
Spiders and dark elves and poison, oh my!
I remember in first and second edition D&D, in which any poisonous creature that bit you meant a save or die situation. We feared poison more than anything. We had a house rule that if you were poisoned, a vial of holy water gave you one extra round of life. Our clerics would run around with 3-4 slow poisons and another 3-4 neutralize poisons.
Then 3E came along and ruined poison.
Now, don't get me wrong, 3E fixed WAY more than it broke, from THAC0 on down. But under 3E, poison does ability score damage, and you get multiple saves. And you know why that is crappy? Because ability score damage is a bad mechanic. It forces you to stop in the middle of combat and recalculate stuff on your PC sheet. Then you get bit the next round, and it is back to more math. The consequence is that game masters mostly stopped using poison. The bookkeeping is too nasty. Just not fun. Then there's the whole thing about when you get secondary saves, and how many, and what they mean, and what if you have multiple bites? Heaven forfend, from creatures with different poison types? Drow with poison bolts riding poison spiders, with stinging driders along for extra fun? Who has been poisoned by what? How many saves have they made? What are their ability scores this round? No thanks!
5E does it better, I suppose, by just making poison another damage type, like radiant or fire. And you can get the poisoned condition, which simply imposes disadvantage. Meh. It works, losing hit points is a thing, having disadvantage is a thing. Some poison knocks you unconscious if you fail by 5 or more -- and you can be shaken awake. But who fears poison when it literally cannot kill you? At least under 5E, you can actually put poison into your game without needing to pause for five minutes whenever someone takes ability score damage.
Now, I'm no OG First Editionist who wants to go back to Save or Die, like those Dungeon Crawl Classics grognards. But there is something to be said for poison with some teeth in it, so to speak. Poison that makes you wary ... and can kill you.
In Labyrinths & Liontaurs, There are three strengths of poison and three related conditions to go with them:
- Weak poison inflicts the queasy condition for ten minutes. If you are already poisoned, more weak poison stacks you one level higher.
- Strong poison inflicts the sickened condition for two hours. If you are already poisoned, more strong poison stacks you two levels higher.
- Deadly poison inflicts the nauseated condition for one day. If you are already poisoned, more deadly poison stacks you three levels higher.
Another way to think of this is that there are five stages: normal, queasy, sickened, nauseated, dead. If you were facing enemies with weak poison, you would have to be bit four times and fail four saves to go from normal to dead. If you are already queasy, strong poison pushes you to nauseated, and deadly poison pushes you to dead.
You can read the poison rules for L&L. You can also check out the details on the related conditions: queasy, sickened, nauseated.