Universal Poison: Difference between revisions

* Often, poison will not be lethal, despite being quite capable of bringing characters to the brink of death. Usually, it will drop to one hit point and stay there, though the poisoned status will remain.

* Poison will be classified as an elemental force of nature, on par with fire, water or electricity. If [[Functional Magic]] exists, there will often be an entire school of magic devoted to utilizing elemental poison.

* If not used as a proper element, poison will be shoehorned into a miscellaneous damage type.

An [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Acceptable Break From Reality]], as most players would not want to have dozens of remedies to sort through to handle the specific type of poison that one monster might inflict, especially if there are many other [[Standard Status Effects]] to carry cures for.

== Literature ==

== Video Games ==

** And purple seems to be the color of choice for many Poison-types in these games.

*** In Generation V, poisoned Pokémon pulse purple (alliteration not intended).

'''Kunzite:''' It cannot be helped. I am constructed to be very similar to a human being.<br />

'''Hisui:''' Don't brag about it! }}

* The gradual damage effect is inverted in ''[[Half Life]] 2'' "Poison Headcrabs", which do a huge amount of damage straightaway (dropping you to 1 health point, and medkits do ''not'' return this damage) which immediately begins to heal back (to what you were at before being poisoned), representing your HEV suit "administering antivenom". So, essentially harmless - unless they manage to get you in the middle of a battle. Poison headcrabs themselves are not capable of killing you, even multiple ones. They are often carried on the back of a larger zombie who first throws three or four of them one at a time, then charges you while you're poisoned to one point. He ''is'' capable of removing that [[Critical Existence Failure|last hit point]], as well as any others you may have handy.

* Similar to ''[[Diablo 2]]'', being poisoned in [[Hellgate London]] prevents an character (including enemies) from regenerating its HP. It occurs as a randomly generated effect when a character takes damage from a Toxic weapon / spell.

* ''[[Ys (Video Game)|Ys]] I'' has the Evil Ring which either drains your HP or kills you instantly, depending on the version, unless you equip the Blue Necklace first. Darm Tower later has the "Devil's Corridor" where [[Brown Note|evil music]] drains your HP. Starting with ''Ys IV: Mask of the Sun'' the series featured poison as a [[Standard Status Effects|status effect]].

* The [[Chest Monster|Eggplant]] that drains your vitality in ''[[Wonder Boy (Video Game)|Wonder Boy]]'' and ''[[Adventure Island]]''.

* ''[[Pathways Into Darkness]]'' has a poison status effect, and an alien [[MacGuffin]] that drains your vitality unless kept in a lead box.

* In the [[Find Mii (Video Game)|Find Mii]] game built into the 3DS, characters with purple shirts use poison magic on enemies. It does 1 damage per turn.

* There were dozens of different poisons throughout the various ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' sourcebooks from the start, with different effects. In 3rd Edition none of them even do direct [[Hit Point]] damage. The damage is dealt instead to the character's attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma), and the type and amount of damage are different for each poison. However, they generally affected all creatures the same way, the exceptions being creatures that were immune to poison (and who were thus immune to ''all'' poison), and poisons that specifically affected only certain types of creatures. The few exceptions to ''those'' exceptions were gone by 3.5. (3rd Edition druids, for example, could become immune to "natural" poisons--but not mineral poisons. In 3.5, they simply became immune to poison.)

** In the Pathfinder rules set, which is essentially a debugging of 3.5 by another company as opposed to 4th editions ground-up rebuild, poisons are still effects that do stat damage over varying amounts of time and require certain delivery methods (contact, injury, and ingestion, though there is some overlap). They do affect most creatures the same way regardless of their type, mostly to avoid making the rulebook into a medical diagnosis sheet. However, the only creatures that are really immune to poison are either things with no anatomy to affect, like elementals and undead, or innately magical creatures that would need these immunities to survive their inimical environments, like Devils. Kind of hard to lord it over the tormented souls when you can't breath the atmosphere.

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in the ''[[Warhammer]]'' rulebook, which states this trope is in use for [[Acceptable Break From Reality|simplicity's sake]]. It also notes that there are exotic poisons for exotic creatures, such as [[Holy Hand Grenade|Holy Water]] for [[The Undead]], which poisoner is assumed to have access to and can use when fighting such opponents.

[[Category:Toxic Tropes]]

[[Category:Universal Poison]]