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11
Aug/2008

Food poisoning, real life and in game
On Thursday, I was poisoned.

For Real.

Not in game.

It was a TERRRIBLE experience, I was...

(spoiler: bad visuals.. skip this paragraph) Puking up streams of multicoloured viscural intestinal tract into the temple of the porcelin god. AND streaming full pelt from the nether realms, my body heated up so badly that I could have poached eggs in the sweat of my brow.

Summing it up.. I was too sick to gamesmaster, actually too sick to do anything for 3 days, but got me thinking.. Why don't players have the same experiences...

In a Gaming world, the levels of disease, naturally occuring poisons, the lack of hygene.. surely they would be sicker more often.

There is the school of thought, that a body more exposed to disease will be more resistant to disease, yet that only means that they should be getting as sick as we do.

ALSO, its a GREAT trick for rogues to play, put a bit of rat into someones meal, they get sick, and when you see them doubled up and heaving, take the opportunity to bash them/rob them, as any combat abilities they may have will be reduced.



So, for future reference:

Food Poisoning:

If characters were to partake in unhealthy meals, food from untrusted sources, or failed attempts to cook almost bad food into good. The Gamesmaster should determine what level of Food Poison exists, and then have the character make successive tests every 3 hours.

Failed cooking attempts should be 45% tastes bad, but no effect 50% mild poision/5% medium poison.

Unhealthy Meals or unhygenic cooking or culturally difference: 30% no effect, 60% mild poison, 10% medium poison.

Significant cultural difference, extreme unhygenic cooking: 10% no effect, 40% mild poison, 40% medium poison, 10% strong poison.

Strength of Poison:

Mild: no modifier inital check. 2d6 poison effect. ignore higher criticals.

Medium: -d6 initial modifier. 3d6 poison effect. ignore extreme criticals.

Strong: -2d6 inital modifier. 4d6 poison effect. full chart applies.



Character makes initial constitution/strength test against poison plus inital modifier, If failed, character is struck with terrible stomach pains, reduce initiative, reflexes/dexterity, at least a 15% reduction in all statistics (more if bad fail) If they PASS, count at least a 5% reduction, (minimum 1) for the cramps and pains.

Every 3 hours afterwards, make Con/Str/Will saves, as appropriate:

POISIONED CONDITION CHECK:

Roll: STR/CON/WILL minus Poison effect

Pass by 12: reduce appropriate Stamina score by 1 for the day, reduce total poison effect by d4+1.

Pass by 6: reduce appropriate Stamina score by 1 for the day, reduce total poison effect by d3.

Pass: reduce appropriate Stamina score by 1 for the day, reduce total poison effect by 1.

Fail: reduce stamina by 1, reduce poison effect by 1, temporarily reduce physical stats by 1.

Fail by 6: reduce stamina by d3, reduce poison effect by 1, temporarily reduce physical stats by d2.

Fail by 12: reduce stamina by d4+1, reduce poison effect by 1, temporarily reduce physical stats by d3.

Fail by 18: reduce stamina by d6+2, reduce poison effect by 1, temporarily reduce physical stats by d4.

Higher Pass: bonus success systems should reduce the poison effect by 1 extra point, in d20 this is a roll of a 20. roll again for subsequent 20's for subsequent reduction.

Higher Critical: critical fails, etc, should not reduce the poison effect for that turn,
Extreme Critical: If your system allows for extreme criticals, e.g. in d20 system roll of 1s means re-rolls for Extreme criticals, if a second 1 is rolled, ADD d2+1 poison effect.

Tags: Bane_Star Food Poison Rules

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Viewing 1 - 4 out of 4 Comments

From: Bane_Star
08/11/2008 15:51:56

I wrote generic rules so that anyone could adapt.. my game system handles alot of this very differently, as I have differing sets of physical health and stamina, and mental fatigue, But If I write in my game system, alot of the blog would be useless/harder to adapt..

Personally I find that alot of players skip the spells that they really should take in D&D, Neutralise Posion and Cure disease haven't come up in any my last D&D group, cause it was just not required. This might have been poor planning from a DM, but when dealing with such a poor depth world system as D&D you dont usually need to.

Truth be told, I dont like D&D, To compare, D&D is too WoW, too many spells, too many magic weapons, too much munchkinism, I prefer a more darker, gritty, realistic world, where magic is rare, and heroes deal with everyday things as much as the otherworldly.

Gimme a day when my 50 year old barbarian, suffering from previous wounds, lack of healthy diet and some re-occuring disease, has to quest for a local dentist, and needs to deal with the city beauracracy, as swords are illegal in these parts. but thats just me. 

 

From: BLAMM67
08/11/2008 13:49:53
Not bad, but it adds a level of complexity that might not work with all games. Making these checks *every* time the PC eat can get monotonous. And since it appears you're using AD&D rules, a Neutralize Poison or Cure Disease are usually not very hard to come by except for all but the lowest level characters. I don't want to put a damper on your newly found GM evil, but the reason this kind of thing isn't brought up very often is because it's usually a small bump in the road compared to the other dangers that lurk in the standard D&D environment.

That said, if you want to make it easier on yourself, there are already rules in place for poisoning and for being sick or nauseated. Give them the check for food poisoning as you describe, but have the effect be the standard ability loss for poisoned coupled with sick/nausea effect. Typically, poison causes a two saving throws, second one needed only if the first one failed. If they fail the first one, they are also sick. If they fail the second save, they are now nauseated. Recovery works the other way. When the character recovers the ability damage from the second fail, they upgrade from nauseated to just sick. They recover from being sick when they recover the rest of their ability damage. Just an idea, but it save you from all the numbers.

From: Bane_Star
08/11/2008 07:36:07

Oh I forgot to add, After All Poison Effects are reduced to 0, you continue to roll to regain your stats...

 

In Real life this too a full two days for me, so I guess that the rolls might be reduced to every 6 hours, and count reduce total poison effect as regain physical stats.. I think I should run this wa few times on NPCs and see what the results are... 

From: MC43
08/11/2008 07:10:00
(Strokes beard) You know... I might have to add this...


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