Thread: Neeed Advice On A Small Detail

Hey, I'm Rob and am new to this forum.

I have a BRP book and have learned a fair bit from it, but I was looking over the examples of poisons, each having a description of symptoms and a potency number. The thing is, it doesn't tell you how to apply this to any poisons or venoms not in the book, so my question is; how do you figure out what value a certain poison may have? How would you know what to compare it to?

I ask because I'm writing up my own game and some classic creatures have been altered to take on my own twists, some including venom/poison. The problem is, while I have the symptoms written up, I have no idea what would be a fair potency to apply to each. Are there any guidelines I can use? Do any of you have tips or something I can work with?

I'd really appreciate if you can help me out here, since randomly allocating a value would end up either becoming stupidly powerful or not powerful enough.

Originally Posted by Rob

The problem is, while I have the symptoms written up, I have no idea what would be a fair potency to apply to each.

The best way to deal with this would be to do a little Internet research concerning
the toxicity of various real world poisons in order to get a feel what plausible toxici-
ties / potencies would be like. A short cut is the fact that a poison's toxicity can be
expressed as the percentage of persons who are killed by the poison, or suffer the
poison's maximum effect if the poison is not a lethal one. So if you define the poten-
cy of your poison as the number of people of an average Constitution which are da-
maged or killed by the poison, you can compare that desired strength of your poison
with the Resistance Table on page 171 of the BRP book. For example, a poison that
is intended to damage or kill 75 % of all persons with an average Constitution of 11
needs a Potency of 16, a poison that is designed to hurt 40 % of all heroes with a
Constitution of 15 needs a Potency of 13, and so on.

Approaching the thing from a different angle.

What I (sometimes) tend to do is relate the Potency to a statistic of the creature in someway. Base the POT on the critters POW, for example, which can potentially make for a powerful bite attack, depending on the critter.

Great ideas, guys, thans. I'll give an example. My game will have vampires, but their bite does not turn people (they breed rather than turn). Instead, their bite, if a save is failed, would cause the victim to slowly rot from the inside out, like a nastier version of leprosy. What would you say its POT should be? Low? Mid level?

mmmm......tough one. In my game diseases and such like have two POT expressed 10/11 ( for example ) the first is POT for catching disease the second for the effect. Use the common cold as an example. It's highly infectious so would have a high POT for catching it. yet in most cases it's fairly harmless so would have low POT for damage. Maybe the chances of catching the vampiric rot are low, but once you've it caught your fate is pretty much sealed ? so you might express it as:

Vampiric Rot: POT 5/20 where POT is rolled against CON on the resistance table

That's a damn good idea, I forgot disease in games worked that way. I have others, like harpy and medusa venom, but the vamp one is a good guideline. Thanks Agentorange!

Welcome to the forums, Rob!

Originally Posted by Rob

How would you know what to compare it to?

This isn't an area that I've thought a lot about, so I'm not much use in the conversation except to say that when tooling around with the rules I like to first figure out what I want the end result to be, then run the numbers to try to find a good middle ground. After that, I look at the extremes to see where it breaks and what the special circumstances are.

Now, the Resistance Table is pretty straight forward so I'd think it depends on where you consider your average Constitution score. If you've got a venom at POT 8 it's going to have a much greater effect on PCs who's Con averages 11 and PCs who's Con averages 13. But that all ties in to how you like to generate characters.

Originally Posted by Agentorange

In my game diseases and such like have two POT expressed 10/11 ( for example )

Words do not express how much I love this. Consider it yoinked.

Originally Posted by Rob

Hey, I'm Rob and am new to this forum.

I have a BRP book and have learned a fair bit from it, but I was looking over the examples of poisons, each having a description of symptoms and a potency number. The thing is, it doesn't tell you how to apply this to any poisons or venoms not in the book, so my question is; how do you figure out what value a certain poison may have? How would you know what to compare it to?

You've got great timing. As luck would have it Erasamus and I have been working on some animal stats and just recently devlved into the realm of venom and other toxins.

The way scientists handle this is something called LD50. LD50 means how much toxin would kill 50% of 1kg mass of creatures that are exposed to it. THis is very nice for those of use who play BRP because it mirrors the way POT and the resistance table works. The 50% mortiality rate in BRP occurs when the POT equals the CON (Hit Points) of the target. THe POT also increases with the amount of venom. For example the King Corbra has realtively weak venom compared to some other snakes, but it has a lot of it, and that gives the bite a higher POT.

With the LD50 values and dosage you can work out fairly accurate POT values for any venomous creature. With some limits. First off, most LD50 values are based off on the effect on ll mice (or rats), and these values might not translate directly to humans. Many snakes that hunt mice have venom that is tailored towards killing mice. Also, the LD50 can vary based upon the type of wound. Not surprisingly if a critter manages to bite deep and hit a vein the bite tends to be more lethal than with just a light scratch. But LD50 still gives us ballpark figures.

Our tables aren't finished yet, but if you want we could show you our method, table for determining POT from LD50 and dosage, and/or POT values for some sample poisonous creatures and toxic substances.

I ask because I'm writing up my own game and some classic creatures have been altered to take on my own twists, some including venom/poison. The problem is, while I have the symptoms written up, I have no idea what would be a fair potency to apply to each. Are there any guidelines I can use? Do any of you have tips or something I can work with?

I'd really appreciate if you can help me out here, since randomly allocating a value would end up either becoming stupidly powerful or not powerful enough.[/QUOTE]

Tips:
1) Ask for the LD50 to POT table. Since a lot of sites list LD50 values (even wikipedia), you can use it to get POT scores for practically anything from snakebite to never gas, to radiation to water.

2) Ask for our sample POT for snakes (since it will save you some work)


3) Use Total HP instead of CON to resist poison. All the evidence shows that it is the amount of toxin relative to the victim's mass (SIZ) that matters. A big SIZ 18 guy should be more resistant than a SIZ 8 guy, even if both have the same CON.

4) You might want to consider a variable POT score. Most venomous creatures inject a variable amount of venom on a bite, and just how effective that venom is will depend on the quality of the bite, so a variable roll, modified by success level is quite realistic. There are quite a few snakes that won't kill you with a bite unless they hit a good spot. But if they do get a good spot they can drop an elephant!

5) If you want to add a bit of uncertainty to poisons, don't reveal the POT, and don't inflict the damage all at once. Instead, dish the damage out a point at a time over set intervals. That way the player will have no idea if he will survive the poison, or even if he made the roll or not. .

Originally Posted by Agentorange

In my game diseases and such like have two POT expressed 10/11 ( for example ) the first is POT for catching disease the second for the effect.

This is brilliant. Wow. So simple, its been staring me in the face all these years! Thank you - its now in my home rules as well...!

Originally Posted by Rob

That's a damn good idea, I forgot disease in games worked that way. I have others, like harpy and medusa venom, but the vamp one is a good guideline. Thanks Agentorange!

The other thing to think about is that POT doesn't of necessity have to equal damage, Using my example of the common cold you might have a fantasy version that goes:

The Big Chill

POT 25/1D3

A highly infectious yet relatively harmless virus endemic to Oerth. Virtually everybody exposed to it will contract it, yet the symptoms are mild. For each day infected roll damage POTency against CON on the resistance table, if the virus wins all physical skills are considered hard for that day. If the virus loses subtract POT times 3 from all physical skills for that day. In any event all other skills are at minus POT times 3 for the day.