What if Poison disabled healing?

[Jotari]

I think Poison is generally seen as a bit of a disastor when it comes to Fire Emblem design. They barely ever even allow the player to use it as enemy generics die too fast and even when placed on the player the amount of damage it does is so slight and presented at the start of the turn so it's easily mitigated. In fact poison is more of a boon than a bane to the player as it allows repeated healing every turn to safely grind clerics and staff ranks. However, what if Poison outright disabled healing? Suddenly we have a very dangerous status effect. A unit inflicted with this is suddenly put at a lot more risk than any other ally as every hit they take is going to put them at a much greater risk that can't be as easily mitigated, and the per turn damage is still in effect ensuring that it will eventually deal sizeable damage unless treated. Poison would suddenly become an effect you absolutely can't risk your tanks having on them. Eh, just a thought.

[Reality]

This isn't battle for Wesnoth.

I don't know if the intent is to justify more frequent enemy healers, or just to increase unit cycling.

[Alastor15243]

That would certainly make it more useful to the player too, especially in games like Binding Blade where enemy physic users can make dealing with powerful threats a lot more frustrating.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Interesting idea, I can see that making Poison significantly more threatening. And thereby, Restore and Antitoxins more useful.

Maybe it could be combined with extra ways to inflict it? Like a staff/spell that deals no damage, but inflicts poison at range, to potentially whittle down bosses and powerful enemies?

[Dragoncat]

Would vulneraries still work? Would make them more useful overall.

[whase]

I like this idea and I'm going to steal this for my own system. =P

I already had poisons with different potency (some last longer, some deal more damage etc.), but some other effects are a great idea. Beside anti heal, maybe also disabling spells, lowering movement speed, or disabling activated abilities?

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Reality said:

This isn't battle for Wesnoth.

I don't know if the intent is to justify more frequent enemy healers, or just to increase unit cycling.

Less to encourage more enemy healers and more to create something in that vein that's actually threatening to the player (and thus increasing the necessity for it's counters in the form of restore and antitoxens, and maybe even a poison immunity skill, which would be completely superfluous in the current system).

[Fabulously Olivier]

Maybe if it is balanced out by removing anti-toxins and adding poison removal to Vulneraries, Concoctions, and Elixirs.

[Shrimpica]

No. Just no. Status effects don't need to become more annoying. 

Only way i can kinda accept this is if Restore becomes range, and if like 3H, it's range get's multiplied by 4 or something

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Thracia 776 was the only game which treated poison realistically.

As annoying a permanent poison conditon might have been for the player, it's an ailment which will not go on its own without medical treatment.

Also poison shall kill as in the games from 5 to 10.

 

As for the actual topic, I would not mind the idea, if the game gives enough of restores and antitoxins.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Falcom Knight

[Florete]

That's a viable idea for sure. There are plenty of ways to make poison actually threatening, some of which have been brought up here. My own was to have it increase the amount of HP it takes (25% of the unit's max HP) and debuff the poisoned unit by 2-5 in each stat.

[NinjaMonkey]

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Poison would suddenly become an effect you absolutely can't risk your tanks having on them

Oh no, it's doing 3 HP per turn damage for 5 turns on my 40HP General who has so much Def that most enemy attacks do nothing to him. What ever will I do?

[Jotari]

14 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Oh no, it's doing 3 HP per turn damage for 5 turns on my 40HP General who has so much Def that most enemy attacks do nothing to him. What ever will I do?

That nothing most enemy attacks do will build up much faster than you realize if healing isn't an option (presuming it's not literally nothing, if a unit is taking literally nothing from most attacks then the stat line of the game itself needs to be rethought imo).

[vanguard333]

I don't think it would make much sense lore-wise for mundane poison to negate magical healing. But I do think that having another status ailment, called curse, that disabled healing would be interesting. 

[whase]

11 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I don't think it would make much sense lore-wise for mundane poison to negate magical healing. But I do think that having another status ailment, called curse, that disabled healing would be interesting. 

Magical beasts exist in Fire Emblem, so why not magical poisons that repel white healing magic? Nobody said anything about poisons being "mundane". =P

(That said, if they were to make an FE where magic and magical beasts play a smaller role, it wouldn't really make much sense from a lore-perspective, no.)

[vanguard333]

28 minutes ago, whase said:

Magical beasts exist in Fire Emblem, so why not magical poisons that repel white healing magic? Nobody said anything about poisons being "mundane". =P

(That said, if they were to make an FE where magic and magical beasts play a smaller role, it wouldn't really make much sense from a lore-perspective, no.)

True; though, just because the creatures are magic, does that mean that their poison is magic?

Still; I think it might be interesting to have poison and curse as separate things, with curse being the thing that prevents healing. 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

True; though, just because the creatures are magic, does that mean that their poison is magic?

Still; I think it might be interesting to have poison and curse as separate things, with curse being the thing that prevents healing. 

In that scenario poison is still useless and will only have any effect when paired with curse. Might as well throw them together. Given that it's magic, ie a completely fictional thing, there's absolutely no reason poison can't counteract its effects.

[Eltosian Kadath]

If you make poison that dangerous you would probably have to make poison weapons or staff more breakable as well. There is a reason sleep, berserk, and silence tend to have single digit uses, while the far less dangerous poison weapons have as many uses as a real weapon, but with that nasty of poison any weapon or staff that causes it should probably be the same. Unhealable damage reminds me a bit of the hexing rod actually, as lowering the HP cap functions a lot like damage that can't be healed.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

If you make poison that dangerous you would probably have to make poison weapons or staff more breakable as well. There is a reason sleep, berserk, and silence tend to have single digit uses, while the far less dangerous poison weapons have as many uses as a real weapon, but with that nasty of poison any weapon or staff that causes it should probably be the same. Unhealable damage reminds me a bit of the hexing rod actually, as lowering the HP cap functions a lot like damage that can't be healed.

Hexing Rod is pretty damn annoying though because it never wears off. The only way to deal with it is to put a high res person in it's range and just hope it misses for three consecutive turns. Either that or kill the user before they have a chance to use it (not always possible given its range). If hexing rod faded after three or four terms I'd feel more positive about it.

[Hawkwing]

Only if poison-inflicting enemies are rare (per map, not for the entire game), the map design prevents mass poisoning, and there's still a way to get rid of the poison that doesn't require an item (like forts removing the poison at the cost of not healing that turn).. Otherwise, a small annoyance could become a large one, and while it would most certainly make maps more challenging and interesting, I don't see how this would make them more fun.