Poison

[coldwar]

Hello, all. I'm a long time maker, first time forumer, an ltmftf.

I was wondering exactly how poison works. Does it just shave off a little HP everytime it triggers, or a percentage or what? Is it something useful at high levels, or is it just a minor annoyance the whole game?

[Perversion]

Re: Poison

Annoyance. The amount of points it takes off one character during a battle is minimal, and if you don't cure the poison right after the battle, every X amount of steps you take, the game stops, makes this "Hit" sound, and displays a message on the screen that you've been poisoned. The way to avoid this: Give the player a cure spell/potion. But if you are immediately able to cure the poison, it makes little sense to even use poison in the first place, if you are always able to cure it. And trust me, if the player has to travel to a town halfway across the map to cure the poison, with the poison message occuring every so often while walking, people will just begin to get annoyed with your game.



So yeah, annoyance. I think I used poison (cobras) in my first game, but I refuse to use it in any other game I make.


Oh, yeah, welcome, coldwar.

[coldwar]

Re: Poison

That's too bad. If you had poisons of different severity, you could do cool stuff like have classes that specialize in poisons, like Venomancers and Alchemists.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Poison

Yeah, I'll go with annoyance as well, but if you make poison the added effect of a spell, you can still do cool things like make Venomancers and Alchemists or whatever else you desire.

As an aside, the "BANG! You took 2 damage!!!" message is also startling, so if you poison someone in an event, you might want to make that clear to the player.

AND, welcome to the Pavilion!

[ezz1692]

Re: Poison

what do you mean by specializing in poison? The only thing you can do with poison is ...poisoning him! I don't know what else "specialized in poison" you can do.

[Hikari no Kaze]

Re: Poison

Well, there's...

• Poison as an Added Effect
• Elemental Poison
• Undeadbuster Poison

and who knows what else, if you're creative enough.

[ezz1692]

Re: Poison

Well, you can't make a monster weak to poison, but i'm sure if you make an attack with the poison ball effect, give it a "poisony name", you may have what you want to do, making poison appear like an elemental.

[coldwar]

Re: Poison

Yeah. 'Poison' could be strong vs. certain enemies. And then there could be slow poison, death poison, paralysis poison etc.

But there will never be a good damage over time poison, like in Diablo. It looks like the best uses for it are against the player as an annoyance and something that will scare the crap out of them.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Poison

Yeah, uh, poison in Diablo was never a "good damage over time" kind of poison...

Basically, making a Necromancer or other "specialize in poison" kinda character would also involve a bit of careful planning/naming on the part of the programer.

No, you can't have the actual Bio effect of the Final Fantasy(s) but you can make spells of variable power (1 at 10 damage, 1 at 25 damage...) that all have "poison" as an added effect. You can also make that character your "Status healer" or even go so far as to incorporate the "Blue Mage" ideals and give good ole Neccy all the status effect spells...

[coldwar]

Re: Poison

Yeah, uh, poison in Diablo was never a "good damage over time" kind of poison...

On the contrary, some people use Plague Javelin to some success! But that would be off topic. But I suppose one of the reasons you would want to make a decent Poisonmancer in RPGM3 would be to avenge how sucky Poisonmancers in Diablo are.

Status effect characters would be something fun and gimmicky to play for sure, though. It would beat a whole party of direct damage characters.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Poison

On the contrary, some people use Plague Javelin to some success!

Who?!

But I suppose one of the reasons you would want to make a decent Poisonmancer in RPGM3 would be to avenge how sucky Poisonmancers in Diablo are.

That and all characters with poison as their ace in the hole...

Status effect characters would be something fun and gimmicky to play for sure, though. It would beat a whole party of direct damage characters.

On the other hand, dealing 1-5 damage every turn until something dies gets tedious extremly fast. Maybe think about having a battle (maybe two) where a boss is weak to status but protected from all other kinds of damage...

I still stand behind having one character whose only tactic is using status effects/getting rid of unwanted status effects/increasing stats/etc but any more than that and it slows down gameplay.

As another alternative, try making the Status Character an archer, so that way most players might not totally ignore them.

[ParanoiasBestFriend]

Re: Poison

You could make a cleric, or make your Status Character your healer, why waste two character spots?

[coldwar]

Re: Poison

Think outside the generic fantasy setting box, people!

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Poison

Think outside the generic fantasy setting box, people!

WALKTHROUGH TIME~!

Step 1: Start actually thinking. God gave you a brain for a reason: use it.

Okay, now that we got that outta the way... Dealing damage to anything when damage is in the single digits is never a good idea unless the target has max hp that are also in the single digits. Therefore, Poison is totally useless in MOST battles. As far as RM3 is concerned, poison is the only way to deal indirect damage and therefore your "Poisonmancer" is 100% totally useless 99.9% of the time.

Should you decide to take a quick look at reality, making an archer who doubles as a cleric (thanks PBF!) who also has offensive/indirect damage spells makes a whole lot of sense because now you have a character who, when properly balenced, CAN attack for melee damage, CAN heal up other members of your party, CAN use offensive magic, and WON'T be sitting through most battles BLOCKING or ATTACKING and having neither matter.

Sure, I agree with the "think outside the box" principle, but first you need to think about what you can actually do. EXAMPLE: in Diablo2 you CAN make a Necromancer with lv20 Teeth, but nobody does, because its a waste of 20 skills points that could have definatly been put to better use in any number of different skills (Corpse Explosion, Bone Spear...) thus making your NEcromancer EFFECTIVE instead of crippling your character and never being able to make it past Nightmare if you were lucky enough to get there in the first place...

Definatly, a team COULD benefit from a character whose skills involved status effects or indirect damage, however, RM3 is not the place for this poor soul.

[ParanoiasBestFriend]

Re: Poison

Think outside the generic fantasy setting box, people!

Considering this is RPM3, what is possible besides the "generic fantasy setting".