I don't like the immediate ability drains that go with poisons. They reduce any benefits of using an antitoxin or a nuetralize poison spell or item right away. This lessens the value of having a healer around or someone with a good heal score, not to mention the value of nuetralize poison.

For instance, if you are poisoned and get a -4 to your CON, why worry about using antitoxins or nuetralize poison right away? Just wait for the poison to go away, then chug your lesser restoration potion or use your purple crystal.

I thought we used to have a period of time where we could treat the poison, and avoid the ability drain and the need for a lesser restoration? Did that change?

Thanks

Antitoxins only remove the poison itself and prevent the secondary poison damage, while I am pretty sure the spell neutralize poison does remove both the ability damage and the poison itself!

Yeah, I thought that too.

I'm talking about the immediate ability loss on getting poisoned. It makes using an antitoxin, or a more expensive neutralize poison less efficient than just waiting for the poison to finish its effects and chugging a cheaper lesser restoration or using a fairly common purple crystal.

Maybe make poison damage come in waves? Say, three hits instead of one so that people will try to get rid of that poison right away? That's why I suggest putting the ability hit off until later, to give a person with healing skills the chance to get rid of it completely if they get it quick enough.

Right now, I think characters just wait until poison runs out and use their purple crystal.

And, I'm out of suggestions for a while. :)

Neutralize poison removes both the poison and ability damage so it's pretty useful. The others... Not so much. Unless you're really in a hurry, it's often better to wait for the second fort save on the poison and use a restoration instead of the antitoxin.

There are lots of dangerous places where if I am strength sapped to being heavily encumbered or con sapped to singular digits of maximum health I would prefer using neutralize poison as soon as possible instead of dying! I also think that antitoxin in conjunction with things like ironguts are a decent solution to avoid secondary poison damage if you can survive with the smaller ability penalty.

<ScottyB> Has anyone else noticed that the suggestions the players have lately are either impossible with the NWN engine, or incredibly difficult to reliably implement?

Locked for hardcoded-ness