this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Hot take: if you as a DM pull something like this but aren't otherwise running a "survival" campaign with enforcement of other environment-related rules like encumberance and starvation, you're a jerk.
You can drop lots of hints, a perception check to notice the flame of their torches has diminished and is threatening to be extinguished. They start making con saves every 2 minutes, if they fail they get dizzy, subsequent failed saves cause headaches, then vomiting. Give them heal or wisdom checks for a chance to determine what's happening. After 3 failed checks you use the rules for holding your breath and party members with the lowest constitution begin to lose consciousness. Seems fair
I don’t think a potentially deadly concentration of carbon monoxide would displace enough oxygen for a flame to go out. The deadly part is that it makes your red blood cells useless once it binds to them.
No way would it be enough to dim a fire, because CO floats. You're either out of range entirely because the ceiling is too high, or you're screwed enough to have already noticed.
The deadly part is carbon monoxide is flammable. If the party is in any sort of situation requiring torches or any one of them takes any action that creates an unlucky spark, you will never stop finding the body.
Which makes it a questionably intelligent plan for a lich.
posted-as-written the undead fucker has filled it's lair with carbon monoxide. not tainted the air supply, not attempted to poison the player, the lich has FILLED it's lair.
No torchy, no respiration and woozy falling asleep, this is open the door OH FUCK GASP DIE
Yea, I think Nitrogen would be a safer choice (for a Lich) than CO.
Just permanently filling their enclosed lair with an inert gas that displaces oxygen would be a strong deterrent.
Maybe a bit extreme for a rust inhibitor, but lichdom is also an extreme "solution".
Edit: hold on... THE Nepenthe? Who likes yarn and cats? What a nice surprise running into you here
I KNEW IT WAS YOU. I was just debating saying something in the discord! Both a pleasant and hilarious surprise
I'm thinking for what they want, something inert would be a good deal, yeah. Just nitrogen can be made in quantity pretty easily, would displace the air enough to put out a fire, and cause disorientation, possibly nausea. Main problem is, we would be talking brain death in a little over a minute and that may not be enough time if the party is dnd stupid. A TPK in the span of a couple breaths, because without the CO2 you wouldn't understand what's going on until someone noticed the torches, and they may be too out of it by the time that they do.
Kinda wanna go through a list, now, to see if there's anything heavier than air that's entirely or quickly becomes odorless, has more pronounced symptoms than "confusion," and wouldn't kill quite so fast, but I'm not entirely convinced because of....how necessary breathing is. The rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide dissipates very quickly into nothing, but one breath is enough to kill you and that isn't hyperbole.
All that would, of course, be assuming we're playing by irl rules despite the whole place being built by a zombie wizard.
Oh for sure it's an absolutely terrible idea for an actual game because it's kind of a cheap TPK, it's just a great idea for of you ever become an actual lich.
So tell me then, what would make sense? How to implement this intelligently into an encounter?
With named poison gases one would find irl, there really isn't a lot available that would meet the requirements. 99.9% are too volatile either to open flame or the presence of oxygen, have a very strong smell and/or obvious color that one probably couldn't explain away by blaming it on the tinted glass of a nearby lamp.
Or they cause immediate symptoms that the party would be far too damaged by to doubt what's happening (blindness, lung damage requiring immediate medical attention, etc.), or the symptoms don't show up for 3+ days or require months of exposure. At which point, I consider any lich really wouldn't bother doing that on purpose because who's it going to slow down? It would be more of an accidental environmental feature like radon that would leave the surviving players lingeringly convalescent just to piss them off.
For something so non-reactive it poses no danger to the big bad, with immediate symptoms that are still deadly while being understated enough that an adventurer might brush them off...it would more or less have to be mostly or entirely inert, I feel like. Nitrogen, argon, and krypton are all heavier than air, inflammable, unnoticeable, and all easily made through an identical process at differing temperatures, with krypton additionally exhibiting a strong anesthetic effect.
A study of nitrogen gas as a replacement in fire extinguishers doused varying types of fires in 11-71 seconds. So your torch would go out, yes, which would be really cool. With this one, at least, it also seems to have a habit of reigniting when you leave. Fun!
However, my main concern with this would be that because all you're doing then is displacing the air with something your body doesn't even notice. There will be progressive symptoms as one approaches the source: fatigue, a feeling either of panic or drunken euphoria, dimmed vision, dizziness/incoordination, nausea and vomiting, confusion and hallucinations that may make them roll at a disadvantage to address any of these things.
And then you fall over and die. These things kick in very fast irl and kill even faster. As in, unconscious in half a minute and brain-dead in ten minutes or less. This would obviously be unfair to the party. Your light would go and then you go.
The two thresholds are very close for my liking, making the question in my eyes how fast they would notice anything is wrong before they had to grab a new character sheet. You'd have to fudge reality a bit if you wanted to make this even a little bit not bullshit.
And in a setting where the lich has intentionally depleted an area entirely of oxygen? We already have places like that. Pluto's Gate in Turkey emits a steady stream of CO2 that pools on the floor of the cave in such strong concentrations that anything passing the threshold at the wrong time of day is dead unless it can hold its breath. You didn't get a warning beyond what the locals would tell you and probably all the corpses. In roman times, they sold birds for the tourists to toss in. You're going to have to make something up.
A great answer, thank you. A hall of nitrogen horrors does seem like a perfect entrance to a lich's underground castle. Perhaps an 'isekaid' lich from our world would do exactly that (reminds me of Nazarick). Or a different but very similar element could be less violent in the way it affects living beings but still dangerous for a 1h+ descent. Interesting!
That's just poison gas that has no color or odor. That's standard dnd shit. CO has detectable symptoms.
Now you want to be evil? CO2 just feels like shortness of breath. Want to be diabolical? Very high nitrogen has no symptoms. You just die.
More info for those interested,
The main symptom of CO poisoning is sleepiness. By the time you realise it you're just thinking to yourself I'm tired and I'm going to take a quick nap, then you never wake up.
CO2 poisoning is easy to spot because you're suddenly very breathless and hyperventilating for air.
This is because our respiration is controlled by the percentage of CO2 in our blood. Not by the amount of oxygen. So we actually don't react to most gases, we just KO and thats it. If no one removes you from that area, you're a goner.
I think you'd know something is off here a bit faster - evil sorcerer is filling the crypt with CO. You immediately will be unable to draw breath, there will be no oxygen in the air. Carbon Monoxide poisoning occurs when there's still oxygen to breathe, it's just got lots of CO.... unlike Nitrogen when you can resperate and attempt to breath until you fall over dead, your lungs don't want to take in CO. It won't be gradual, there's literally nothing to breathe.
While I appreciate we're discussing hypothetical DND scenarios, I'd just like to take a moment to highlight the dangers as it's an actual risk we deal with in reality. (Cars and heating systems)
CO is a very dangerous gas for a reason. Its known as a silent killer because while there are symptoms, it's mild and easily mistaken for other medical issues. Its not uncommon to be wrongly diagnosed by medical professionals. CO works by binding to hemoglobin 200% stronger than oxygen and stays bound for hours. So unlike nitrogen hypoxia, where once you brought back to a high oxygen environment, you will start recovering, CO poisoning remains. Even a 100% Oxygen environment will not in itself save you from severe poisoning because the CO is so strongly bound to your blood that oxygen cannot displace it.
Anyways in a (near 100%) flooded environment, the players are already dead when they feel the symptoms. Once CO is bound to their blood stream the only treatment is hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Good to know information:
0-9 ppm CO: no health risk; normal CO levels in air. 10-29 ppm CO: problems over long-term exposure; chronic problems such as headaches, nausea 30-35 ppm CO: flu-like symptoms begin to develop, especially among the young and the elderly. 36-99 ppm CO: flu-like symptoms among all; nausea, headaches, fatigue or drowsiness, vomiting.
100+ ppm CO: severe symptoms; confusion, intense headaches; ultimately brain damage, coma, and/or death, especially at levels 300-400+ ppm
Ok, now what's the result for CO 1,000,000ppm?
That's what the Lich has done. It has filled the space with CO.
I’d say you’re dead once you take a breath of that. It’s probably going to feel like you’re breathing 100% nitrogen because your body will think it’s breathing out CO2 like normal. You’ll get weak really fast since you’re deprived of oxygen and then you just die because your blood cells are ruined.
Not on the body. Which is why it is high in the statistics of cause of death for farmers. Silo gases are dangerous, heavier than air too.
Btw, candle doesn't help: you're dead before the flame extinguishes.
No symptoms? https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/carbon-monoxide-poisoning
Not symptoms you notice until it's too late.
Also, that dungeon better be pitch fuckin' black. Torches ain't gonna work with that shit lol
Finally, the light spell is useful