Ability Score Restoration

[rgrove0172]

Does anyone else have a problem with the rapid healing rate of ability scores?

In a recent game an assassin managed to sneak in and plug a hulking Aesir character with a nasty poison, dropping his Constitution from 17 to 6. A couple hours later, bingo - hes up dancing. Ill admit I wasnt familar with the restoration rule when I plotted the assassin's attack, it was meant to keep the barbarian out of the fight that night. No dice, he took a nice nap and was fine.

Youd have thought being stricken like that would take several hours, maybe days to overcome.

Im considering, given the dark nature of the game, slowing the restoration of ability scores. Im thinking maybe the CON bonus per day of rest, halved if active. The Aesir would have been out of action for a day or so and slowed a day after that, back to normal in a few days.

What are your thoughts?

Or is this a factor of weak poison rules rather than ability healing?

 

[Clovenhoof]

The rule for ability recovery even says that "characters recover quickly from being poisoned" so it's fully meant to be that way.

Cutting down the ability restoration by default is not such a good idea, because it can bog the game down too much. In D&D you have those Cure Poison / Lesser Restoration spells that keep a single NPC Rogue from disabling half the party for several nights with his Crippling Strike.
Besides, slow recovery rates are one of those things that work only against and hardly ever for the players. If you poison an NPC in combat, he's likely to be dead a few rounds later anyway so he doesn't need to worry about his recovery.

However, I see a simple and elegant way out of your dilemma: increase poison duration, i.e. the time between primary and secondary effect, for individual poisons. The book says it's one minute "in most cases". You could make it, for instance, six hours instead for this particular assassin poison. And of course not allow any recovery while the poison is still active. So in short, recovery can only begin six hours after the poisoning, and then it's going to take another few hours until the character is back on the mend.

 

[argo]

The rapid healing of ability scores is designed to make ability score damage a "single encounter" duration. IOW if the damage doesn't drop you before the end of the encounter in which it was dealt then you will probably be mostly recovered before the next encounter (unless the next encounter is back to back).

If you want the condition to linger then you could try adapting the mechanics for disease. The damage is reoccuring over a period of time until the character makes a successful check to recover. Poision damage is usually higher than disease damage though, so be carefull that you don't accidentally drive your player into a death spiral. Espically with those Con poisons.

Hope that helps.