The smiley indicated the overwhelming seriousness of the post.

EDIT: But, back to one my significant (and yet unanswered) questions: should a city mage / psymet monk skill like Psionics BioFeedback be expanded to defend against a Poison damage type (even though it isn't a traditional elemental).

Logically, the answer is yes, since in terms of inter-class balance, it is unfair to have one city's mage archetype's "damage" be less easily resisted.

However, thematically, as Eventru has already pointed out, the answer is no, since poison is, by both normal definition as well as in lusternian lore, not an "elemental" damage type.

The question is, should mechanics trump rp? My personal belief is yes, for the sake of inter-class balance, RP should be twisted to fit mechanics instead of the way around.

Now, to end off, I would also like to note that the current status quo has been existing for many RL years now. Any imbalance in the mage archetypes' damage output has probably already been discovered and addressed. Or at least, ideally it would have been. The possibility remains that geomancers are overpowered because they have poison damage that is not included under the elemental umbrella, but the possibility is also high that geomancer's damage output has already been sufficiently balanced in other ways to compensate for their poison damage not being included as an elemental type.

The only way to determine for sure is for the envoys and coders to do tests and find out if there is an imbalance between the mage archetypes in terms of damage output, and whether this gap can be traced back to poison being too difficult to find resistances for.

In short, if there is an imbalance that currently exists (tests needed to confirm yes/no) then RP should be sacrificed or twisted (or other mechanical compensation be made) to correct said imbalance. If there is no problem with the status quo, then there should be no need to change anything in this regard. (Considerations for RP should come after balance.)

Lots of animals that aren't soulless have poison. Manta rays, Octopi, Platypi.

The problem with poison is that it's not a very good damage type when you start to think about it. Unlike other damage types, where there's a clear relation between cause and effect, what's poisonous and not isn't nearly as clear cut. Even oxygen can be "poisonous" in large degrees. And poison already have a lot of different effects to show that while some poison may scramble with the messages the brain tries to send to your limbs (mantakaya), others eat away at the calcium in your bones and make them weak (Calcise and Dendroxin).

You are confusing Poison and poison.

-Poison, as per the skill, are various chemical/protien compounds collected from creatures. These compounds afflict depending on the system that they attack.

-poison, the damage type, is a representation of the corrosive power of the Taint, like Acid damage in DnD. Note that Tainted areas have an acrid fog floating through them.

No I'm not. I'm saying that having poison as a type of damage is stupid because the name is misleading because... well that's already been explained and agreed. I understand it's a staple. It just becomes hard to justify when you think about it closely.

Poison damage is in many ways almost a Cosmic damage type, along the lines of Divinus or Excoroble. Poison damage is representative of the aspects of the Taint that are destructive to the body (more like powerful acids). I feel that it is a perfectly justified damage type.

Actually we should parse "poison" out into two types, the usual suspect and a more perfect kind: WYRDEN. (please sense the "just-joking"ness on that one)

The poison types are identical between Taint and Wyrd.

(what does that tell you?!)

Yes to more poison (and asphyx/divinus/excoro) resistances overall. No to lumping poison with elemental. There is an Elemental Plane of Earth, but no Elemental Plane of Poison.

There are no Elemental Planes of Cold or Electric, yet they are elemental types.

I wonder what the maximum DMP levels for each damage type are? I think I need to calc this up.
I also wonder how Armor interacts with cutting/blunt, and how much DMP it translates to.

More on topic, maybe you can answer this Eventru: What is the admin Vision for damage type viability?
Are damage types intended to be be arraigned by tiers (Psychic>Cosmic>Poison>Elemental>Physical)?
Or are they intended to be balanced?

Knowing what the Vision is for the damage types would go along way towards helping us figure out what, if anything, should be done to balance them.

Similar question to what I ask HERE, inside this thread.

You should know by now I rarely answer questions about the "Vision".

Because you have myopia.





(I'm kidding don'thurtmeplease.)

Some initial calculations. Based on the AVERAGE amount of DMP available to each damage type across the Basin (disregarding race) the pecking order is more or less as follows:

Weakest to Strongest
Cutting/Blunt (Though I am unsure how armor interacts with physical damage, it APPEARS to have an effect comparable with DMP)
Heat/Cold
Electric
Poison (Probably artificially low; most of the Poison DMP is concentrated in Glom)
Asphyxiation/Psychic
Excoro/Divinus

I'll get actual numbers up once I get some friends to double check them.

Actually psionic users get 20 DMP to psychic. A very niche damage resistance.

Exactly; only Mages/Monks get any reasonable amount of Psychic resist, but it still evens out to a higher level that Asphyx. Everyone can get Asphyx DMP through Low Magic, but no one gets very much of it. Te two damage types are probably comparable.

Outside of Glom, Poison is probably the same tier as Psychic and Asphyx.

Well, I plan to have a BioFeedback / EnergyContainment report in about two envoy cycles to test these waters. Will have to see what happens then. I'd be interested if other envoys take up the banner and propose some creative solutions as per their particular guild.