Poison Weapon

Gotural

Today we lost one of our brothers in arms.

Poison Weapon
Each successful hit within the next 5 rounds will inject poison into the target. Each target can only be affected once per round. The amount of poison damage depends on the user's level:

1st - Target suffers 1 poison damage (no save) and 1 poison damage per 2 seconds for 12 seconds (save vs. death negates).
8th - Target suffers 2 poison damage (no save) and 1 poison damage per second for 12 seconds (save vs. death at -1 negates)
16th - Target suffers 4 poison damage (no save) and 2 poison damage per second for 12 seconds (save vs. death at -2 negates)

Rest in Peace Poison Weapon 2000-2016 you will never be forgotten.

It was you who carried me through tough times, combined with Melf Minute Meteor you were able to deal 60 more damage per round from range and you made BG1 a walk in the park.



Bypassing every immunities in the first game, you managed to take down some invulnerable characters.





Mixed with Arrows of Detonation, Frag Grenades or Fire Seeds you could even apply your lethal damage over time effect on multiple targets at the same time, bypassing Protection from Magical Weapon.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EicptLkQpr8

Farewell my friend.



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Jokes aside, I'm actually happy with this change! This ability was too strong in my opinion and made Blackguards over the top.
But I'm a bit curious at the same time, why did the team decide to change this ability? Why only this ability and not the Enrage for example?
Can we expect some more rebalancing in the future?

I invite you to share here your impressions on this change and your stories about your Assassins or Blackguards!

[Deleted User]

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Noon

What did change about poison exactly ? I almost never use it.

SirBatince

But such a nerf makes assassin boring, doesn't it? Other than the stab multiplier, it becomes a lackluster kit.

Don't mind one bit for the blackguard though.

TheArtisan

SirBatince said:

But such a nerf makes assassin boring, doesn't it? Other than the stab multiplier, it becomes a lackluster kit.

Don't mind one bit for the blackguard though.

Backstab makes the assassin fun. Poison made it stupid.

Personally, I have no problem with this change.

Flashburn

RIP Poison Weapon. I hardly knew ye - I didn't know about that it could do that until about a month or so ago.

Gotural

@subtledoctor At the moment, Poison Weapon penetrates both Stoneskin and Mirror Image. And this shouldn't change with the patch AFAIK.

I had Dorn kill a high level mage fully protected in a single round with GWW + Poison Weapon, he didn't do a single physical damage to him but killed him in a round with 120 poison damage.

I think it's a bit sad for the Assassin though who do not have such THAC0 and APR.

TheArtisan

Gotural said:

@subtledoctor At the moment, Poison Weapon penetrates both Stoneskin and Mirror Image. And this shouldn't change with the patch AFAIK.

I had Dorn kill a high level mage fully protected in a single round with GWW + Poison Weapon, he didn't do a single physical damage to him but killed him in a round with 120 poison damage.

I think it's a bit sad for the Assassin though who didn't such THAC0 and APR.

TBH, making the Blackguard share the same poison ability as the assassin was a huge mistake. The original poison was balanced around the thief's low apr and hit rate so even stacking it wasn't that broken. Then when you put it on a fighter you see where it becomes a problem. Obviously you could do something similar with the assassin/fighter but it's already common knowledge that dual-classing with certain kits basically breaks game balance in half. It's sad too, I don't even think the blackguard is that over the top without poison.

I play assassins a lot and most of the time, I never use poison for damage. I always save it for interrupting mages, so this change doesn't change much for its utility. It just kills abuse cases like the above.

Abel

[spoiler=before]When Poison Weapon is active each successful hit within the next 5 rounds will inject poison into the target, dealing an extra 2 points of damage per second with no Saving Throw (up to a maximum of 12 points of damage per hit). Moreover, if the target fails a Saving Throw vs. Poison, he/she will suffer 1 additional point of damage per round for 4 rounds.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=nerfed]Poison Weapon
Each successful hit within the next 5 rounds will inject poison into the target. Each target can only be affected once per round. The amount of poison damage depends on the user's level:
1st - Target suffers 1 poison damage (no save) and 1 poison damage per 2 seconds for 12 seconds (save vs. death negates).
8th - Target suffers 2 poison damage (no save) and 1 poison damage per second for 12 seconds (save vs. death at -1 negates)
16th - Target suffers 4 poison damage (no save) and 2 poison damage per second for 12 seconds (save vs. death at -2 negates)[/spoiler]
Indeed, pretty huge nerf (see bolded extracts). I'm not sure I agree with this change. It makes Blackguards and Assassins much less interesting.

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Gotural

@subtledoctor Oh but I agree with you, it's both absurd from a roleplay and a gameplay point of view.
I was just saying this to confirm you that poison indeed penetrates Stoneskin, and even Mirror Image!

(And according to the changelog, this isn't going to change)

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IchigoRXC

Is the poison going through stone skin and mirror image not fixable by our wonderful community?

Blackorb

I am a little disappointed with the nerf for the Assassin. Yes poison is very strong but in my opinion a Assassin's poison was not overpowered enough to warrant a nerf in baldurs gate 2, in baldurs gate 1 it was WAY over the top!

Now i don't mind that the poison is weaker in baldurs gate 1 because i personally don't mind it if class kits that were originally only in baldurs gate 2 get nerfs or scalling on level for abilities to make them more in line for baldurs gate 1 and low level content in general (beginning of icewind dale for example).

But for high level Assassin's this change is a little disappointing i rather had a nerf for low levels only and then get the old poison back on level 8 instead of the way it is now.

I dont mind the nerf on the blackgaurd though with there higher thaco and apr poison was way to strong.

Pecca

There is also a question if the poison will be useful at all in ToB, where saves are quite high.

Dee

The original Poison Weapon ability didn't scale at all, which meant that in BG:EE, it was way too powerful. The new version of the ability scales so that it's appropriately potent at level 1, and eventually becomes the rock-the-house ability that you'd expect from a level 16 assassin.

JuliusBorisov

@Dee In terms of the new version of the ability for BG2 (the 16th level version) - the question is why is this ability nerfed, i.e. made worse than the original BG2 behavior - @Blackorb in the latest post covered exactly that.

A target can only be affected once per round is a nerf, and thus damage is a lot lower, with a negating save, while before a target could be affected several times in a round, and saves worked differently.

Dee

If anyone's curious about the math, here it is. Parentheses shows the total damage if you make your save.

| Level | Old     | New    | Change   |
| 1     | 16 (12) | 7 (1)  | -9 (-11) |
| 8     | 16 (12) | 14 (2) | -2 (-10) |
| 16    | 16 (12) | 28 (4) | +12 (-8) |

At level 1, it's a significant decrease from what it was before (which is appropriate).
At level 8, it's only slightly less powerful. The biggest difference is the amount of damage that's prevented by the saving throw.
At level 16, it's significantly more powerful than it was before, if the target fails their save. If they make it, it's a bit less powerful.

The short answer for why we felt it was necessary to rebalance the ability is that it was designed without the Blackguard in mind. You were never supposed to be doing poison damage five or ten times in a round against the same target. It made the Blackguard kit way too powerful, and it needed to be addressed.

The longer answer is that the mechanic as a whole needed a redesign. If its level 1 version was too powerful, we needed to find a way to make it balanced while still being fun to use. And the scaling needed to be predictable and intuitive as well; otherwise it feels like two different abilities, and we didn't want that.

So the first thing that went out the window was the extended poison effect not offering a saving throw. That's too powerful; you can't have that at level 1. You arguably shouldn't have it at any level; it cuts too many fights short, without any chance of it not working. It's a "win" button, and that's bad design.

So once that aspect of it was gone, it was just a matter of crunching the numbers. The new version of the ability is intuitively scaled, powerful enough at all levels to be worth using, and not so powerful that it automatically wins every fight you have.

Gotural

@Dee The old poison didn't work like that, in fact, it didn't work the way it was described.

If the save was failed, you suffered 1 additional point of damage every second per round for 4 rounds, but the by seconds was never mentionned.

This means that the old Poison Weapon did at least 12 damage per hit over 6 seconds, or 36 damage per hit on a failed save over 4 rounds (18 damage the first round, 6 more damage per round for three rounds after).

The new Poison Weapon, even at level 16+, is definitely inferior.

Tresset

@Dee I typically dislike nerfing, but you make such a good argument it is hard for even me to disagree. That said, I am still going to keep a back up of the old poison, just in case...

Gotural

@Dee If I may take your graph, here are the real numbers.

| Level | Old     | New    | Change   |
| 1     | 36 (12) | 7 (1)  | -29 (-11) |
| 8     | 36 (12) | 14 (2) | -22 (-10) |
| 16    | 36 (12) | 28 (4) | -8 (-8) |

It's huge nerf at every level of the new ability, and that's without counting that

-the new Poison Weapon ability can only affect someone once per round which is a big decrease in power.

-the new Poison Weapon ability doesn't apply a damage over time effect if the target make its save, which means that you cannot interrupt spellcasting as easily as before.

Gotural

Here is a proof of what I'm saying about Poison Weapon.




As you can see in this screenshot, Edwin is down to 41 HP from 90 in one melee punch. The fist attack did 13 damage and he failed his save against poison, dealing 36 more damage in the process for a total of 49 damage. 90-49=41.

You can even see that Edwin took 1 damage a lot of times (24 times exactly) instead of the regular 2 damage 6 times if the save is made.

Caradoc

I'm hoping that someone creates a mod which restores poison ability to it's full glory.

Pecca

I don't see why assassins and blackguards must use the same ability. In fact they shouldn't. One should have an ability properly balanced for a thief kit, and the other for a high THAC0 and APR paladin kit.

antimatter3009

Ugh, I *hate* this change on the assassin. This ability is now balanced for a blackguard, which inherently makes it underpowered on an assassin. It was previously balanced (or maybe slightly overpowered) for the assassin, which made it way overpowered for the blackguard. There's no way to reconcile the two. They should have different poison weapon abilities with different scaling, even if they work similarly. It's stupid to me that a warrior class and a rogue class ever shared a damage dealing ability like this.

Many people already dismissed the assassin as a crappy thief. Now it's definitely true. Their x7 backstab multiplier isn't all that much better than a x5 and doesn't come into play until halfway through SoA anyway. The thief skills they give up essentially means they cannot be an effective utility thief and an effective backstabber until very late, they have to choose one or the other. This was already true, but you got compensation through the poison ability, which gave a nice, limited use way of shutting down casters. Now, until you hit that x6 backstab multiplier they are largely useless characters. No utility skills, crappy thief combat skills, and the ability to apply all of 1 or 2 extra damage per hit (if, of course, they can even land their 1 high thaco attack per round).

A small amount of stoneskin-bypassing damage is a fantastic ability on a warrior with 2.5+ apr with good thaco, but is not much use on a thief, who is lucky to land 1 attack in a given round. Especially at the cost of giving up all the thief utility. If you're going to backstab, an assassin is now more like a gimped stalker. If you're not planning on micromanaging your assassin to run in and out of combat for backstabs (which I find tedious), then it's tough to imagine any use for them. They were crappy fighters with the ability to achieve great power for a short time. Now they're just crappy fighters.

Tresset

Wait... The new poison doesn't stack like the old one used to? Bah! Hang on people... I can fix this for you.

Jarrakul

I don't have the beta, so I haven't played with the new version, but I will say I agree that this is a *substantial* nerf that is appropriate for the blackguard and the low-level assassin, but is not appropriate for the mid-to-high-level assassin. The reason for this is not the difference in raw damage, but rather the fact that, if I understand correctly, the damage-over-time component of the poison is now completely negated on a successful save, which means that it becomes increasingly less useful at disrupting high-level spellcasters as the game goes on.

I *do* like the once-per-round change, however. This significantly limits the amount of ridiculousness the blackguard can achieve with it.

Dee

Hm, it looks like we did some of the math wrong. The "Once per round" bit is intentional, and it primarily affects the Blackguard since the Assassin isn't usually going to have more than one attack per round. But the damage scaling may need a second look.

Gotural

In fact I would even say that limiting the application to once per round per target should be enough to fix the ability, it will retain its ability to disrupt spellcasting for a single round with no save (the damage over time effect lasts for 6 secs) which is in my opinion the main utility of this ability; to disrupt spellcasters.
But at the same time it will prevent Blackguards to abuse their APR with the poison to kill Mages and Dragons through Stoneskin without dealing any physical damage to them.

Tresset

Dee said:

Hm, it looks like we did some of the math wrong. The "Once per round" bit is intentional, and it primarily affects the Blackguard since the Assassin isn't usually going to have more than one attack per round. But the damage scaling may need a second look.

While you work on that I will provide the old poison weapon files. They are available here.

Dee

As helpful as that is, I'd like to hear people's feedback from actually using the Poison Weapon ability in its current state. Talking about numbers and how they've changed is well and good, but playtesting is more helpful.