Special rules:

Poison rules

Numerous animals in the wasteland have stingers or other methods of administering poison. Add to that deadly or at least debilitating poisons developed by scientists, both before the Great War as well as a few that were discovered or developed afterwards.

On the following pages the basic rules for poisons are described, what kind of effects they have and how poison resistance works.

First to the poison resistance: Each character has a poison resistance. The base value is Endurance * 4.

Furthermore, there are differences between the races, bonuses that enhance poison resistance and traits that influence it.

The poison resistance determines, whether a character is even affected by a dose of poison. If they receive a dose of poison with a resistance threshold of 20 points and they have a poison resistance of 20 or more, the poison is without effect, at least in that dosage. As one can see in the example below for the poison of the large radscorpion, up to four doses are counted before a character has received the highest dosage. If they are stung a fifth time, the character does take damage from the wound caused by the stinger, but is already so saturated by the poison, that they won’t take any further damage.

Now to the effects: The effects can be varied. The example below shows the poison of the large radscorpion and that has damage to hit points for a certain amount of combat rounds as it’s main effect. Furthermore the poison causes increasingly more difficult tests on skills and even character stats. Other poisons behave differently. Some paralyze, others render unconscious but make little to no damage to hit points. It always depends on the poison.

Poison of the large radscorpion:

Dosis:

First Dose:

Second Dose:

Third Dose:

Fourth Dose:

Resistance threshold:

10

20

30

40

Effects (when poisoned):

1 D3 damage for 4 combat rounds.
Pain: All skills handicapped by 2 points.

2 D3 + 2 damage for 6 combat rounds.
Strong pain: All skills handicapped by 5 points.

3 D3 + 2 damage for 8 combat rounds.
Horrible pain: All skills handicapped by 12 points.

5 D3 damage for 10 combat rounds.
Hellish pain: all skills handicapped by 25 points.
All tests on character stats handicapped by 1.