Bite kits and poison / disease DC

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Kerstman
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Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Kerstman » Thu Jan 26, 2017 7:42 am

Hey,

I noticed that several if not most poison or disease afflictions require a score of high in the twenties or sometimes beyond the thirties to be successful when a bite kit is used. Especially when two DC's have to be beaten for full success. I play a char who has some very good heal skill, but even when using the +3 or +5 kits they often could just as well have been thrown away. Unfortunately I cannot provide specifics about which creature's disease or poison requires which roll, but I'd be happy to try it out to provide more information. If you guys have an answer already or shall put this to the test yourselves then I am very curious about that.

Also I wonder if a -2 penalty applies when applying the kit to yourself, as is the case with healing kits.
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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Loreweaver » Thu Jan 26, 2017 1:43 pm

Including the -2 penalty for using a kit on yourself, the maximum DC to stop poison is 28, for stopping disease it's 32 and for curing attribute loss it's 36. The minimum DCs are 12, 16 and 20 respectively.

In the case of a Heal 11, WIS 14 barbarian trying to fix attribute loss on a level 8 PC with a +5 bite kit, the DC will be 34 and a 16+ roll is therefore needed. This is about as difficult as it gets, and with a 25% chance of success it'll take an average of four kits to accomplish this task. When bought from merchants, it's going to be cheaper to get a potion of lesser restoration instead, but the kits are much more commonly found in the wilds and you'd need to sell more than four of them to afford a single such potion. Even a pile of 6-7 +3 kits found in the wilds should be slightly cheaper than a store-bought potion in this example, although +0 and +1 kits would be wasted against this DC.
If this same barbarian tried to prevent a poison from getting worse on a level 6 PC, the DC would be 24 and the +5 kit has a 75% chance of success. A potion of health could be cheaper, but lacks the 35% chance of removing the initial poison damage in the process.

I will say that the financial benefits of the Heal skill are more pronounced with healing kits. The costs per HP healed can be significantly lower than for healing potions, even for purchased kits. The reason for this difference is that healing kits are not very reliable during a fight, whereas bite kits work equally well in and out of combat.

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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Ostheim » Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:00 pm

A store-bought lesser restoration? I don't think I've ever seen this, though I could be mistaken. Not asking for spoilers, mind, I just honestly have checked many merchants around the module and I'm fairly positive none sell these. Fairly sure antidotes can be bought, however, which accomplish the same thing, but are more expensive on average than a lesser restoration.
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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Kerstman » Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:29 pm

I do not think it is entirely fair to take the level 7 maxed out heal skill 14 WIS barbarian as the benchmark for these DC. The average to look at might be something around level 4 or 5 with a +1 or +2 WIS modifier bonus to heal skill, which is obviously best maxed out, but without skill focus. At least that is my opinion on this. It is true the bite kits are fairly cheap and they can be used well in combat, but the very poor success rate makes them rather uninteresting to invest in. Therefore I'd still suggest some more testing or looking into these numbers.

As for +5 bite kits or +7 bite kits: they are still rare finds and the strongly outclass the basic +0 bite kits commonly available from merchants. As you pointed out already.
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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby blatob » Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:29 pm

To be completely honest, I must agree on this with Kerstman. I don;t think I ever bough bite kit or heal kits for that matter. I use what I get in the loot and keep heal kits only for reviving PCs that fall down. While heal kits have some use, even if the the effect is unpredictable and thus not really worth the money from the point of my PCs, bite kits I have so far found out to be completely useless. I have never succeeded with healing the poison with them nor disease (I must confess that I did try first 6 or 7 months after server went live, then gave up), so I relay on sleeping it out. Sadly, we can't even use them as ammunition to hurl at enemies.

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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Poisonous » Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:48 pm

I would agree that even Kelda fails most disease checks, although in her case the heal kits seem correctly balanced while bite kits do not.
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Kerstman
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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Kerstman » Thu Jan 26, 2017 3:52 pm

Aye, my point is entirely about the bite kits. Heal kits are very useful also apart from helping bleeding PC's.
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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Loreweaver » Thu Jan 26, 2017 7:18 pm

It's a fairly similar story across levels. A Heal 7, WIS 14 PC using a +1 kit has a +10 modifier. If they try to cure a fellow level 4 of attribute loss, the DC is 26, so they too would need a 16+.

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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Kerstman » Thu Jan 26, 2017 7:58 pm

So then the kits are designed to have a 25% success rate only when a PC of a high level with decent WIS and maxed out heal skill uses it to cure another lower level PC of attribute loss? Unless ofcourse they find a +5 or so. Also I do understand some other afflictions may be successfully cured. But applying it on self is generally not a good idea. Please correct me if I am wrong here anywhere.

Personally I'd be very much in favour of removing the -2 when applying it to self. I can understand this modifier from an IC perspective, but as it is now I do not understand why my PC's are carrying them. Or maybe they should give all their bite kits to the party member with the highest heal skill, but I'd encourage a higher success rate for applying them to yourself all the same. Similar to healing kits. With a +10 effect (including the -2 modifier) they heal 20 hps on average. Which is rather helpful.
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Re: Bite kits and poison / disease DC

Postby Toros » Thu Jan 26, 2017 8:19 pm

My concern with the generally low success rates of bite kits comes down to their cost, which on average is higher than a potion of health by a significant margin.

With a dungeon paying 200cp in loot, it's unsustainable to use the 200 cp in bite kits you might need to undo poison, and while you might find some here or there a gas trap can easily affect 3-4 people.

I don't personally use bite kits, as paladin already have built in ways to mitigate their effects, and with the cost inflation they aren't really useful outside of an emergency situation.
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