The Poisoning Skill
Poisoning in UO has been severely limited in combat situations ever since UO:Renaissance, when poison was changed from being primarily about dealing damage-over-time to a system that was primarily intended to slow down healing. Rather than being an offensive skill in its own right, poisoning these days is best used as a supplemental tool, and is essentially effective without any skill investment whatsoever.
In the old days, poison would do significant damage over time, and curing was more difficult; and even though a target could heal damage without curing first, a high-powered poison would eventually overcome their ability to maintain healing pace (the essence of a damage-over-time model), providing the poisoner with an advantage for their skill points. With UO:R this was all changed: the target must cure the poison before they can heal any damage, but curing most poisons is so easy now that this does not really affect anything. In particular, high-level poisons have a slow damage timer, and are easy to cure before any damage is delivered, using a wide variety of mechanisms (healing, magery, chivalry, potions, orange petals, ...), meaning the target can cure the poison before any damage has been dealt out by the poison itself (and while it does take time for them to cure, it also took time for you to poison, so it's a wash). In fact, low-level poisoners are often more effective in the current combat system, since the lower-level poisons deal damage more frequently, making them at least useful for interrupting the target's spell casting abilities (something the high-level poisons do not do). This essentially makes high-level poisoning skill a waste of points, and shuts out an entire class of playstyle.
What's most annoying here is that the Necromancy skill has a spell that works the way poisoning used to (and should again), which is Strangle. With this one spell a player can have all the benefits of a legacy poisoner--including the fabled damage-over-time, and skill-based "cures"--and can do so with no difference in skill point cost (necromancy and spirit speak require 200 points, but so does poisoning plus a delivery mechanism such as fencing or magery). But for the 200 points in necromancy and spirit speak, the player also gets a wide range of other spells as well as a healing method, while the equivalent investment in poisoning only wastes your time.
This proposal suggests returning to the old-style poison model, and implementing some additional features that would make the skill richer and more substantitve, while also preserving game balance. Essentially, make poisoning worth the cost of skill-point development again, but do not make it overpowering.
Towards that goal, I suggest the following features:
- Fixed damage clock: All poisons, regardless of strength, should use a common damage clock, so that high-level and low-level poisons interrupt the victim's spells and bandages at a common rate, for a common duration. Essentially, the only substantive difference between the poison levels should be the amount of damage that is dealt per-tick. I suggest using a five-second clock for each damage tick (slightly longer than mid-dex bandaging or FC0 spell casting), with somewhere between six and ten damage ticks per poison.
- Skill-based damage: The amount of damage from
the poison should reflect the assailants ability and all related variables.
Under the current system, there are six "levels" of poison, which
each deliver a fixed amount of base damage, and while the levels are fine for
some purposes (such as creating poison potions, and telling the victim how
bad the poison damage is going to be), the actual amount of damage should reflect
actual skill. I propose using a base damage that is 20% of the assailant's "determined"
skill level (ie, a determined skill of 100 poisoning would deal 20 hit-points
of damage for each tick), with a minimum of 5 hit-points per tick (for characters
with 25 points or less of determined skill). The method for calculating the
determined skill level is discussed in the next few paragraphs.
For mage-based attacks (poison and poison field), the determined skill level should be an average of the assailant's poisoning skill and their magery skill. Range should no longer be a factor in determining the base level of the poison. This means that a character with 100 poisoning and 120 magery would have a effective skill of 110, capable of delivering a maximum of 22 hit-points of damage per-tick.
The necromancy Posion Strike spell should remain a one-hit damage spell with no ongoing damage, but should use a similar scoring system as magery (thereby rewarding the necro who invests in poisoning), with the inclusion of spirit speak into the average. This would mean that a legendary necro with legendary spirit speak and 100 poisoning skill would have (120 + 120 + 100) / 3 = 113 determined skill, for a one-time base damage of 22 hit-points. Meanwhile, a legendary necro/ss character with no poison skill would have a determined skill of (120 + 120 + 0) /3 = 80, for a one-time base damage of 16 hit-points.
For weapons-based attacks, the poisoner's skill level and the base poison level should also be incorporated into the average (these values can be stored in the weapon's attributes when the poison is applied). Poison level should use the level-based system, with 20 points of base skill for each level (ie, lesser poison is 20, regular poison is 40, greater is 60, deadly is 80, lethal is 100, etc). As will be shown in a moment, this formula produces a determined skill level that is slightly less than what is produced from the magery example above, so there should also be an additional 10% added based on the assailant's poisoning skill (this will be illustrated below). In the common case of a legendary fencer with no poisoning skill, but who had a GM poisoner apply deadly poison to their blade, the formula would be (120 + 0 + 100 + 80) / 4 for a determined skill level of 75, dealing 15 points of damage per tick. If the fencer was also a GM assassin, the formula would be ((120 + 100 + 100 + 80) / 4) + 10 (the extra 10% of their posoning skill), for a final value of 110, which would produce 22 hit-points of base damage per-tick, the same as the nox mage. This same formula should be used for monsters and pets that deliver poisoning through melee attacks (such as the rotting corpse, the rune beetle, and so forth). Similarly, ninjas that use poisoned darts and stars should also use this model, except that the poison level should use the ninjitsu skill instead of the weapons skill (there is no skill for ranged weapons, and ninjitsu skill is used for those specific weapons).
The Serpent Arrow archery attack does not use a poisoned weapon, so there is no "level" to incorporate into the average. Therefore it should use a formula similar to the one described for spells. A simle average of the user's archery and poisoning skill should be sufficient for this purpose.
Let's not forget tinker traps. Those should use three inputs for the determined poison level of the trap: the tinker's skill, the tinker's poisoning skill, and the level of the poison that was used. So for a GM tinker with no real poisoning skill and a deadly (level 4) poison trap, the realized skill would be (100 + 0 + 80) / 3 = 60, with base damage of 12 hit-points per tick. - Skill-based cures: Poisons should require equivalent
levels of skill to even have a chance at curing, and there should not be a
100% chance of success unless the target is significantly higher in skill than
the assailant's determined skill. The easiest thing to do here is to use a
40-point window, so that the determined curing skill can be no less than 20
points below the assailant's determined skill to have a chance at successfully
curing the poison, while having 20 points of determined curing skill more than
the assailant's determined poison skill produces a 100% chance of successfully
curing the poison. This would mean that a GM poisoner would usually kill a
target with 80 points or less of a curing skill, while a legendary healer would
usually be able to handle a GM poisoner (not considering other factors and
variables).
For skill-based cures (magery, chivalry and healing), a simple percent-chance comparison of the curing skill versus the assailant's determined skill would be sufficient, with a very small amount of randomization thrown in to keep it interestng. To keep this simple, we can use a 40-sided die, with the chance to cure being the difference of the skill points within the 40-point window. For example, at 100 determined poisoning skill, the 40-point window is 80 through 120, so we create a 40-sided die with that range of values, which the victim rolls whenever they try to cure. If the die comes back with a number that is within the victim's determined curing range, the cure succeeds. For a victim with 100 points of determined curing skill, half of the poisoner's 40-point window would be in their favor (80-100), so there would essentially be a 50% chance of curing the poison. In the case of a 90-point determined curing skill, 10 of the 40 points would be in the healer's favor (80-90), resulting in 25% chance to cure the poison. At 120 curing versus 100 poison, the entire 40-point window would be in the healers favor (80-120), so all 40 sides of the die would produce a winning roll, producing 100% chance to cure.
For cure potions, the level of the potion, the alchemy skill of the target, and any "enhance potions" jewelry should also be taken into consideration, similar to the way that poison potions are considered into the assailant's determined skill. For starters, the value of cure potion should have 30 points for each level (30 for lesser cure, 60 for normal cure, and 90 for greater cure). In addition, a flat 10% of the user's alchemy skill should also be added for additional weighting. Similarly, the jewelry boost should also be applied as a flat 10% value to the sum of the potion and alchemy values. For example, if the victim used a greater cure potion but did not have any alchemy skill or jewelry, they would have (90 + 0 + 0) = 90 determined curing skill. This would provide a 25% chance to cure GM-level poison, and a 2.5% chance of curing 110-level poison. If the user also had GM alchemy, they would get an additional (100 / 10) = 10 points of base curing skill, or (90 + 10 + 0) = 100 determined skill. If the user had 50% enhance potions jewelry, they would get an additional (100 * .5) = 5 points of determined skill, producing (90 + 10 + 5) = 105 determined curing skill. That value would provide a 62.5% chance to cure GM poison, or 47.5% chance to cure 110 poison. - Additional defensive mechanisms: With the math
presented above, poisoning would be a very powerful offensive skill, capable
of killing weaker players outright, and even capable of killing strong players
that simply had a bad run of the dice. In order to offset this, I would propose
two additional defensive measures.
First of all, if a target is within the 40-point cure window but loses the cure roll, there should still be a small chance to reduce the level of the poison, without curing it completely. This can be achieved through a second roll of the dice that would simply reduce the damage level of the poison by 10% instead of curing it. In this regard, multiple attempts to cure may not succeed entirely but may reduce the damage considerably. Since the poison would not be cured, it would continue to interrupt spells and healing attempts at each damage tick.
I would also like to see heal-through-poison brought back to the game. In this model, a player might choose to simply heal themselves after each damage tick, rather than waste time trying to cure a high-level poison. Furthermore, players who had no chance of curing a high-level poison could keep themselves alive if they fled the battle and focused on healing. The ability to heal should be deliberate (through the use of healing spells or potions, as opposed to curing potions), but should also be incidental (such as automatically healing with bandages if there is no chance to cure with bandages). If the poison damage tick strikes during these periods, spells and bandages should be interrupted as normal, so timing will be crucial in these kinds of situations.
Additional defenses already exist in the form of orange petals and Vampiric Embrace. These would need to be adjusted to fit within the new model. Orange petals should probably be changed so that they reduce the damage by 10% every tick, but do not automatically cure the player. For the vampire form, an initial check should be used when the poison is first applied, and if the poison is below a certain level it is simply ignored (see below for additional discussion on how this can work).
Finally, there should continue to be combat-level skill-checks that determine whether or not the poison is even successful. For example, magic resist should continue to be used as a skill-check against the poison spell (and should also be used for the poison field spell). Similarly, parry and defense-chance checks should continue to be used to see if the infectious strike special move is blocked.
Note that I am also separately suggesting that potions should be usable with two-handed weapons, with some penalties. This would allow cure and heal potions to be used with a wider variety of weapon types, thus making them more effective and useful, thereby making the poisoning skill comparitively weaker in combat (otherwise it would be too powerful against two-handed weapon foes such as archers and samurai). - Additional poisoner benefits: Apart from the purely
offensive nature of the poisoning skill, there should also be some passive
benefits to the active poisoner. First and foremost among these would be a
natural resistance to poisons from others. This would allow poisoner characters
to take on poisoning monsters where other characters could not, for example,
and would also make PVP combat between two poisoners more interesting. I propose
two mechanisms: the initial poison should be reduced in strength according
to the target's poisoning skill, and each damage tick should also have an automatic
chance to reduce the poison strength by an additional 10%.
For the initial reduction formula, I propose that the initial base damage of the poison be reduced one hit-point for every five points in real poisoning skill of the victim. If the initial hit-point reduction value is equal to or greater than the base damage of the poison strike, the strike would be nullified completely. For example, assume that the victim has 100 real points in poisoning skill, meaning that the initial base damage from a poisoning attack would be reduced by 20 hit-points. If the attacker had a determined melee poison skill of 60 (such as a snake or some other low-level poisoner), the initial base damage would be (60 / 5) = 12 hit-points, which is less than the assumed victim's reduction of 20 hit-points, so the poison attack would be immediately nullified (note that the delivery would still have been successful, so spells and healing would still have been interrupted, and the only real difference here would be that the poison didn't "stick", and it would not have to be cured). Meanwhile, an attacker with a determined poisoning skill of 110 would have an initial base damage of (110 / 5) = 22 hit-points, which would be reduced by the assumed target to just 2 hit-points. That might not sound like much damage (and it's not), but since the poison "stuck" it would be ongoing until the poison was cured. Note that this would be useful for the necromancy Poison Strike damage calculation, as well as the traditional damage-over-time poisons, all of which could be nullfiied even if the initial defense failed..
This same kind of model can be used for the Vampiric Embrace reduction described above. In that case, a base value of 70 poisoning skill should be used for the initial damage reduction calculation, unless the player has a real poisoning skill that is greater than 70 (in which case the real skill level should be used).
Separately, poisoners should get the free chance to reduce the poison's ongoing base damage by 10%. at each damage tick. This would use the "second roll" formula described above, but would be automatically applied at each damage tick. The victim could also try to cure the poison, and would still get the second-chance roll to further reduce the damage by 10% with each explicit cure attempt. It is theoretically possibly in such a scenario for damage to be less than one hit-point, meaning the only negative affect would be the spell and bandage interruptions at each damage tick. For poisoner-vs-poisoner fights, this would still make poison important and interesting, but other forms of damage would have to be used.
Overall, these suggestions would make poisoning a viable combat class in its own right, albeit still dependant on other skills for delivery (ie, magery and weapons). It would reward characters who invest in poisoning by making their poison strikers stronger and harder to cure, and also by giving them an inherent defense against certain kinds of poisons. However, there are sufficient number of defensive mechanisms that strong players do not need to run in fear from strong poisoners.
Furthermore, this model works well for poisoning monsters too. For example, a high-end monster like a rotting corpse can have access to GM or better poisoning and melee skills, and also have access to level 6 poisons (with 120 base). If a monster were to have all inputs maxed at 120, the determined poison would be ((120 + 120 + 120 + 120) / 4) + 12 = 132 realized poisoning skill, with base damage of 26 hit-points per tick, and would only be curable by near-legendary mages and healers, with just a 30% chance of success at legendary. Meanwhile, a paragon rotting corpse that I saw had 119 wrestling and 144 poisoning, and under this formula that monster would have had a determined poison of ((119 + 120 + 120 + 144) / 4) + 14 = 139 realized poisoning skill. Clearly, UO developers are not restricted to the input variables they use so would be entirely possible to produce a poison level that was completely uncurable if they so chose.