On Earth there are many different types of poisons. Animal poisons are usually injected and can cause anything from pain and irritation to rotting flesh, organ damage, anaphylactic shock, and even death. Plants and fungi can be irritating and painful to the touch, like poison ivy, poison oak, and stinging nettle, or even more harmful and even deadly if swallowed, like hemlock, nightshade, oleander, blackcap mushrooms, and poinsettia. Chemicals like arsenic, chlorine, strychnine, and many others created by man as well as naturally existing have a variety of effects from nausea to death, often based on how much is breathed or consumed. And then, of course, humans have weaponized any and all of these types of poisons to coat their weapons or contaminate the ventilation systems or water supplies of rival companies, factions, or cities.

There is no way to really cover each and every one of these in a specific way without making for an incredibly complicated game, so we'll create simple rules for poison and let the GM increase or decrease the number of attack dice to represent how deadly the poison is considered, going as high as twenty dice or more for some ultra-venomous snakes or consumed plants, or more reasonable numbers like three to eight dice for less deadly animals, plants, or chemicals that a character's immune system might normally be able to fight off.

Attacks using poison follow the general rules for shape, size, and range and generally come in two varieties: ones that require a person be struck first and those for which a character would merely have to breathe or consume to receive the effects.

For breathable or consumable poisons, the poison attack would be handled by itself as an attack vs Poison or Disease. All successes would cause damage and residual effects would be handled as described below.

For poisons requiring that a person be struck, at least one point of force damage, usually piercing damage, would have to occur first. Then the character would roll a second set of defense dice against the poison. A viper might, for example, only roll four attack dice against piercing because their bite hurts but isn't necessarily deadly except to tiny creatures, but if any of those dice are successful, they might then roll thirteen attack dice against poison or disease to represent how deadly the GM thinks the poison actually is.

Additionally anyone affected by at least one point of poison damage is considered poisoned. A poisoned character automatically rolls at the beginning of each turn against an equal amount of dice to the amount of damage they took the previous round. This continues each round until the defender beats all attacking dice or they are cured, either magically or medicinally. If multiple poison attacks are successful, later rounds are defended against individually.

Example: John the Barbarian is hit with a poison bolt. His poison defense is three. The attacker has five dice. The rolls are 5, 3, 6, 1, 1 vs 6, 6, 2, which is 6 vs 6, 5 vs 6, 3 vs 2, and two 1’s that aren’t defended. John takes 3 points of damage. The next round John has to defend against three dice, the ones he couldn’t defend against the first round. If he is attacked by another poison bolt and defends against all but the two he can’t defend against AS WELL AS a second defense roll against the residual poison from the first attack. If that attack is successful as well, the third round likely could include defending three times, once against the attack, once against the residual poison from round one, and once against the residual poison from round two.