Author Topic: Recovery from poison effects  (Read 1097 times)

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Offline Druss_the_Legend

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Recovery from poison effects
« on: October 22, 2017, 02:00:35 AM »
I have a pc who is suffering the effects of poison. its not a standard effect from the standard rules but a type of nerve poison that is effecting stats CO/STR and gives a cumulative penalty to actions.

interested to hear what other GMs out there have used versus poison.

the pc in question will seen get to a herbalist/physician and i was wondering what i should use for time of recovery. the poison is well established. it was inflicted by a poisoned blade that delivered a deep cut (critical) to his chest. the pc chose not to rest and not seek first aid/healing for the first 12hrs since the wound.

any suggestions how to handle the recovery once he gets to the herbalist/physician?

I would think that 3-7 days bed rest would be minimum but there may be a way to lesson the effects of the poison? 75% recovery max until bed rest? taking an antidote if one can be made (poison lore/cookery/first aid skill check) in the form of a brew or salve seems likely but i dont think this will have an instant effect as it isnt magical.

thoughts?


Offline RandalThor

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Re: Recovery from poison effects
« Reply #1 on: October 22, 2017, 09:15:42 AM »
The poison itself should tell you how it is healed (but it sounds like one made up by the GM, so you need to see how they want it dealt with). In the case of attribute damage I thought it was usually 1 point per day of rest, one after the other (so 10 points of Con damage and 10 points of Str damage equal 20 days of rest to remove totally). The not getting help as soon as possible I am assuming made things worse, because that allowed the poison to spread throughout their body, something that is always worse. (Though, funny enough, if the wound bled a lot - I am assuming it didn't as your character would likely be dead after 12 hrs of bleeding - it could have actually taken some of the poison with it, thusly lessening the effect.)

To speed up the healing, you either need to get the appropriate herbs or magical healing. Poison lore could be used to identify the poison and hopefully what is needed to deal with it and its effects. Of course, because they waited, they will most likely just be dealing with the effects as the poison has "run its course."
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Online jdale

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Re: Recovery from poison effects
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2017, 11:53:34 AM »
If you want some real-world data points, https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article/102/8/563/1600487/Failure-of-antivenom-to-improve-recovery-in and https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/snakebite#1 have some discussion of recovery time. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2700615/ has a nice discussion of effects and treatment as well as secondary concerns.

In game terms, once the antidote has been successfully applied, I would treat the character as needing recovery based on the damage accrued. If it's a hits or a penalty, that's covered by the usual recovery rules. Treat as nerve damage for a nerve venom, etc. You could put a penalty on the recovery roll for the delay before treatment. Normally you want to restrict the rate at which the venom moves throughout the body.

RMSS gives recovery from Con damage from undead at 1/day of rest, 1/week of activity, 2/day if resting in a place "soothing and sacred" +1d10/day on holy or consecrated ground. Holy probably doesn't matter for natural venoms (perhaps if it's a deity of healing?) but the higher rates might be possible if being tended to by a particularly skilled healer.

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Offline Druss_the_Legend

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Re: Recovery from poison effects
« Reply #3 on: October 22, 2017, 02:08:29 PM »
great. thanks for the input thus far. good ideas here.
the pc in question is not keen to rest as they are needed in upcoming adventures so the recovery will indeed be slow until full bed rest is allowed to happen.
Magical healing is the best option here for speed of recovery and there is someone available for this although i suspect they would prefer to use a herbalist/physician in the short term and the healer is not as that easy to locate and there will be a 'dept' for the healers assistance (most likely a quest to help the healers deity/followers of the healers deity).

Because the poison has run its course i think ill rule that once an antidote is given no further deterioration will take place.
stat recovery (1 per day of activity, 2 per day of rest, 3 per day of rest with skilled healer)
penalty to actions (5 per week of rest)
hit recovery (can heal at normal rate once an antidote is given)