Poisons in Khoras

[tanis]

I was looking at the poisons section of the site, and I got to wondering about something. There is a sesquipedalian term that refers to toxins called Mithridatization. This is when you administer small doses of poison to gain an eventual immunity. If possible, could there be a new section on poisons referring to which poisons can be used this way. Some poisons chemically will not do this, but some potent poisons can be such as potent venoms, et cetera.

[Eltern]

A player in my campaign is becoming something of a poison connoisseur, so this information would be useful to me, too. I suspect David is pretty busy these days, and I've already stolen so many of his ideas, so I'll see if I can't whip this one up myself :-) Sometime within the next week or two I'll try to post my hypothesis.

Do you have sites that I could use as a reference?

[avisarr]

Yep. I'm swamped, unexpectedly. However, this is a fascinating topic. I may just have to do a little research and cook something up.

[tanis]

Sorry, I'm not good at searching for sites, but I'll keep looking.

Post Scriptum: Cyanides and ricin don't work because one keeps oxygen from going from blood to tissue, while the other impairs protein synthesis.

[Spence]

This is definately an interesting topic.  I dont know what others would recommend, but here's what i would do. (After we've found poisons that one can build a tolerance to)

1) PC's can expose themselves to a small dose of the poison, they suffer a minor version of the poisons effects, but not lethal or permanent.  For the next week their body is busy fighting off the effects of said poison (or  however long it takes them to recover the damage naturally).  This gets repeated with an ever shortening cycle of time to heal for a set amount of time, after which they gain a resistance bonus on all poisons (or that single poison, your choice).  They'll need to continue to expose themselves to said poison to retain the bonus.  After this another poison can be chosen and a higher resistance bonus gained until a maximum bonus (determined by the GM(s)) has been met. 

I actually thought about bringing this idea up to the DM team for the Dathkandra chat, but for an online setting with more than your average players (compared to a TT group) this is very hard to keep track of.  That and I still have to come up with rules for all things relating to poison that the chat can use (such as costs, materials, availablity of materials and whatnot).

Hope maybe my idea helps you abit though =)

Spence

[tanis]

My biggest issue is that some very deadly toxins, which I can't think of off the top of my head, but which are more toxic than cyanide, allow you to undergo mithridatization, and even some neurotoxins, like in cobras, for example, can be utilized in this way.
Oh and by the way, I am glad that this wasn't forgotten, because I finally decided to join the forum because of the answer to this question, and this is my first forum, so, I love it, but, I'm 16 and have way too much time on my hands. So, anyways, Danke Shen.

Post Scriptum: How do you spell that, aaauuggghh!!!!!!!

[Spence]

Some poisons are so toxic the body cant fight them off, even a drop introduced into the blood stream (for injury induced poisons/venoms) can be fatal.  But not always.  If somebody has a strong enough metabolism (Dwarves spring to mind, they're very hardy) they can fight off the poison and eventually recover.  The body produces a means to fight the toxin.

If the body is already used to fighting toxins (via Mithridatization or what have you) the means will already be there, and often already working.  IF done correctly it will make one more resiliant to toxins, if it is not however it can be fatal.  Mithridatization is risky business, even for those experienced with it.

For gaming purposes i'd suggest a requirement in knowledge skills and medical skills (Knowledge: Nature and Heal for DnD, Science and Medicine for WoD, etc etc) before somebody can even try to do this without outright causing injury or death to themselves or others.

[tanis]

    Thanks!

[tanis]

     I was reading up on ricin and it's source castor beans about a month ago, but it just now hit me. Ricin is actually two proteins. Ricin A has to be combined with Ricin B to be deadly. Ricin itself as a poison is found as about five percent of the leftover stuff after castor oil has been refined. Now, if I remember right, it takes around 20 whole beans to kill an adult with ricin poisoning, while quite a bit less will make you just very sick for a few days. Now, it is very unlikely that you could ever get really good and immune to it, but it should be possible to at the very least lower it's lethality for you, allowing you a greater fighting chance against it.

[tanis]

     On the other hand, many venoms cause sensitization, and eventually allergies. Humph...David, you may need to make this and Magical Coding Systems Monthly Spotlights.

[tanis]

     If you don't mind David, please keep us informed of specific changes to Poisons here and Coding Systems in its topic.

[avisarr]

I'll post it here on the forum and on the News page.

[tanis]

     Cool!

[tanis]

     I just realized that Xelnoir would either be an extremely humane death, or more of an extremely dangerous drug.

[tanis]

Haha talk about bringing up dead topics, i just realized this was my first topic but...

I saw on the page for the Death Blossom you had some information on becoming immune.

My question now is would you intend for the effect to be permanent once built up?

If so great, but I just wanted to verify.

Here's the text:

Tolerance: It is possible to build up a tolerance to the Death Blossom powder, but it requires many months or years. It must be administered in very small doses weekly. For each month of treatment, a 5-10% immunity is built up. This is cumulative. After 10-20 months, the victim is completely immune.