Poison Types

I've been reading the JG Ready Reference Sheets, which I'll be reviewing eventually, but I sussed out a particular pattern in their poison table. Unlike the default old-school approach, JG poisons do not cause instant death; instead, they are arranged in a table as poison types 0 through 9 and each does a set damage per round for an equal number of rounds. There's also a bonus effect (illness, paralysis, or coma, in most cases.)

I tend to shy away from highly specific tables, preferring stuff I can memorize or easily adapt from one or two multi-purpose tables, so I had a negative reaction to this table when I first saw it. I still wasn't sold when I noticed that the poison type, damage, and # rounds were all identical, and the delay before onset was 10 minus the poison type.

But then I checked the listed monsters against their monster compendium and discovered: poison type = HD of monster (except for purple worms.) This means you really only have to worry about the bonus effect on a failed save.

I may want to address that in a future post, but the basic concept seems worth adopting: poisons are still dangerous, especially from wyverns or purple worms, but it's not a save or die roll.