Poison Weapons. What is their purpose?

[2WB]

(I really want to reply to everything! Poison is just exciting! AAAaaaaAAAAAAAAAA.)

@JeyTheCount

The same as any other debuff (for example from status staves). Annoying the player if they don’t have the proper response.

I think this is a bit reductive - For the other status conditions, you have to address the issue in an active capacity -
ie. for silence and sleep, you can bait out each shot, or have alternative plans for when a unit gets afflicted by having a different unit move forward in their place.
This means that the other status conditions require some strategic handling to get around, whereas poison is “just damage”, so it requires much less forethought if any at all.
But also, I think we can have faith that the mechanic was not added to be annoying, that the developer actually wanted it for a reason that’s important to them; because adding things for the express purpose of annoying players is not something most developers…do? Most games are there to be challenging, fun, or about their experience; and “annoying” is frequently what happens when “challenging” goes wrong, if that makes sense.
Poison fits that bill well: FE5 Poison creates a tactical problem to solve due to its unlimited duration, and FE6 changing all status conditions to cure over time means that it jumped categories as a consequence that wasn’t given enough forward thinking.

@JasonGodwin7

Poison weapons typically lack a coherent gameplay design.
How do you use [a weapon] that deals barely 2 poison damage per turn?

I don’t think this tracks. A poison weapon’s to kill the player unit when they’re careless - FE10 is the first game where it’s possible to obtain one without glitches and that seems more like an oversight. You the player are not intended to use them, which is why the damage not being too high is okay: It’s asking if you’re going to keep using this unit or pull them back to heal them; making a value judgment and thinking multiple turns ahead to estimate how much damage they’ll be taking.

Shadows of Valentia – where poison was reworked into something very useful for the players, being a flat 10 nonfatal damage! – is the first game where you are intended to get them. Three Houses makes it 10% HP, something that’s an appreciable amount in many situations.

@Aswink

rework poison system to never ending […] In irl does poison heal itself NO

Y…yes, it does, if you don’t die to poisons you recover. Pretty much in the same way that it does when you get sick, are wounded, eat bad food, imbibe alcohol, take drugs, overconsume…
After being inserted into your bloodstream your body actually has multiple mechanisms for taking out things that it ‘thinks’ shouldn’t be there, most notably your liver being literally the organ that does this. That’s what the organ does: filter toxins! Its primary purpose is to maintain the correct chemicals in your bloodstream and make sure that when you eat something foul it doesn’t get into your blood.

I agree with your actual point, however. Poison being both low damage and limited duration is why it’s horrible.

@Aswink

[Poison weapons have] even worst stats than iron [weapons]

I think this is usually pretty sensible. You’re not using the poison weapon except when you want the poison, so being worse than the basic weapon accentuates that nature.

I do agree that it’s really overkill - the poison weapon should at least boast a good hit rate. Low critical, though, is absolutely the worst thing, since it means staring down “the RNG said you have to reset now” even when the player doesn’t make an actual error in judgement, just luck not rolling their way one time being devastating.

[Yasako]

Oh, looking at that, poison could be used as an anti-turtle stage gimmick, without having to rely on reinforcements or absolute loss conditions.

[Aswink]

Ya i get your second point on my reply

@2WB

Y…yes, it does, if you don’t die to poisons you recover. Pretty much in the same way that it does when you get sick, are wounded, eat bad food, imbibe alcohol, take drugs, overconsume…
After being inserted into your bloodstream your body actually has multiple mechanisms for taking out things that it ‘thinks’ shouldn’t be there, most notably your liver being literally the organ that does this. That’s what the organ does: filter toxins! Its primary purpose is to maintain the correct chemicals in your bloodstream and make sure that when you eat something foul it doesn’t get into your blood.

I agree with your actual point, however. Poison being both low damage and limited duration is why it’s horrible.

but on first place poison and food poison are separate things. Think aboult in war do u apply rat poison or a really strong poison that really kill (for eg rattle snake venom )
Which cant be filtered out by body

[jackofblades1991]

Really I think the issue is that “poison” is too vague since there are poisons that aren’t ment to be lethal, but rather weaken.

So my idea would be different poison coatings. Like, a Sapping Poison would apply -2 strength or magic, blinding -3 skill, acidic coating for minus 2-3 defense/resistance, and a numbing poison for minus -2 speed.
i’d even go as far as say, axes get the acid, lances get the sapping and swords get numbing while bows get the blinding.

That’s just my idea though.

[topazlight]

Sorry, I really should’ve replied to this in my first post in this thread, but couldn’t you just as easily say this about anything that presents an obstacle to the player’s success? Status ailments create a problem for the player that they have to respond to, either by playing around them somehow or by spending an action removing them.

Armored enemies “annoy the player if they don’t have a proper response”. Restrictive terrain layouts “annoy the player if they don’t have a proper response”. These things exist to create friction that the player needs to overcome to clear chapters, and part of a game like Fire Emblem is that resource management aspect of making sure you’re prepared for various types of threats the game might throw at you. I guess not every threat will be fun to every player to deal with, which is fair, but the game is about overcoming obstacles, so those obstacles need to actually pose problems of some sort in order to justify their existences.

@2WB

FE10 is the first game where it’s possible to obtain [a poison weapon] without glitches and that seems more like an oversight.

This is kind of an aside, but I really thought there was, like, a generic enemy Warrior late in Path of Radiance with both a Venin Axe and a Venin Bow from whom you could steal one of the two if Volke or Sothe had high enough Strength for it, but I may be misremembering.

[BladerDj]

I always thought they would be a way to stall yourself out of every single battle if you are patient enough. Ultimately due to the short time the effect applies this will not be as useful as in theory. But I always thought this was the reason they never gave the player access to these weapons.

[JeyTheCount]

@topazlight

Sorry, I really should’ve replied to this in my first post in this thread, but couldn’t you just as easily say this about anything that presents an obstacle to the player’s success? Status ailments create a problem for the player that they have to respond to, either by playing around them somehow or by spending an action removing them.

Armored enemies “annoy the player if they don’t have a proper response”. Restrictive terrain layouts “annoy the player if they don’t have a proper response”.

To a degree. The issue with status staves and poisoned weapons is that there’s only two ways to endure them - to just tank the effect (which is basically the equivalent of failing) and using the correct item (restore & antitoxin). Compare that to fighting an armour kinght. You can use magic to circumvent their high defence, use anti-armour weapon, a character with a lot of strength etc. etc.
If you were to have multiple ways of tackling poision or status, the mechanic would immediately become better.

[DATonDemand]

I’d advocate for a percentage based poison tick, it’d make poison always relevant for both enemies and players

[theghostcreator]

@JeyTheCount

The issue with status staves and poisoned weapons is that there’s only two ways to endure them - to just tank the effect (which is basically the equivalent of failing) and using the correct item (restore & antitoxin).

Incorrect. You could also rush the status user down or overwrite the status with poison. Taking a status effect also isn’t a game over state so if you don’t have a proper response it’s entirely possible to still complete the chapter, even deathless.

Status presents a problem and if you don’t have a solution you deal with the consequences. With poison if you don’t have the solution you just don’t care because the consequence is so unsubstantial that you can just ignore it.

[topazlight]

@JeyTheCount

To a degree. The issue with status staves and poisoned weapons is that there’s only two ways to endure them - to just tank the effect (which is basically the equivalent of failing) and using the correct item (restore & antitoxin). Compare that to fighting an armour kinght. You can use magic to circumvent their high defence, use anti-armour weapon, a character with a lot of strength etc. etc.
If you were to have multiple ways of tackling poision or status, the mechanic would immediately become better.

That is one way of looking at it, I suppose, but I think it makes more sense to think of status ailments as elements of the larger whole that is an entire map. You can still clear a map even if you get hit with multiple status ailments, you just have to adjust your play to work around those setbacks, same as if things go wrong any other way. At least as I see it, I think that fits in pretty well with Fire Emblem having multiple elements in place (honestly, primarily the random ones) to facilitate inter-playthrough variation and keep the player on their toes.

I do realize that the degree of randomness in Fire Emblem is in itself a… contentious thing, at least in certain spheres of the fanbase, so the extent to which my reply here could even be considered a “defense” of status ailments as opposed to an explanation of what’s wrong with them is entirely subjective.

[JeyTheCount]

@topazlight

ou can still clear a map even if you get hit with multiple status ailments

Unless it’s berserk staves and you forgot to buy restores

But yeah, fair.

[MegaCowsamMan]

@topazlight

This is kind of an aside, but I really thought there was, like, a generic enemy Warrior late in Path of Radiance with both a Venin Axe and a Venin Bow from whom you could steal one of the two if Volke or Sothe had high enough Strength for it, but I may be misremembering.

Your correct.

Don’t know exactly why you would. But it’s an option!

[topazlight]

Oh, and this is exactly the chapter I was thinking it was in, too, haha

Yeah, there’s not really much practical reason to steal it. It’s more a fun novelty than anything else, but I do think it’s pretty cool regardless!