Alchemy question - poison effects?

[kryptopyr]

I've played with characters who were fairly strong in alchemy, but I've never really focused much on creating or using poisons.  Recently I've been looking at some of the different alchemy effects, and I have a few questions about poisons.  I'm hoping I can get some feedback or suggestions from some of you who might have more experience using these poisons in the game.

 

If you're familiar with these effects and understand how they work, then you can ignore the next few paragraphs (in fact, I'll just stick them in a spoiler for tidiness).  However, since there does seem to be a fair bit of confusion online about how these effects actually work, I'll go ahead and take the time to clarify them before going further.

 

 

 

First, and by way of comparison, there are 3 different beneficial alchemy effects that buff Health, Magicka, and Stamina:  Restore, Fortify, and Fortify Regeneration Rate.  These seem to compliment each other nicely, particularly when the Restore effect is given a 5-10 sec duration rather than instantaneous.  Each one contributes a bit differently to your stats and each effect has specific pros and cons that make them useful in certain situations.

 

However, I'm not sure that I see the same complimentary nature in the various poison effects.  There are four different types of poisons that effect H/M/S.  The descriptions given in the game are inaccurate.  The actual effects and what they do are as follows:

 

- Damage = Damages the target's Health by points.  The damage is permanent unless some action is taken to recover (or time elapses to allow the attribute to naturally regenerate).  In the vanilla game this is an instantaneous effect.  In many mods, the damage occurs over a 5-10 sec duration (which I think is preferable).

- Ravage = Reduces the target's maximum Health by points for seconds.  This is a temporary effect.  The full reduction happens instantly upon effect start and is automatically and instantly recovered after the duration is over.  Ravage is basically the negative counterpart to Fortify.

- Lingering Damage = Damages the target's Health by points per second for seconds.  Like "Damage" this is a permanent effect and there is no automatic recovery.

- Damage Regen = The negative counterpart to Fortify Regeneration.  There is no Damage Health Regen however, just Magicka and Stamina.

 

 

 

Balanced properly, the four different poison effects seem okay with regard to Health: Damage Health deals permanent damage over a short duration (modded to add duration); Ravage Health decreases max health instantly but only temporarily; and Lingering Damage Health does permanent damage over a longer stretch of time (modded to increase duration and magnitude).

 

My question mostly concerns the Damage, Ravage, and Lingering Damage effects as they apply to Magicka and Stamina.  Is there much difference between these effects as they apply in game? 

 

Does a Lingering Damage Magicka or a Lingering Damage Stamina poison have any noticeable effect on enemies?  Even with the slightly higher magnitudes and longer durations that I see in some mods, it just seems as though most enemies are going to make up for this with their normal regeneration rates and, at best, the Lingering Damage would simply counter their regeneration (making it essentially another Damage Stamina Regen poison).

 

What effect does Damage Staimina and/or Ravage Stamina have?  Given that in the vanilla game power attacks only require 1 point of stamina, partially reducing an enemies stamina seems fairly pointless.  Even with some of the combat mods that adjust the way stamina works, it seems that unless you really manage to seriously ramp up the magnitude of this poison, it's not going to have much noticeable effect.

 

Likewise Ravage Magicka seems like a weaker counterpart to Damage Magicka, neither of which seem very useful unless you stack several of the higher magnitude versions.  Theoretically, both of these should be limiting the number and/or type of spells that enemies are using, forcing them to use fewer or less powerful spells until their magicka recovers.  I'm not sure I've ever noticed this in game, which might be more of a reflection on the limited number of spells that most enemy mages are given.

 

Anyway, I'm hoping someone can shed a bit of light on these effects.  Maybe I'm not using them correctly, or haven't found the right situation for them.  However, after playing around with the effects for a bit and figuring out exactly what they do, I feel that there's a lot of redundancy and ineffectiveness in these poisons, and I'm wondering if there might not be a way to rework these effects to make them better and more useful.

[Aiyen]

I always wondered why oh why it was possible to make power attacks without X amount of stamina. Even with low stamina you can do it and even though you do not get the full damage you still get the ability to stagger them. Which just makes one wonder why stamina is even a thing. Still have not seen a combat mod that actually fix this issue...every single one I have tried still lets me perform a power attack when there is too little stamina instead of forcing a normal attack. 

 

As for magicka then I have seen an effect of low magicka on enemy mages.. if they are constantly low on magicka their spell casting will reduce to almost nothing and they are more prone to go into a melee with you. Some mages do however have such an insanely high base regen that it does take poisons as well as lightning spells and other magicka reducing effects to really notice it. 

[redirishlord]

I concur with your observation on Stamina re- power attacks / shield bashes (I wish I had the knowledge/time to make a combat mod that charged a fixed cost for actions & did so reliably thus preventing a bowl of vegetable soup allowing me to use my shield to play "paddle-ball" with an enemy, I'm pretty sure papyrus lag would prevent that from working as desired even if I could script it).

As far as reducing the Magicka / Stamina of enemies, my perception (rather than any empirical knowledge) is that it just isn't effective & I gave up on those types of poisons & spell effects. Lately I've begun to revisit Magicka / Stamina effects against my enemies using them myself as well as arming a pair of followers in hopes of overwhelming whatever game mechanic enemy actors seem to be enjoying. I'm just getting set up to barrage enemies with multiple frost / shock effects and haven't begun acquiring / making poisons yet, so I unfortunately haven't begun rigorous experimenting yet.

Any thoughts on how best to monitor enemy status with regard to Magicka / Stamina? I like to begin showering enemy Mages with lightning and magicka poison in earnest, but I'm not sure how to gather data?

 

* perhaps EgoCarib (Dynamic Potions author) could shed some light on those effects.

Edited August 13, 2014 by redirishlord

[kryptopyr]

I'm honestly not sure what the best way to track enemy status is.  That's one of the reasons it's been a bit frustrating to try to test the effectiveness of these poisons.  I can test what exactly the effects do pretty easily (make a potion with the effect, then have my character drink it), but testing it in actual combat situations is a bit more muddled.

 

Damage Magicka Regen seems to be the most powerful of the magicka poisons.  I can definitely see a difference when using one of those poisons.  The other magicka poisons seem more subtle, at least until you get a fairly high-powered one, but even then unless it's used against a relatively low-level opponent, I just haven't noticed much impact.  I've been trying to do all my testing without any mods that affect enemy stats, but of course any mods that alter enemies are probably just going to make the situation worse.

 

I've been wondering if it wouldn't be better to convert Ravage Magicka into a Silence effect.  The Silence effect from Oblivion pretty much acted like a very strong Ravage Magicka effect, which instead of varying in magnitude, would always drop magicka to 0 for a scaled duration of time.  This would certainly make Ravage Magicka into a much stronger effect, but I worry that this would simply be duplicating something that can already be achieved (to a somewhat lesser effect) with Damage Magicka Regen.

 

Similarly, I wonder if changing Ravage Stamina so that it would always force Stamina to 0 and scaling the duration of the effect would be a better way to handle it?  I think if Stamina is truly forced to 0, then this would prevent all power attacks for the duration of the effect.  Due to the way the Ravage effect works by decreasing the maximum stamina, natural regeneration wouldn't occur while the poison was in effect, nor would foods or other potions that restore stamina or increase stamina regeneration.

[redirishlord]

The "Ravage force stat to 0" is genius (especially since I'm not entirely sure the npcs operate in the same manner as the pc). I miss Silence (and a lot of Oblivion, don't get me started on what I miss from MW), I was assuming I would need a pair of followers with lightning based attacks and my own use of magicka poisons to suppress an enemy's magic use (quite possibly not worth the effort, but possibly granting insight into npc casting mechanic - assuming the magic user is durable enough to survive the experiment long enough to provide some data, I think I feel my "alignment" shifting but that's another game).

Of course the revised ravage effect is dependent on a mod created to achieve that, but definitely one I would endorse.

[kryptopyr]

There are a lot of things about alchemy that I feel aren't balanced very well.  I've kinda been working on a mod to fix a number of those issues, so if I can come up with some good alternatives, then I'll just include them along with the other changes I'm planning to make.  I actually started thinking about these poisons while looking into adding Silence as a new effect.  Then I realized that the existing effects weren't really doing all that much, and instead of adding a new effect, I started thinking that maybe I just needed to rework the existing ones.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to use the exact same Ravage mechanic or if I'll need to add a scripted effect to accomplish the "set to 0", but it's nice to hear that there's some support for the idea. 

 

So if Ravage Stamina and Ravage Magicka were changed to a "force to 0" effect (Ravage Health would obviously need to remain more or less as it is), any thoughts on what would need to happen to the Damage Regen effects, if anything?  I feel that they're somewhat redundant if Ravage is changed to a Silence effect.  While they are doing different things (setting max stat to 0 vs setting stat regen rate to 0), the end result is almost identical.  The only difference is that the Damage Regen still leaves enemies with a full stat pool to burn through first before they start running into problems with no regeneration.  Presumably potions of restore & fortify regen would still work to counteract the Damage Regen (though I haven't tested that), while such methods shouldn't work for Ravage/Silence.  Is it worth having both effects?

 

I do think that using Weakness to Magic poisons when accompanied by a mage follower might be a fairly effective strategy.  Something I was considering given that for whatever reason I generally end up with a mage for my primary follower.

[redirishlord]

I like to travel with a mage and an archer myself (using your published mods, plus AFT, so that they have better stealth AI and can be set to use a specific tactic; archery, magic, spellsword). Adding weakness to magic &/or weakness to (elemental effect) poisons to my arrows in conjunction with spell using follower(s) does seem to be effective. It's the tactic of magicka / stamina suppression that I'm still not sure of, although I'd really like to be able to sap the stamina of two-handed enemies with follower frost spells and stamina poisons.

 

I'm curious what npc's stat regen is like, my own followers under AFT regenerate far to quickly (there is a "disable combat regen" option, but once the last enemy falls they zoom back to normal). I'm not sure if that is indicative if how npc regeneration works, and with mod-added followers it's likely regen values vary quite a bit (I use OBIS, SIC and several quest mods which probably add their own custom actors). A script to force values of 0 is probably the surest route to silencing an enemy spellcaster, while having the two effects you mention in your post appeals to "realism" I don't know if the end result would be noticed (so you might save some effort with a single script?). As an end-user I'm primarily concerned with how it plays out & allows for new combat tactics (I love to find and exploit weakness in combat sims).

[Teabag86]

My question mostly concerns the Damage, Ravage, and Lingering Damage effects as they apply to Magicka and Stamina.  Is there much difference between these effects as they apply in game? 

In answer to your initial question. I rarely use poison in game but do save a few vials for tough battles. I never worry about stamina or magicka, because if you can take away their Health then it is game over (for them) anyway. In my experience the straight damage poisons generally deal low damage in one hit. Say 12-20 points. But the lingering will give something like 8 points over 6 seconds. So 48 damage is great at low-mid levels. It's good to use against the leader in a group giving time to focus on the other enemies whilst the poisoned one is literally dying. I don't tend to find many ravage health poisons in game - but maybe I just haven't noticed. From memory I think ravage poisons are mainly magicka which makes sense. Hope that helps.

[kryptopyr]

I think regeneration abilities are typically controlled by the race properties, and in vanilla Skyrim, I believe that all the playable races should have the same regeneration rates.  There are regen multipliers, though, especially for combat regen, which I think are controlled by special perks, so this might vary the regen rates among different NPCs, particularly if added by different mods.

 

Actually there aren't any generic Ravage Health poisons available in the vanilla game.  It's an alchemy effect that is available on ingredients, but not available as a ready-made potion (another oversight that I'd like to fix).

 

Thanks for the help.  I'll see what I can pull together for the Silence effect.  I'm also a fan of having different options and tactics available, and I'm hoping to add a couple of other effects as well that will hopefully further expand the range and usefulness of the alchemy poisons.

[Visdagon]

As far as what the game already has for poison effects I would keep them, though they probably need reworking done to have greater numbers. I think it would be better to introduce entirely different and out of the box concepts for poisons. For instance one that blurs the players vision (and on npcs would reduce their chance to hit for similar results). Poisons that slow movement/attack speed, or increase them. Maybe even greek fire (might be out of your scope to produce but it would be cool) There are plenty of things poisons and potions could conceivably do that are not in the game but the engine is capable of producing, and they dont all have to merely be tied to health, mana, speechcraft, ect.

[kryptopyr]

I feel that the ravage effects really need to be reworked in order to make them more useful and less redundant.  Simply increasing the magnitudes just makes them redundant with the damage effects.  I really think they benefit from being more distinct.  In addition to the Silence and Fatigue effects, I'm also adding a "Drain Strength" and "Drain Intelligence" which will reduce attack damage and spell damage respectively.  There is already a slow poison in the vanilla game, and I am indeed adding a corresponding Fortify Speed effect.

[statmonster]

I like the idea of some new thinking with respect to poisons.

 

Of course a lot of poisons in homemade potions are more dude effects of beneficial potions than true poisons and they work ok for this - though are too easily avoid by the careful alchemist.

 

I use egocarib's mod to crank up the duration but reduce the effect per minute of potions and poisons and generally like it. As you say health poisons are the only way to go though. Still on way to overcome this is to radicle beef up the effects of stamina and magicka poisons for the same alchemical ability. Doing 250 points of magicka (or stamina if that wasn't broken) damage instead of 25 health might make it an interesting trade off.

 

On another tangent - I would like to see more "realistic" poisons - very deadly but not instantaneous.

 

Gaseous or liquid poisons -especially anti stamina or anti- magic would be interesting. More scope for assassins using poison against food or drink would be good if it could be introduced gameplay-wise. Or even sung reverse pick pocketing to poison people.

Edited October 5, 2014 by statmonster

[kryptopyr]

As far as I know, reverse pick-pocketing would be the only way to poison an NPC using food.  I think in Oblivion NPCs would actually "consume" food laying around in the cell with them, but unfortunately Skyrim doesn't seem to have that type of mechanic.  I think creating potions that could be thrown like grenades would be the best way to implement gaseous poisons, and I agree that something like that could be a lot of fun and open up some interesting new gameplay options.

 

I'd love to know what durations for potions/poisons you've found to be a good balance.  I've increased the duration of some effects, and I'm going to try to make the Restore & Damage effects have the option of either 1, 5, or 10 sec.  I've increased the Lingering Damage effects to 60 sec and made them much more potent when allowed to run their full course.  I'm questioning whether these durations are still too short, though.

 

I've made the strongest pre-made Damage Magic/Stamina poisons do 200 pts damage (250 pts damage would be achievable for a highly skilled alchemist with perks).  The strongest generic Damage Health poison does 125 pts.