ability damage won't work

[steff]

Greetings.

I have been trying, in vain, to make an effect to apply poison to a character. seems simple... turns out it's not.

Giant Spiders cause d2 strength damage per round of failed save for 6 rounds.

first I figured out that you cannot have the game apply a dice roll to an attribute. so d2 strength damage is not a thing.

so then i thought, fine, i'll just have it apply strength damage and i'll simply apply the effect. so i came up with poisoned; STR:-2

Nada... no effect on the characters strength.

It seems like this should be easier than it is..

What am I missing here... is it something in the syntax?

[superteddy57]

What ruleset is this for? You have posted in an extension workshop area and this appears to be more of a question for one of the related rulesets.

[Trenloe]

Which ruleset?
This was posted in the Extensions sub-forum - are you developing an extension?

[steff]

oops. sorry bout that. it is for the 3.5 ruleset. i was looking at an effects building extension (which I also can't seem to get to work). I can repost in the correct forum. I assume that would be the 3.5 forum...

[Trenloe]

oops. sorry bout that. it is for the 3.5 ruleset. i was looking at an effects building extension (which I also can't seem to get to work). I can repost in the correct forum. I assume that would be the 3.5 forum...

I'll move the thread, no need to re-post.

[Trenloe]

STR:-2 will apply a -1 penalty to all FG actions (rolls) that use STR. It doesn't reduce the STR ability score on the character sheet.

See the screenshot below - the STR:-2 effect is applied to a strength check, melee attack and melee damage and is indicated by [EFFECTS -1]

[steff]

Ah.. I get that. back to my very original question, is there no way to build a poison effect?

It feels like an oversight or is the code for something like that get too weird to worry about.. just easier to do it manually?

[Trenloe]

It feels like an oversight or is the code for something like that get too weird to worry about.. just easier to do it manually?

I don't think you can with the effects available. But, even if you could, the thing to understand about effects is that the dice component is evaluated every time the effect is applied, so STR: -1d2 (this won't work, it's just an example in context) would apply the -1d2 effect every time it was used, which is not how poison damage works as the damage is set when applied, it doesn't change. So you're left with manually rolling the D2 and applying either a STR: -1 or STR: -2 effect.