How could we add\remove status effects, such as Poisoned?

I've been looking around in the XML files, and what I'm wondering about is - how could I implement a Neutralize Poison spell?

Ideally, I'd want to do something like <RemoveEffect>Poisoned</RemoveEffect>, but the XML does not seem to work that way - the Poison attacks just do continual damage, rather than creating a Poisoned status on the target.

Hence, the Neutralize Poison spell does not have a way of knowing that there is ongoing damage from Poison (as opposed, to e.g. "bleeding", "on fire" or some other continual damage status).

The only way I can see so far is to create a new unit trait "UnitStat_PoisonDamage", and have the poison spells first increase it, then do the [UnitStat_PoisonDamage] in damage each turn. Then the Neutralize Poison spell can set the value of the unit stat to zero.

Of course, the problem is that if the poison attack is re-cast, there will be two of them applying the poison value each round (i.e. the original attack is still in effect, and will apply the same poison value again).

Am I missing something? Do we need to lobby for a new "InflictEffect" and "RemoveEffect" set of tags?

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

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Yes, those things are not possible. We also cannot apply or remove a trait to a spell target.

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Have you tried making a spell that sets the characters poison resistance to 100% for a short number of rounds to see if the poison attack is negated?

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Hmm... I’m still in the armchair general phase at the moment.

It’s a shame that spells cannot inflict or remove statuses – seems like a fairly limiting omission from the design. Ideally, it would be nice to have status effects – Poisoned, Diseased, Dazed, Bleeding (different type of continual damage), Afraid, Horrified etc. Then you could have spells which are countering specific statuses (i.e. "Armor of Faith" helps with Afraid\Horrified, "Cure Ills" helps with Poisoned\Diseased, but maybe not Bleeding).

It would also prevent the situation where currently there’s nothing stopping two separate poison attacks both inflicting continual damage on the same target – you may want to limit the amount of damage poison can do per turn, and the way to do so is by using the Poisoned status.

As for making a spell that increases poison resistance after the fact – that would be something to try (not sure if the roll to check for unit’s poison resistance is done each turn, though). However, what should its duration be? If it does not match the remaining duration of the poison exactly (and it won’t, generally), then either the poison will kick in at a later phase, or else the unit will have poison resistance for a few more turns... Hmm... maybe it’s a feature – Neutralize Poison removes all poison, and keeps you from being poisoned for three turns.

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I was in battle with spiders and though they took the poisoned effect when stabbed with a poisoned blade, they did not any poison damage per turn. I bet a spell that raised poison resistance to 100+ would prevent any further damage, even if won't actually remove the visual indicator of the effect.

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