot of anesthetics to capture people, and I wanted there to be a risk of overdose/allergy resulting in death, even for poisons that were indicated with a max result of "Paralysis" or "Sleep".

[vroomfogle]

Since poisons tend to be rather low level, and I don't see why someone should get less vulnerable to poisons as they go up in level, I use a static target level for all Poison RRs, such as 5th level.   In other words everyone resists all poisons as if they were level 5 rather then their own level.

[Greyaxe]

Since poisons tend to be rather low level, and I don't see why someone should get less vulnerable to poisons as they go up in level, I use a static target level for all Poison RRs, such as 5th level.   In other words everyone resists all poisons as if they were level 5 rather then their own level.

I do the same except everyone saves as 1st level.  Poisons when administered efectivly are killer.  I make the application of poisons difficult though and before a target has to make a save the user must score an absolute success otherwise the user gets a bonus to save or reduces the effect by half.