[MUD-Dev] Poisons (was Foods)

[Koster]

On Monday, August 25, 1997 6:18 PM, Matt Chatterley wrote:
>While there are many forms of Toxin, one designed to kill a member of 
your
>race quickly and efficiently will do so with no qualms, so if you 
have
>reason to suspect food may be dodgy, you'd better get it tasted (and 
if
>you don't suspect it, you deserve to get killed off)!

I've always had a soft spot for thieves and assassins so one of the 
things I've been playing around with is a more realistic poison system 
than just -5hp per tick or even subtle variations on that theme. After 
some research, I've got a rather complicated idea but I've been 
striving to streamline it and ensure its playability. Any suggestions 
or comments will be appreciated.

METHODS OF ADMINISTRATION:
INHALED:	Fumes on a rag/poultice or gaseous cloud
INJECTED:	Syringe, sharpe blade, or bite, etc.
CONTACT:	Basically any prolonged skin contact
INGESTED:	Eating nearly any form, except gaseous.

MAJOR SYMPTOMS:
Bleeding/Hemorrhage, Blindness, Blurred/Double Vision, Cardiac Arrest, 
Coma, Convulsions, Coughing/Difficulty Breathing, Deafness, 
Drunkeness, Drowsiness, Delirium/Hallucinations, Fever, 
Nausea/Vomiting, Paralysis, Respiratory Failure, Thirst, 
Unconciousness, Weakness

Uses six toxicity levels. You can treat individual symptoms but unless 
you use an antitoxin, the symptoms will recur and the longer you let 
the poison course through your veins the more damaging to your system 
the poison becomes. The toxicity level indicates at what point on the 
scale you start at and the higher levels include all the symptoms of 
the previous level. I believe I also have it decreasing hitpoints by 
2% for each level of toxicity. There's also a chance of outwaiting the 
poison, if that fails it upgrades to the next toxicity level.

Problems I see with it right now:
* This doesn't feel very streamlined and efficient yet.
* This is totally untested so no feel for playability
* I don't particularly want to have a separate spell for each poison, 
but I do want to have an IDENTIFY POISON skill/spell
* What does comatose mean in game terms? How or do you come out of it? 
How is it different from stunned?
* I want to do a poison_lore type thing with this as well
* A few new affects/update things to code/check/test
* Doesn't make distinctions for different races/species but could 
easily do so

Btw: I really like the post on inebriation as well! I've been trying 
to think of ways to adapt it all morning. Ah well, it must all be part 
of the immortal conspiracy to make the game harder all the time.

-Kristen Koster
 Kaige at LegendMUD