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Make Poisons Great Again

Started by , Jun 03, 2021, 08:07 PM

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Making this post after playing around with some of the poisons available and finding them to be incredibly disappointing. I would like to see them touched/revamped because I feel like they're a fun and pivotal component to playing an Assassin, Blackguard or any roguish character who can pass the check to use them.

The main issue with poisons right now is their duration. After talks in the Discord, seems like they still have the base NWN duration of 3 rounds. Keep in mind it takes a full round to apply the poison to a single weapon, so by the time you want to hit anyone with it, it's already gone. You literally have to be in someone's face, use the poison, and then maybe get a lucky swing and poison them. It's just not happening. Tried using some in-game, and by the time I actually want to hit someone, the buff was already gone.

The main advantage of poisons, however, is it stacks with buffs like Elemental Weapon. Pretty handy, but that's about the only advantage I can tell of using them.

My suggestions would be:
- Obviously up the duration on poisons to something suitable, maybe character level/turn? Character level/minute? Or just a flat duration.
- Tested this on a mid-level character so this might be wrong, but the DCs could use some adjusting I think - with access to the upper-mid store, the highest DC poison you can get is DC20 (consider high fort saves and most enemies are already immune).
- If poisons are meant to be a short-term boost, then maybe make poison use a free action? A sort of combat buff like rages. If they're opt to be more long-term buffs in line with other things, disregard this idea.

Relevant (sort of) link: nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Poison_(item) - poison 2das are referenced there for viability