Chlorine Gas

[filo_clarke]

I am trying to stat-out chlorine gas as a weapon, and I have a hazy memory of it already being canon somewhere. Is there a spell or an existing weapon that stats out the effects of chlorine gas?

[The Beast]

I know there's a Rifter with biological weapons in it. I can't recall if it has chemical weapons in it though.

Petty tyrants thrive when they have authority backed by vague regulations.

[nwebster]

I'm at work and don't have access to my books, but maybe I can help a little. First remember that Chlorine is naturally a gas. Any liquids or Solids of chlorine that you see is very dilute. for example: your average house hold bleach is only 5% to 7% chlorine and the rest is mostly inert carrier.

That being sad, the danger of Chlorine gas lies in how much is in the given environment. 50ppm (parts per million) may cause slight skin irritation and a stinging/burning sensation in the eyes, throat and respiratory track. 1000ppm is dangerous to life and health after just a short exposure and can cause major chemical burns and damage the respiratory tract enough to cause Chemical Pneumonitis (severe irritation of the lung tissue) and Pulmonary Edema (aka Dry Land Drowning, The lungs fill with fluid because of chemical damage.) After 1000ppm, the higher the concentration gets the worse the surface chemical burns will be and the faster the respiratory conditions will take effect. Personally I would treat it as an Aerosol version of a severe acid and then try to figure out how much SDC/MDC the target's lungs have.

I apologize for all the tech speak. I work with Chemical Warfare Agents and Hazardous Chemicals for a living. I hope this helped some.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I'm at work and don't have access to my books, but maybe I can help a little. First remember that Chlorine is naturally a gas. Any liquids or Solids of chlorine that you see is very dilute. for example: your average house hold bleach is only 5% to 7% chlorine and the rest is mostly inert carrier.

That being sad, the danger of Chlorine gas lies in how much is in the given environment. 50ppm (parts per million) may cause slight skin irritation and a stinging/burning sensation in the eyes, throat and respiratory track. 1000ppm is dangerous to life and health after just a short exposure and can cause major chemical burns and damage the respiratory tract enough to cause Chemical Pneumonitis (severe irritation of the lung tissue) and Pulmonary Edema (aka Dry Land Drowning, The lungs fill with fluid because of chemical damage.) After 1000ppm, the higher the concentration gets the worse the surface chemical burns will be and the faster the respiratory conditions will take effect. Personally I would treat it as an Aerosol version of a severe acid and then try to figure out how much SDC/MDC the target's lungs have.

I apologize for all the tech speak. I work with Chemical Warfare Agents and Hazardous Chemicals for a living. I hope this helped some.

The problem with that level of fidelity is that it dosn't jive with how palladium handles drugs, where even the most potent and deadly poisons do something like 6d6 or 1d4*10 HP damage. which is pretty deadly to first level characters because it bypasses SDC, but only if you fail your saving throw, and saving throws vs. poisons and toxins/drugs is pretty common so in practice any character with a high PE is unlikely to be more than nuicenced by it.

and before you say "Well, chlorine is different"...it's not. rather, TONS of drugs and toxic substances in real life are ludicriously deadly and there is no save vs. poison, merely you skip straight to the "Save vs. coma/death or die, likely die 99% of the time". in any realistic dosage, any random pharamasy contains enough poisons to instant kill any human with 0 chance of survival.

but palladium handles them all the same way: a saving throw to vastly reduce penalties and duration with minor to moderate damage at best. only one absurdly rare "Legendary" poison in one book i've ever seen does reliably fatal damage (some legendary plant in England that does 2d4*100 HP or MD to MDC beings, which will kill most anything smaller than a full-grown dragon outright).

So right there palladium defines "reliably fatal" with "Rare on par with a soul drinking rune weapon" AKA "not chorine gas"

The real issue is that Rifts sensibilities and most of it's rule set were drawn from Heroes Unlimited (the whole 2 attacks per melee confusion began with a copy paste error from rules in the psychic combat section, that wasn't clarified until RUE), which is a super hero game, AKA "The genre where heroes don't die, they just get knocked out for a while". the rules actually make it fantastically hard to kill someone in a non-shooty-or-stabby way as Palladium is extremely stingy with instant-kill effects (Soul drinking rune weapons being the one famous, and ludicriously rare and expensive if they're available at all)

which means in general, poisons and biological warfare gets the short end of the rules stick. the /genre/ palladium goes for is "light heroic" which is "action packed, with the characters being extraordinary heroes who are hard to keep down". they're supposed to be larger than life. You've never seen the story where Reed Richards drops dead because Dr. Doom just opened a ton of canisters of chlorine gas and killed the fantastic four without a fight because that's a boring story. Oh gas weapons can be used, but the worst that happens is they pass out before being "rescued" by either surprise allies or their enemies for some contrived reason they need the heros help for once.

TL:DR, Poisons are very not-deadly in game because palladium has made the concious choice to turn poisons and toxic gasses into nerf weapons because everyone dying because no one but the ley line walker brought a gas mask is bad drama, so they made the concious choice to make poisons generally ineffective as more than penalty-givers. You should think long and hard before you change this, as it fundamentally shifts the nature of the game. Pandoras box can be opened if players learn that Chlorine canisters are better AND cheeper weapons than plasma grenades...

Best Practice for Poison: Don't think "Kill", assume any given poison is unlikely to kill the average party and instead think of them as Debuffers. Many poisons and toxins retain "some" penalties, even on a save, and more without. so instead of likelyhood of death (very low by design), think "how would you feel if your skin was littearlly burning off" and assign penalties based on that. I'd say -8 strike/parry/dodge and only one action per melee on a failed save, and if they do save still -2 strike parry dodge and -20% skill performance, -40% for any skill requiring fine motor control. Add in some direct HP damage if you want it to still kill random humans with only 10-15 HP.