How Do Games Play With Poison?
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- Опубліковано 10 чер 2024
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If your game only has room for one status effect, it’s probably going to be poison. It’s very versatile. Poison can fit into so many different places in a game’s combat design, character design, or even just the aesthetics of a game’s locations. Let’s talk about how games play with poison!
Featuring:
Slay the Spire
Most Final Fantasy entries
Monster Hunter World
Bug Fables
Spelunky 2
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Super Mario 64
Streets of Rage 4
Left 4 Dead
Hades
Super Mario Odyssey
Sonic Mania
Pokemon
Most of Fromsoft
Elden Ring most of all
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P.S. Toxic Tower from Donkey Kong Country 2... ;)
Or Poisonus Pipelines in DKC3's Reverse Water Controls... :D
The biggest game design decision a developer has to make is whether to make poison Green or Purple
Depends, is your poison the Wrath of Nature or Toxicity of Man
In a D&D game I plan to run, green vs purple poison is the schism point within a tribe, and i think it'll be really funny
@@andrewramlall3560 Perhaps green poison is all naturally occurring from plants and animal venom while Purple is man made chemicals and pollution
@@andrewramlall3560I really hope someone makes the situation even funnier by introducing poisons of different colours
I associate green more with acid than poison, personally
I really like the "badly poisoned" effect in Pokemon that you get from Toxic. It starts super small and doubles every turn... you HAVE to switch or finish the fight before it stacks too high.
On the flip side, I don't like how SMT and Persona bosses are immune to status effects like poison. It just feels like it defeats the purpose of it.
It's also got a really interesting place in competitive where the damage ramp up resetting every time you switch can force out walls with reliable recovery leading to offensive mons to run it in certain metagames like zapdos running it in the gen 3 to force celebi out and make swampert think twice about switching in
Yeah, you reminded me of one of the things I appreciated about Final Fantasy 10. A surprising number of bosses and tough enemies are vulnerable to status effects. There are even some that become much easier once you realize this, like one boss that normally regenerates each turn but is vulnerable to poison or certain enemies/bosses hitting you with devastating haymakers but will miss often if you blind them first.
Badly Poisoned is terrifying, I love it. I also feel like people sleep on vanilla Poison though- for more offensive ‘Mons, the immediate 1/8th damage is just enough to knock something down after a powerful hit. Sneasler comes to mind.
This is also me coping because I love Toxic Thread.
@@maskedbadass6802I had quite the different experience with FFX. I was using status effects during regular battles, but then I got to a serpentine dragon boss near the beginning of the game. When I cast slow on it and haste on myself, it responded by doing the same.
At the time, I assumed that this was a sign that status effects wouldn't be useful against bosses (as opposed to correctly surmising that this meant I needed to learn which effects to use on which bosses) so I just stopped using status effects altogether.
A few too many RPG just make bosses a bit too resistant to status effect in an attempt to create "challenge". The biggest offender is Dragon quest in my eyes. Not only do bosses deny all the big status effects like poison, sleep and confusion but late game bosses also get that move that remove all status boost you put on yourself! It teaches you avoid buffing and rely on just healing and hitting...
The problem with poison in most RPGs isn't that the damage is not significant enough to justify poison attacks, but rather most bosses are going to be immune to most status ailments so you generally don't want to spend an action trying to apply one.
The only reason bosses being immune becomes an issue is precisely because normal encounters dont last long enough.
This is something ive enjoyed about the Bravely series. a LOT of the bosses are not immune to statuses, just harder to inflict. Poison strats and defending is actually some of the best strats to killing some early game enemies.
On top of that, the Bravely series usually tells you if something is immune, so you dont keep trying to no avail.
Glad to run into a fan of the Bravely series. It has the best turn based combat system I have ever seen. @@NunyaBizniz-om6xf
Not something you have to consider with bravely 2 when the game is piss easy and just grinding classes will make you 5-10 levels above bosses and the game is so unbalanced there is never a challenge. Also paralyze locking adam showed me why bosses should be completely immune to status effects cause fights that can be statused become mad boring and lame as you can clown on the boss too easily. Octopath poison is so broken you can wreck every boss with absolute reflect teams when also paired with a poison user that uses all their boosts to increase the turns it lasts a good amount allowing you to stall every boss in the game practically. @@NunyaBizniz-om6xf
Yeah a lot of games defeat the purpose of poison by making bosses immune. Darkest dungeon didn’t do this and it’s sooooo nice
A lot of games make poison or DoTs useless is because you’re asking the player to deal damage later, when immediate damage will solve the problem now. This can be a bigger problem with turn based games where additional turns can potentially backfire on the player.
So ironically, poison is great against the player to put a timer on a fight, but terrible for the player where dragging out fights potentially wastes resources.
Fun fact about Galarian Weezing: despite its typing, it's something of an antithesis to poison. Its Pokédex entries state that it evolved (the real-world kind) in response to Galar's industrialization and purifies the polluted air it takes in.
Br####n really be so bad Weezing had to help out 💀
@Mikescool444 why did you censor Britain
@@hussainalaiwi9270 Why wouldn't he
@@Serg_El_EspantaViejasBecause calling it Bongistan is liable to get banned
It's a fairy type now which is neat
Sad you didn't mention how some monsters in Monster Hunter can have their abilities restricted if poisoned. The Kushala Daora summons a powerful cloak of wind that can knock your hunter down and deflect projectiles... until you poison it to remove that shield.
One of my favourite use of poison is in Sekiro. You can eat a medicine that inflicts a weak poison effect on you, but it protects you from stronger poisons to build up
funny enough, this exists at least in demon's souls (in the swamp of sorrow, the poison from the lake is less strong than the one shamans does to you can offset it with regeneration items like regenerator's ring adjudicato's shield while being protected from shaman poison cloud) and also in elden ring too (in elden ring, there is a "strong poison" effect that is not scarlet rot that deals stronger poison damage and you can inflict to yourself the lower effect of poison with the raw meat dumpling item)
@@bksphantom7867 Dark Souls, as well. Intentionally poisoning yourself with Dung Pies inflicts a weaker version of Toxic that prevents the stronger one the Blow Dart enemies would give you.
@@sabbywins ooh, so that's why you get them before entering blighttown!
I'll try these on my next playtrough (if I don't take the master key!)
@@sabbywins a dozen playthroughs later and I still learn something new about that game. Thank you
@@sabbywinswhile not as applicable, in DS3 the dung pie trick also works as the toxic you get from the enemies in the swamp area is more deadly
Cristales has an interesting take on poison. The battle system uses time travel as a mechanic. If you poison an enemy and send them into the future or bring them back from the past, they’ll take all the chip damage at once
That is a really cool mechanic.
Nice 🤣
Cristales did so many cool things with this
Using a water attack on an enemies shield and then sending them to the future so it rusts.
One thing I like to think about with Poison is its relationship to Fire. In their common implementation, they’re both just DOTs (damage over time). Usually Fire does damage quickly but only lasts a short time, while Poison does damage slowly but lasts for a long time. However, there are more ways to differentiate them. In Monster Hunter, taking damage as a player leaves you with red health that regenerates slowly over time. Fire deals damage very quickly, making it an urgent threat, but it drains your red health first, giving you a buffer to deal with it. You can cure it by dodge rolling multiple times, which rewards you for having good reactions, but costs a short term resource: stamina. On the other hand, Poison drains your true health first, meaning you have no buffer, but it deals damage slowly so you have more time to address it. You can only heal it with an Antidote, so it rewards you for being prepared and bringing the right items, but if you didn’t, you just have to heal through it and wait it out, putting a strain on your long term resources. These distinctions even mirror their real world properties, where fire burns through your flesh from the outside in, but you can extinguish it by rolling on the ground, while poison attacks your body from the inside, and you‘ll need either an antidote or a good constitution to survive it.
I also want to mention that besides extraneous modifiers, you can differentiate DOTs by changing the properties of the damage itself. The game Hyperspace Dogfights has a DOT called Cascade. Like many DOTs, it’s applied in stacks that increase its duration, but more uniquely, its damage increases with the number of stacks, creating an exponential curve that rewards you for landing a lot of hits in a short time. And as mentioned in the video, some DOTs deal damage in percentages instead of flat numbers, making them more powerful against enemies with high health and defense.
Fire can have other interesting mechanics too, for instance, fire can increase damage.
Funny that you mention how similar fire and poison is, a few days ago I was imagining an “Acid” element and realized it could fill in for both.
rise of the ronin does a neat thing with this duality where, if you apply both to the same enemy, it stuns them for a few seconds and inflicts the dizzy status, which makes them weak to your combat style no matter what, massively debilitating them like being on fire and poisoned at the same time should. it makes bows great as an opener option since you can rapid switch between fire and poison arrows.
Especially in games where you can see if an enemy will die from inflicted poison before it wears off, it can allow you to think of an enemy as a "dead man walking", AKA "I don't need to do any more damage to them because they already have lethal damage on them". This is even more true when DoTs such as poison are start of round effects rather than end of round. It creates an interesting dynamic in a game sometimes when an enemy is still a threat to attack, but they become something you tactically simply avoid to address other enemies because the DMW no longer requires your attention to remove as a threat.
Yeah this is something that is really fun about poison/DOT. I noticed that I used it a lot in Slay the Spire where I’d heavily focus on poisoning an enemy then let them die by themselves while dealing with another enemy and sometimes having both enemies die on the same turn
@@SandmanURL Same here, but in Darkest Dungeon. It's why Plague Doctor is my favorite class, the ability to just spread Blight (and sometimes Bleed) and watch the enemies rot and die while you wail on others is super satisfying.
@@SandmanURLbeing able to just end your turn with a full hand and full energy only to watch the enemy still die, makes me feel so badass. It really does give you that superior feeling which is highly contrasted against everything else in the game since you have to be always on your toes and watching out.
Darkest dungeon does this, but you actually get an advantage from killing enemies with poison since they won’t leave behind corpses that block enemies behind it. It’s very cool
This is especially true in Darkest dungeon. Bleed, blight and burn have the same mechanism.
I liked how in Final Fantasy XI the concept of poison would cause a sleep spell to immediately wake you back up. As a healer, you could intentionally poison yourself with items as it was crucial when fighting certain enemy types that caused area sleep effects.
Might be fun to design a game where only one status effect can affect you at any time and by being lightly poisoned you are situationally immune to sleep, paralyze, petrify, etc.
@@BuddyLee23 like Pokémon?
@@BuddyLee23 Various Daylife comes to mind. Except that game uses a chain status system where one overwrites another and you're susceptibility to all other statuses is determined by the one currently in effect. Some skills can apply a minimally invasive status to your own party to get rid of a more problematic one while simultaneously applying to the enemy, but if the enemy continuers the chain or has a move that acts as a combo finisher on the given status, you make yourself liable to a massive damage hit. Of course this entire system applies to both sides of the field and adds a lot of depth to battle strategy.
I'd love to see a clever system like that in a game that's just better because frankly VD kind of sucks.
@@mistery8363 I'm reminded of RBY OU, where you'd intentionally switch a Chansey into Thunder Wave to protect it from being put to sleep by Exeggutor or frozen by an opposing Chansey's Ice Beam.
One more design element in the Monster Hunter example is that the rate of buildup benefits greatly from rapid, repeated hits, making certain weapon choices inherently beneficial to status-forward builds. Since each weapon's control scheme is substantially different than the next, it adds a strategic element to the planning stage before a mission, and the game implicitly rewards players for experimenting with different weapon types if they've been stuck on one. It's a great way of making Poison feel like an active choice rather than a tacked-on benefit or lingering in a long spell list.
That's a point. It's quite easy to poison with fast-attacking weapons like the Dual Blades, Sword & Shield or Insect Glaive, but you try to poison something with a Greatsword or Gunlance and you'll be waiting a while for even the first proc.
Poison in Fire Emblem Engage has a similar effect to Symphony of the Night in that instead of direct damage, it increases the damage you take from attacks, and it can stack
And poison's damage is also a source of true damage, one stack = 1 extra damage taken per hit, 2 stacks = 3, 3 stacks = 5, regardless of def/res. This is part of why putting Lucina on a dagger class is the best offensive option for her ring, because chain attacks with poison weapons can apply poison stacks, and chain attacks don't care about def/res either.
Don’t forget, in Hades there’s another way to clear the poison in Styx. Clearing the room. So, whenever you get poisoned you basically have to make a split second decision on if it’s faster to clear the room or go to one of the mandrake pools. Of course, if the room is covered in the poison pools you might realize that going to a pool is pointless since you’ll be poisoned again anyways
I drink poision
Good. Build your tolerance
That means your immune to poison type Pokemon.
Bro thinks he is MaoMao
babies when they go 2 seconds unattended:
Cool
I really like the way the game Windbound uses poison, instead of directly eating through health, poison increases your stamina usage. Whenever you try to do something that requires stamina and your stamina bar is empty, you start to lose health. It also gives you a sort of nausea effect.
Pokemon also has the Guts ability which boosts a Pokemon's attack when afflicted with a Status effect. There's also the Toxic Orb item which can inflict the holder with that status, or a Toxic Orb holder can use the Fling or Switcheroo moves to inflict that status on the opponent as well.
There's also Black Sludge, which heals Poison types but damages all other types as if they were poisoned without inflicting the poison status (which means it even damages Steel types that are normally immune to poison). If you give it to your opponent somehow you can effectively inflict them with 2 status conditions instead of just 1, or make them take poison damage without activating Guts, or "poison" Steel types as mentioned before.
The Toxic Orb also has the benefit of allowing Pokémon with the Magic Guard ability to be effectively immune to status conditions. You poison yourself, which means you can't have any other status conditions, and Magic Guard prevents you from taking damage from the poison.
And a poisoned Pokémon can't get any other statuses, that's why Gliscor was so good in dp/bw
I did an Emerald nuzlocke once, and my Breloom consistently -- no joke, it happened _every time_ -- stoop up to Archie's Ice Fang Sharpedo and said "no" while pounding it into submission because it had Poison Heal and managed to get poisoned before every single fight with him.
@@CoralCopperHead I don’t think ice fang existed in gen 3… unless the fang moves were specifically introduced for emerald.
@@bobjob2514 It might have been OR/AS, it was a long time ago.
You should talk about water levels: the themes around them, why they're so infamous and how to build around that.
I can think of two games that handle water in a fun manner. Ultrakill and Ratchet and Clank.
Edit: Rayman Legends and Outer Wilds (as an interesting puzzle) as well.
@@leithaziz2716I will add Rayman Legends to that list
Ratchet and Clank Going Commando did something really cool and I think it went over the heads of most players.
The original game had a major issue with ammo being too expensive, so Insomniac decided that the best solution was hyper inflation. They increased the cost of weapons and gadgets by about 10x and gave you about 10x as many bolts from enemies and crates while keeping the cost of ammo the same.
Then there was a random guy that you find frozen in a block of ice who doesn't know what year it is and thinks he is going to sell his new gadget to Gadgetron which was the weapon company from the first game but went out of business to be replaced by Mega Corp in the second.
Since he was frozen in time, he had no idea that inflation occurred so he sells you his thermerator for a surprisingly cheap price that would have been appropriate for RAC1. Once you get the thermerator you can go through a bunch of water and ice puzzles.
@@leithaziz2716
honestly, there are some that aren't bad, Rayman legends comes to mind, but me personally, I think the Caribbean from kingdom hearts is fairly good, since the underwater controls are actually not that bad and it mostly focuses on ship combat anyways.
i'd like to nominate shovel knight. that game's water level completley inverses what you would expect from water levels, making you floatier in water than out. it has a lot of cool puzzles involving you traversing in and out of the water.
16:07 funny thing is the galarian one would be the best to be around since it collects smog and air pollution in it, and not spewing it
Playing the Mario RPG remake I realized how useful poison could be in that game. It can auto kill the dry bones, who just need to take damage from a skill, and the poison damage can melt certain bosses and enemies. Though the enemies aren't hard so that's not as useful.
Axem Rangers. Bowser's Poison Gas can tear down their durability while you work on individual Rangers. Only Yellow is immune to Poison.
You mention poison Final Fantasy tending to be weak, but there is a notable exception; FFXIII has an unusually high damage percentage for it, to the point that it's actually recommended against the final boss - which is shockingly not immune - due to the fight being on a timer.
It's the same in Final Fantasy 10: Poison is really easy to apply with weapons that have it as an added status, and the damage it does is *explosive*, often being one of the first sources of damage you can do that will put 4 figure damage numbers on the screen.
Your statement makes me think there are so many wrong things in that game, lol
@@kevingriffith6011 part of the reason poison is good in FFX is because it has normal enemies with really high HP and just having those enemies exist alongside the regular ones make poison and gravity actually useful in the game
Forget poison 😆 the final boss is vulnerable to the *death spell* once staggered
I’m fairly new to D&D, and recently in our campaign we’ve run into a few poisonous situations. Kinda funny how the first time I was poisoned I thought “okay how many HP am I going to lose at the start of every turn?” just based on how poison has worked in all the video games I’ve played. When in fact poison works differently than all that-it causes you to roll at disadvantage for all attack rolls and ability checks (kinda like your Castlevania example here-makes you worse at everything). And then a fun consequence was that because of those incidents, I understood the usefulness of the Lesser Restoration spell (can be used to cure poison), which prior to all that had seemed like an unnecessary use of one valuable learned spell spot.
Bleh. Give me 3.5E's poison with actual different, unique effects. If being poisoned in 5E just amounts to "roll twice and take the worst result," that's just boring. Give me knockouts, give me paralysis, attack my ability scores directly, stuff like that.
@@CoralCopperHead There's other poisons in the DMG, and the Dungeon Master can homebrew new poison effects.
@@CoralCopperHead If a poison can't destroy your soul is it really poison? :p
one particular example of poison i find interesting is minecraft's poison and wither mechanic, both do damage overtime, but difference is poison leaves you with half a heart, so sorta like alucard's poison state, but actually harms your health, it might not kill you, but it does make it easier for something else to kill you. on the other hand wither doesn't have that restriction. it will kill you if you don't have enough hearts.
and another neat feature with minecraft's buff debuff mechanics, potions of harming actually heals the undead like zombies, drowned, skeletons, etc and potion of healing harms them
I like those minecraft interactions, but I feel like it is not used enough. Like, do anyone really use potion of healing to kill undead? It feels like a forgotten game mechanic.
@@dominiksulzer1338 yea, it's not that often used cuz there's more efficient ways of doing it, but hey, it's a neat game mechanic when you're in a pinch and need healing, just throw a splash potion on yourself and it'll harm the undead while healing you
it's interesting to me that in fighting games, poison effects do negligible DoT and are almost always used for some some additional effect instead, if poison damage was even remotely decent it would encourage hard keepaway which nobody likes. AKI in sf6 gets improved combo extensions from hitting a poisoned opponent with certain moves, ranno from rivals of aether's poison serves to extend the time the opponent is stuck in his side b and down b bubble depending on how many stacks he's applied, and the mutant from yomi hustle's poison creates a bubble from the opponent whenever they block which pops and hits them again after some time, giving the character monstrous block pressure
Alien in Mortal Kombat X before the nerfs was an example of how making the poison effect too strong on its own makes for a boring playstyle. When poison is handled well, it acts as a pressure tool that forces the opponent into panic and gets them to act. It's kind of like a psychological tool against opponents online in that regard which makes it an interesting mechanic in those games.
Don't forget Valentine from Skullgirls, who has three different types of poison she can inflict: standard DoT, one that induces a slow on the opponent, and the coolest one, one that gives your opponent input lag
One thing I like about Ranno's poison is that it also changes the way the enemy plays if they want to deal with it. When poisoned, every attack you make, you take 1% damage. If you land a hit on your opponent, your poison stacks reduce by 1, encouraging you to act carefully so that you don't chip damage yourself with missed attacks. Parry the opponent, and you remove all your poison.
I'd argue that Dot almost never encourages keep away in traditional fighting games. You usually need to score some kind of hit to set it up in the first place, and it almost never lasts long enough to make running away viable. You'd have to run back in after like 2 seconds anyway. Most of the time it's best use is as a combo tool. Since the damage over time is usually fixed, poison can be an optimal ender for high scaling starters. In GG and P4A poison damage ignores defense modifiers like guts, so it's also great for finishing off opponents at low health.
@@hijster479 DoT doesn't encourage keepaway in most games specifically because the devs take precautions against it by making it really weak, they make it only be applied by certain moves on hit, do low damage or wear off quickly. A character that could easily apply strong poison would set it once then run away or zone all day
Thematically, poison is my favorite element. There are so many cool applications of it in nature and man-made horrors that provide near-infinite possibilities!
I’m still waiting for a Poison/Ice-Type Pokemon… maybe it’s a defrosted ancient plague?
That reminds me of Cassette Beasts which has lots of interesting type interactions, like if a fire type hits a plastic type it melts and becomes poison type. Maybe they could have an ice type that if hit defrosts and becomes poison.
But why poison? Water would make more sense unless there is a specific reason for it, in which case that could be a cool gimmick
Captain America reintroduces polio… but as a Pokémon? I’m in!
Smog! If it's not too close to Koffing and Weezing, that is... Or maybe even another regional variant for them, why not?
no that would be poison flying. smog isn't cold.@@FranciscoJG
Reverse 1999 has an condition called pollution in one of the event stories. Instead of hurting those afflicted once each round, it takes effect for every action a character does. Because this game gives you a set of action points that you can use on any of the active characters, you can have a character take multiple poison hits in a single round, but a character you don't use will take no damage from it. The condition wears off after a couple rounds, but it can stack.
Reminds me of an ability in Dota 2 which applies a bleed effect that does a lot of damage but only while the target moves, and just standing around can leave them vulnerable to other attacks.
So If I understand this correctly, Pollution only hurts you as long as you extert any one of your Action Points.
@jordanhunter3375 you have a team of 3 to 4 characters (action points = number of living characters) so its pretty easy to avoid using a character that was polluted or balance it out with spending an action point on a healer (since pollution takes effect after each action its possible to at least negate the damage). You can also use your action points to create more powerful moves for future turns and that doesn't cause you to take pollution damage so it incentiveses doing fewer, more powerful moves
Sounds like bleeding (or oiling) in Steam World Quest.
Physical activity is discouraged if the air is polluted, so checks out
I like how poison, or Phazon, is used in Metroid Prime. It does a lot of the things that poison normally does, but it’s also core to the story. This poison is literally killing this planet, and you have to stop it.
Fire Emblem Engage has a very unique take on poison as a mechanic that i actually kinda loved. Other games in the series has it as a DOT, where it could potentially kill your units in some games, while it could only take you to 1HP in others.
Engage however implemented a system where poison doesn't do any damage on it's own, but instead acts like a permanent debuff that can be stacked three times per target. Every level of poison guarantees more and more damage on a foe. One stack gives +1, 2 give +3 and 3 give +5 damage on any attack!
So if a unit is poisoned, even characters who would do zero damage, is now guaranteed at least 1 damage against it, and everyone else does their normal damage plus the bonus from poison.
I like how earth bounds status effects. Not poison but their mushrooms cause confusing. The status effect lasts outside of combat and can be cured by selling the mushroom to someone.
My favorite use of poison is in the very first Etrian Odyssey. The thing was that poison was not a percentage based damage but it was a flat damage overall. Meaning if I put in enough skill points into the poison skill on on alchemist I would be guaranteed close to 200 or 300 damage each turn. I practically had this OP poison alchemist carry my entire party through the game.
Poison wasn’t something I used personally, but the second game had a strong advocate for at least letting you apply status effects to bosses; maybe they don’t take as much damage from poison, but it’d be nice if you could still poison them.
That skill is Ad Nihilo, a damage skill that does more damage the more status effects are on the target (though it then removes all of them). Thus why I think a game where resistance to the actual effects would be cool: maybe this enemy takes basically no DoT from poison, but you can still technically poison them, which is all that matters to crank up the damage of an Ad Nihilo type ability.
Showing FFX to start with the discussion on poison is subtle but powerful. Because, after many other FF and JRPG entries, FFX made me respect Poison again. Lots of other titles did tiny damage. 10% of max HP, or even current HP so you'd never actually KO to it. Or it was some piddling damage that was more a nuisance and easily ignored. FFX's whopping 25% of max was a threat.
Definitely the strongest Poison in an FF game. Seymour is particularly vulnerable to it since his stronger forms take multiple actions to attack- about 2000 damage to Seymour Flux whenever he does *anything* adds up.
I get what you mean but I never did beat the final boss of that game (didnt want too)
@@WhiteFangofWar
And that's still nothing against the ancient dragon on gagazet. Limit-breaking poison damage if you make it stick.
As far as I know, poisons and other types of DoT have an interesting history within MMOs, as something that is either so strong you basically _have_ to make keeping it up your priority, or so underwhelming it's basically not worth the trouble. Not to mention games that have entire classes built around applying DoTs, spreading DoTs, etc
The two Monster Hunter games I played (World and Rise) also have some interesting alternatives to the typical poison status on the player side, including stuff like Miasma lowering your max health, and a gear set that slowly eats at your HP in exchange for several damage buffs.
Cassette Beasts has an interesting chemistry with its elements. As for poison, other than basic poison stuff, you also have a plastic type that, when hit with fire, it temporarily becomes a poison type.
I really like how NEO TWEWY handles its status ailments since a lot of them are actually required in order to get a Beatdrop (combo finisher) going. You have three different DoT variants (Burned, Poisoned, and Shocked) and you have can one status override the other in order to both build up your Groove and extend the duration of the DoT. No one enemy/boss is immune to these either so you can just go ham with them to boot.
16:06 Galarian Weezing exhales purified air, so I think it should be fine to breathe it in.
I like how dangerous poison (called Blight) is in Darkest Dungeon 1&2. It makes attacks that utilize it feel powerful. Additionally, enemies dying to DoT effects like poison don't leave a corpse (at least in DD1). It gives an extra level to planning how much damage you're doing if that positioning matters. If you line it up, you can finish your turn and the enemy will decay to ash on the spot. Incredibly satisfying.
Poison is genuinely my favourite element/status in games. It's really cool to see a video on it - you did a great job!
one of my favorite fringe uses of poison is in Bravely Default's Arcanist class, with Exterminate being a skill that does insane damage to any poisoned character on screen including your own. it makes a seemingly weaker status suddenly become very strong if you can mass spread poison and capitalize off of it
in the boss fight against the Arcanist, you can "use it against her", iirc, if you Poison any enemy in this boss fight, Arcanist will stop using Exterminate because it will damage her or her ally, and instead, will begin to cast Dark and Doom in your party.
Erik in Dragon Quest XI also has a skill in his skill set that does increases damage sixfold on a poisoned enemy.
@@goofusmaximus1482 same in Bravely default 2, Some jobs have skills like that, Thief have a skill that do more damage in sleeping enemy, Bastion in Blinded enemy, Phatom in Poisoned, HellBlade in enemies with dread... and so on
I never have the opportunity to use any of theses as its so hard and unreliable to apply any status effect in this game whiout using Phatom job passive, and then its just better paralizy enemies and use Godspeed strike that do insane damage and do the same damage after or some other OP combo...
A bunch of characters/classes in other games have moves like that, but none are as powerful as the BD1 Arcanist. Getting that asterisk is the moment that game starts to break: you need to pair it with a black or red mage to apply the poison, but anything it sticks to is practically dead on the spot.
Sonic and the Black Knight has an equippable item that "poisons the user", making you lose one ring per second, but one of the unlockable skill lets you build your Soul Gauge bar by losing rings, which means that if you have that skill and the poisoning item equipped, you can defeat King Arthur, the game's midboss, in 6 seconds
Given they're based on the Pathfinder TTRPG, Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous use poison in much the same way as the TTRPG does. "Poison" isn't a single status effect, but comprises a bunch of different poisons you can get from different creatures. And they don't deal HP damage, but rather slowly tick away at your character's stats. So, if the character afflicted with poison doesn't make their saving throws fast enough, they could end up REALLY crippled in everything from combat to skill checks if you don't have the right spells or potions/scrolls to heal that stat damage.
Personally, I think one of the most interesting cases of usage of Poison status aliment is in Tales of Rebirth. Other aliments like Paralyze, Freeze or Slow give you just some small disadvantage, Poison there not only drains your HP slowly overtime, but also prevents you from regaining HP, which could be quite deadly.
Riiiiight the poison.
The poison for kuzco
The poison chosen special to kill kuzco
Kuzco's posion
That poison?
In the game Puzzle and Dragons, some enemies might spawn poison orbs on your board. Matching those can hurt you for a chunk of your hp but you can cancel it out with a potent enough healing match. These can also serve more purpose and can sometimes be used towards a leader skill if you think the risk is worth it. They even might have a chance to fall naturally from a certain debuff.
Love that you decided to do a video on this as poison is such an underrated ability in most games
Astlibra Revision has a cool poison system.
When poisoned you have X seconds to use an antidote or find a save point, if not you die.
You can make the antidote from materials too.
It was a little disappointing the first time I found out poisoned pokemon no longer faint from it outside of battle, simply recovering when they're down to 1hp, or just not taking poison damage out of battle at all in later games. (and probably shaking it off with the power of friendship in battle anyway) Takes away some of the urgency to use an item or plan around losing a fighter at an inconvenient time, or more sentimentally, hearing your beloved party hurting with every step toward the nearest pokemon center.
“Teleporting bosses” could be an interesting topic. Twin Princes from Dark Souls 3 and Soul Master/Tyrant come to mind. (Also I guess elden ring has a number of teleporters, but those have more mixed reception)
The inventive genius of some teleporting bosses is that make the camera feel like another important tool in your arsenal. Besides the Twin Princes, Gael and Owl from Sekiro handle this well. Sister Friede is kinda interesting, where you have to look for the boss but you have to rely more on sound. I agree on Radagon though who I find annoying with the teleportation.
@@leithaziz2716 Terraria uses teleporting bosses to prevent cheesing them, similar to how many bosses can pass through blocks so you can't hide from them. (And some late game bosses can shoot through blocks)
I think my favorite teleporting boss has become Primordial Malzeno from Monster Hunter Sunbreak. It really solves all of the frustrating parts of teleporting bosses while also not totally destroying the challenge of fighting a teleporting boss.
Teleportation can also function as a stall mechanic, for better or worse.
If there's a strict time limit to defeat a boss for maximum rewards, a DPS check, the enemy teleporting away becomes a source of frustration, especially if it's unpredictable.
@elk3407 this could lead into some interesting discussions, as most bosses tend to teleport away for heal/ready for charge attack, PriMal whole purpose is to chase you down and hurt you.
"Esuna rather than later" was a gamer-dad joke of the highest (lowest) order.
Poison the most annoying status effect but it makes sense to add in any game rather as a status effect or not.
16:07
While Pokémon plays with poison a lot via the Pokémon, moves etc., it should be noted that it also has TWO poison status conditions. Both are HP drains, but they work differently: one takes a set rate of max HP (I think it was 1/8) every turn. The other one starts with 1/16 of max HP in the first turn but increases 1/16 on every subsequent turn. So after turn 6, it'd drain 3/8 or 6/16 in one turn.
You touched upon it with other games (and I'm grateful for it for the variety), it also has abilities that make use of getting healed when poisoned (you can also poison yourself) or being impossible to poison if your Pokémon has a certain type.
The Etrian Odyssey series poison is infamous, the "Only instant death is worse" kind of ailment. Especially in the beginning, poison can take 1/3 to even half of your HP bar. That's because poison damage is based on a damage formula and the strength of the poison also depends on the skill that poisoned you. So, from one monster, it might be pretty negligible and from the next one, it could pretty much be game over. I'm curious whether other games also have poison damage based on a complex formula.
In these games, each party member/monster can only be afflicted by one ailment at the time. Unfortunately, poison has a pretty high priority, so only really crippling ailments like Petrify - which makes you unable to move at all - can overwrite it. So, unless you have the right skills or items, poison is pretty much a death sentence or eating away heavily on your sustainablitiy in the dungeon.
Probably one of the best design docs, and that's something since they're always stellar. A really multidimensional view into an aspect of game design that is oft overlooked. Well done!
A little surprised that you didn't bring up how one of the central issue with many games is how they make bosses, the type of enemy where poison would be the most useful, outright immune to it.
I would make it so bosses are only immune to poison if there undead/mechanical/etc and only if it would be fair according to game balance, that way players would be able to make educated guesses about which bosses to use poison against.
I had completely forgotten about Poison synergy in Bug Fables. Incredibly strange!
Yeah, Bug Fables does some truly crazy stuff with poison. Thanks for the reminder! Also, thanks for reminding me that poison isn't only an Investment for players, which is my default assumption. I enjoyed Dragon Quest 11 with being able to get a damage-boost for a combo move with Erik if a character was already poisoned (or other status effects) after unlocking the requisite Knife skills.
A little bonus for that Monster Hunter section, in Rise and later Sunbreak, they gave poison some unique synergy and mechanics that turned it into a beast of a status.
1. Poison can be built up WHILE a monster is already poisoned, allowed you to poison it again the moment the original one wears off.
2. A skill called "Chameleos Blessing" doubles the duration of poison on a monster, easily making it the most prolongable status in the game.
3. A skill called "Foray" gives you up to +20% crit chance and bonus attack when a monster is under most status effects, poison being one of them.
4. A skill called "Buildup Boost" gives you up to a +20% damage bonus on any attack that inflicts a status.
5. A skill called "Status Trigger" allows every attack to inflict status damage for a small period of time after rolling through an attack.
Altogether, these mechanics and skills turn poison from a niche damage source into something seriously threatening to anything not resistant to it. (And even if they are resistant, status trigger + buildup boost does a LOT of direct damage as long as you can keep the combo active)
One of the funniest things about Poison Swamps in FromSoft games is how they date AAAALLLLL the way back to Armored Core, before Miyazaki got in, from having to detonate certain spots in a facility full of acid gas that deteriorates your AC, to dealing with rising temperatures in most games with a Heat mechanic, Kojima Radiation in a Level in Gen 4, to that _same_ radiation being used against you to extremely deadly effect in Armored Core Verdict Day's Final Boss, who's piloting an upgraded variant of a previous protagonist's Mech.
So even if you're mechanical, you are not immune to the Ouchie-over-Time Debuff
Ranno in Rivals of Aether. Deal poison and it adds one to the opponent's poison counter which goes up to four. It doesn't do damage steady over time, but rather, if your opponent attacks and misses. The poison does 1% of damage for each poison counter. And the way to get it off is for the opponent to hit Ranno back. And if Ranno catches you in his bubble, it lasts longer the more poison you have on you. Brilliant poison system for a platform fighter.
I like the pokedex description of Alolan Muk, the oil spill one. They eat toxic industrial runoff and their natural environment IS landfills, but because of the region's environmentally-friendly practices they've become endangered. There are several legal toxic waste dump sites established in Alola just to provide a habitat for them.
Galarian Wheezing is similar, it eats pollutants in the atmosphere and produces clean filtered air as waste.
3:23 - Incredible double pun/reference
i'm so used to bosses in games being immune to status effects that I rarely even bother using them or building characters/teams around it
Actually the poison buffs of Bug Fable are mechanics that were already implemented long ago in Pokémon.
The abilities guts/poison rage (50% attack buff) poison heal (12% health recovery) quick feet (50% speed buff), marvel scale (50% special defense buff) all give you various buffs when poisoned making for some very strategies, especially since you can combo it with the move façade which has double damage when a status effect is applied. And similarly to bug fable, you can apply poison to your Pokémon with the toxic orb item (you can also burn them with flame orb).
I have been anticipating this release like no other.
A unique case of poison is found in Tenchu 2 and Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. It's threat doesn't come from the damage over time (5 damage a tick on a 100 hp bar), the real threat with it is that each time you take damage from it, a character winces in pain for like 2 seconds, opening them up for follow up attacks. The end game of Tenchu 2 is brutal because elite enemies and the final boss use it.
I'd like to see a video on burn effects.
In Guild Wars 1, it dealt damage faster than poison, but didn't last as long.
In Mario games, it tends to make you move around uncontrollably.
Path of Exile has not necessarily unique but interesting uses of poison, burn, shock etc effects, I think it would be good for your burn idea as well. The game also has buffs you can have that are while burned, etc.
In Octopath Traveler 2, The Apothecary has access to a skill known as Weak To Poison, which makes a foe weak to poison for X amount of turns, depending on how much you boost the skill. Combine it with an actual poison effect, and the foe loses 1 additional shield point per turn if they're poisoned.
Unfortunately, the only ways to poison a foe would be to either use the Apothecary Skill Poison Axe (which only increases damage done by the skill itself depending on how much you boost it), Bottle of Poisonous Dust (poisons at a given probability, and is an item (you can't boost items)), Bottle of Nightmares (a rare item that also applies many other status effects), and Empoison (a Skill that only Hikari can learn thanks to his Talent)...
It also doesn't help that many foes late game are immune to poison as a status effect, so...
I think I'll just stick to more orthodox ways to deal damage
In Crab Champions, released This year by Noisestorm (who made the Crab Rave song), Poison is a damage amplifier. Each stack increases damage taken by 1%, making it one of the strongest effects in the game. If your proc chance is high enough and if your gun shoots fast enough, you can make the bosses take over 10x damage.
I like Borderlands 2 which has two poison elements, corrosive and slag that do different things. Corrosive just makes you deal more damage to armor and gives you damage over time, however slag lets you coat enemies in it and gives you a big damage bonus when attacking slagged enemies. Another cool thing about slag is that you need to switch weapons to use it effectively because if you attack a slagged enemy with a slag weapon you don’t get the damage bonus.
I love the simple way that Quassimorph does status effects and resistances, poison, fire and any type of damage can be beat is you have enough resistance to that status or damage type, but it all depends on the armor and vest you have, all the armors have diferent resisitances to diferent damage types, so its a matching puzzle depending on what you fear you will face against
I love how Monster Hunter has poison effect monsters differently. For example, the Elder Dragon Kushala Daora's control over wind becomes much worse when poisoned.
One game that had its own "poison" mechanics not on this list is Xenogears, and it comes into play for one key fight. During the first half of the game, where Fei and Bart go to rescue Margie from the castle in Aveh. Bart has to face off against Ramsus and Miang during their escape, and fight alone in a very once sided encounter where Miang heels Ramsus after every turn. However you can beat this by finding a whip called the "Cobra Cracka" located in one of the rooms in the courtyard. Equipping it, it hits Ramsus with the poison effect which forces Miang to cure him instead of using a healing spell.
Darkest Dungeon’s blight is probably my favorite version of poison in games. It’s very similar to Slay the Spire’s version of the system, and blight combos are just super satisfying.
Nothing like cozying up with a Design Doc video during the holidays!
In Pokemon, Poison, Toxic, and the similar Burn are very important for Pokemon that specialize in surviving instead of attacking. It's a whole separate way to play, even though a lot of people don't like how slow it can make fights go.
"toxic stall" is very powerful and reliable, but its slow which is boring and requires survivability (especially against crits which become increasingly likely as a battle drags on)
Dragon Quest XI has one of my favourite implementations of poison in an RPG. Historically, the status condition was far too difficult to inflict on the enemy, and too low-damage to be worth considering. However, in XI it instead primarily serves as a way to set the enemy up for huge damage.
Almost all enemies and bosses are susceptible to it, and the attack Cobra Strike pretty reliably poisons foes. Moreover, once the enemy is poisoned, Victimiser- an attack learned by both Erik and Sylvando- does over *six times* your normal damage, by far the largest damage multiplier in the game. Each use of Victimiser cures the enemy of poison, however, so you'll need to re-apply the effect each time you want to use it.
These skills are exclusive to the Knives skill tree, and singlehandedly make them a viable alternative build to Swords. You get less immediate power from Knives, but you have the opportunity to do enormous damage with the right setup and some luck. Do you want Erik to hit hard straight away, or do you want to gamble that you'll be able to quickly poison the enemy and apply all the relevant buffs to Erik at once for one big attack?
An extra layer is added to this by the fact that with Divide, Erik can triple the damage of his next hit. I personally love building entire parties around supporting him, including investing Sylvando into Knives so he can help poison the enemy. Erik can easily obtain damage in the tens of thousands with this strategy, and when the stars allign you can kill bosses in a matter of turns. But there's so much that can go wrong, as well.
Singlehandedly redeemed both a historically useless status effect, and a historically useless weapon type.
in momodora reverie under the moonlight, there's a little touch I really like with edea's pearl (an item you get from a poison boss), after equipping it and when you shoot an arrow, it makes a little poison cloud, so shoot it at enemies and poison them. the poison damage is no joke, often being able to one shot enemies low-mid health enemies from an uncharged bow shot if you leave them alone for a moment. however, and this is my headcanon, because the item is originally from a toxic centipede and thus borrowed power, *it can also poison kaho(player) too* if she gets too close to the poison cloud
this honestly leads to a fun dance you can between dodging the enemy and your own poison, while stacking the pain onto them. or just ignore all of this by equipping the impurity flask which makes poison heal you lol
Wo Long has an interesting take on poison as well. There are five elements, each having its own elemental debuff associated with it. It takes a while for the status to build up before it is triggered and slowly ticks down. However, the poison is special in that in addition to dealing damage over time, it also prevents all other debuffs from ticking down while it's active.
The fighting game Arcana Heart has the Evil arcana that you can use to apply poison that deals damage over time which can be reapplied, and goes away when you get hit. It's a pretty cool design! (And yes, it's also purple)
watching bug fables mentioned while playing bug fables is joy
Warframe's elemental system, which allows two "primary" elements to combine into a new secondary types, means there's four different takes on the poison mechanic.
The primary element, Toxin, is your standard poison DoT - the most notable thing about it is that it bypasses enemy shields.
Mixing with Heat damage turns that into Gas, which doesn't _directly_ do damage over time, but instead creates a localised cloud that damages all enemies inside.
Adding Electric damage turns Toxin into Corrosive, the status effect of which degrades enemy armour whilst it's active.
Finally, my favourite - Toxin + Cold creates Viral damage, which inflicts a damage vulnerability upon the target; all incoming damage to their health is multiplied according to how many Viral procs they have.
There is something I find viscerally satisfying watching numbers slowly go up while the enemy healthbar slowly goes down.
The hit-and-run-and-hide poison lets you pull off is my favourite flavour of poison, right next to debuff stacking to fight a crippled opponent.
6:50 this also reminds me of how many party builds in bravely default rely on self-poisoning to get extra turns, as well as alot of abilities in Pokemon like Guts and Toxic Heal
7:19 Also, that's no longer the case as of Gen 5 (Black/White) - Poison no longer deals damage outside of battle.
Heck, in Gen 4 (Diamond/Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold/SoulSilver), Pokémon still took damage, but couldn't faint from it; they'd survive and cure themselves of poison at 1 HP.
meanwhile in etrian odyssey 4 poison deal such absurd levels of damage that it kills enemies in one turn when a nightseekers venom throw is maxed out
Magic the Gathering uses Poison in the form of Poison counters, which are applied directly to the player and cause that player to immediately lose if they reach 10 Poison counters. As Players in normal Magic have 20 life but can gain and lose it throughout a game, Poison bypasses it completely, especially since there are extremely few ways to remove Poison counters.
Additionally, a recent set introduced the Corrupt mechanic, which gives certain cards additional bonuses if the opponent has 3 or more Poison counters, as normally Poison does nothing to the opponent until it kills them at 10 counters.
Yu-Gi-Oh has the Venom archetype. As long as Venom Swamp is on the field, any non-Venom monster keeps accumulating Venom Counters. Each counter lowers their attack by 500, and if it reaches 0, that monster is destroyed. Venom monsters are all designed after venomous snakes and Naga.
@@ggrarl Magic does something similar, in a way, by having creatures give poison. Wither and Infect are abilities on creatures that cause whatever damage they deal to other creatures to instead grant that many -1/-1 counters, and a creature that has their toughness reduced to 0 dies. Creatures with Infect and Toxic grant Poison when they attack a player directly, so the defending player has to decide if they want to risk losing their creatures in combat or take the poison. (In Magic you don't attack other creatures, you attack the opponent and they decide which of their own creatures they block with).
I created a TCG game in wich poison attacks do a very high damage, but the downside is every time an enemy or ally is hit by a poison attack it gets a "poison token" wich reduces the poison damage by 25%, until it reaches 4 tokens and do 0 damage, I like the idea of enemies and allies getting more poison resistance until they are completely immune to it
Poison Ink in Splatoon 3's Side Order is really strong, just having one makes your ink x3 as affective against enemies (and more importantly) portals. Stacking a few is also really helpful, especially for some weapons, but its one of the chips that you only really "NEED" 1 of if you can
One of my favorite uses of Poison is with Crow from Brawl Stars. His Daggers not only apply poison which resets the timer if you hit the target, but it also lowers the effect of healing abilities. It’s neat!
Shoutout to Gloomhaven, whose poison effect wasn't mentioned here: in addition to adding +1 to attack damage (like SotN), it also blocks the next heal effect (i.e., instead of healing your HP, it just heals the poison instead), which gives a unique dynamic in some scenarios of "weak heal, then stack as many strong heals as possible before I become poisoned again."
It also has a damage-over-time effect called "wound" (1HP/turn) which is also substantially useful, because (1) there are a number of enemies with low HP (3-4) but high defenses so that quick weak attacks bounce off, and (2) you have a finite number of actions so letting chip damage take someone out means you don't have to waste another attack.
Poison in One Step From Eden is similar to Slay the Spire from what you're telling me...the way it works is you can apply as much poison as you want, but until it ticks down your poison don't actually do damage itself, but once it resolves the target takes full damage, then the poison stack is halved. There's a character who uses poison in a dangerous way to accelerate their gameplay, but if you poisoned yourself too much you need to keep the poison up or lose. It's a very fast paced game where you could forget for one second and die.
Yu-Gi-Oh has the Predaplant archetype. The gimmick here is their “Predator Counters”. When a monster has a predator counter, their level becomes 1. This can ruin your opponent’s strategy because levels are needed to summon Synchro and Xyz monsters. The only two that don’t need it are Fusion and Link monsters, but they aren’t commonly the focus of many archetypes.
There is also Ritual monster, but nobody really use those.
There was also the Venom Archetype back in GX.
I'd say that the most common status effect/visual thing is actually on fire/burn. Would love to see a vid on that as well
Love the Satorl Marsh theme at the end
this is honestly so much up my alley lived this duder. also i been LOVING poison on (mainly) the character Sissy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. it effects your stamina and messes with your controls so you wobble in directions
In Rivals of Aether, the water element character Ranno represents the sub-element of poison. He can build up to 4 stacks of poison on an opponent by hitting them with specific moves. The implementation here is very interesting because rather than dealing damage over time, it deals 1% of damage every time a poisoned enemy uses a move, and one stack is removed every time they hit Ranno. Not only does it rack up a good amount of damage, but it encourages the opponent to play aggressively to clear it, potentially making them more predictable and able to be countered more easily. The poison mechanic also works back into the rest of his kit with his bubble mechanic. When an opponent is put into a bubble with side special or knocked into one placed with down special, the duration that they're trapped for is dependent on how many stacks of poison they have, with the stacks being removed as the duration is expended almost acting like a timer.
Similarly to the Castlevania example is D&D (or Baldurs Gate 3 i guess), where Poison is on one hand a separate Damage Type, but also the poisond Condition gives you Disadvantage on Skill Checks and Attacks, meaning you perform worse. Not only does that heavily influence Combat but can also spice up some Exploration in a Dungeon.
If It wasn´t for the Fact, it´s the most resisted/immunized(?) Condition + Most strong Monsters have very good Constitution.
"Esuna rather than later"
*slow clap* Well done
A good non-video game example of how poison can be used as a mechanic is in Magic: The Gathering. You accumulate poison counters over time from taking damage from certain kinds of creatures, and if your poison count ever hits 10, you immediately lose the game. It gives the feeling of approaching a critical density of poison rather than it being something that takes effect over a long period of time. Eventually the toxicity gets to a point where you can no longer survive. There are also other cards that give bonuses or have synergies with a poisoned opponent. It's honestly one of my favorite poison systems in any game because it changes how you approach playing. Your life total, the thing most often used as your metric for how close you are to death, can be entirely irrelevant against a deck that's looking to kill you with poison counters, which means that some of the usual strategies for combating a fast deck that looks to kill you fast can be ineffective.
Really fun that this came out on the same day I got to Blighttown in my Dark Souls playthrough!
Also, Kirby's Poison ability is one of my favorites - you can leave clouds of poison gas hanging in the air for a few seconds, dealing AOE chip damage, and you can spray enemies with poison goop, and even slide on the poison goop trails yourself!
On the MonHun example: Rise really took poison damage as a concept to the next level by giving us skills to benefit a playstyle focused around it. For example: skills that increase damage dealt to poisoned enemies; double the duration of poison’s effect; and an interesting one that gives you a guaranteed poison proc after you perfectly evade through attacks with a significantly higher build-up rate than usual.
The closest I’ve found to this being done well RPG is Erik’s kit in DQXI. Being able to have team setups that take advantage of poisoned enemies for high-damaging skills is a more layered alternative to just having a bit of poison on your weapon for giggles.
In Spiral Knights, a poisoned character cannot recover health.
Got an enemy that is body blocking you from attacking the creature that keeps healing it? Poison it, and that healer is doing nothing for them.