Poison in the 1974 rules

[geoffrey]

Have I been misunderstanding the 1974 D&D rules with regard to poison? Look at the comments on the saving throw table on page 20 of Men & Magic: "Failure to make the total indicated above results in the weapon having full effect, i.e. you are turned to stone, take full damage from dragon's breath, etc. Scoring the total indicated above (or scoring higher) means the weapon has no effect (death ray, polymorph, paralization, stone, or spell) or one-half effect (poison scoring one-half of the total possible hit damage and dragon's breath scoring one-half of its full damage)." [emphasis mine]

I've always assumed that poison in the 1974 rules was save or die. Yet the above indicates that poison inflicts a range of hp damage rather than inflicting death.

So how much damage? I'd say one 6-sided die of damage. After all, everything else does that much damage unless the text explicitly says otherwise.

Example: A Champion is hit by a wyvern's poisonous sting. The Champion takes 1d6 points of damage from the sting itself. Let us say the referee rolls a 3. On top of that, the poison will inflict an additional 1d6 points of damage. Let us say the referee rolls a 4. The Champion makes his saving throw, and thus takes only 2 (rather than 4) hp damage from the poison. Thus, his total damage from the attack was 5 hp damage (3 hp for the sting plus 2 hp from the poison).

Thoughts?

[thegreyelf]

My interpretation of that would be if you save against poison you lose 50% of your hit points, since poisons tend to be save or die.

[aldarron]

Nice catch Geoffrey. Since the Dragons breath is 1/2 total damage it does seem to be saying that poisons are meant to have a damage range included with them, like "poison, 3d6" that is reduced by half of maximum if a save is made. The weird thing about that though is you could end up with more damage from a successful save than from a straight roll. I suspect this was a rule that was never given much thought or playtesting. I like the rule, but in practice, I'd be inclined to play it as 1/2 damage inflicted or maybe the way Jason reads it.