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It's a throwback to classic RPG's (Especially JRPG's) where this was the case. Poison (Bio if you're familiar with Final Fantasy) would heal undead and healing effects would harm them.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the face of it (Also, in various cases "Poison" is being considered "Acid" too, with it being effective against armour and causing degredation... Old RPG's were really bad about this sort of thing).

I believe the general logic leap is that "Poison" is just a term used in lieu of something like "Nercrosis", "Ichor" or "Miasma", some sort of "Unlife" energy that saps away the life force of the living rather than actual poison (Also, by definition, it would be a Toxin not a Poison since you don't make things ingest it...)

Hence it works on skellingtons, ghosts and other things that lack the systems that are necessary for "Poison" to cause harm.

Basically, a long standing poor wording choice.

I'm a programmer and an old fight in computer science was VMS vs Unix.

Unix is a wordplay with Eunuchs, because it started as a "crippled", simplified version of a much larger operating system project (called Multics or something like that) that never actually saw the light of day.

VMS on the other hand was an operating system that was horrifically complex and absolutely cryptic to use (I once did use it a bit, many decades ago).

So the question was which OS would be better.

Unix won this, big time. This was because it was build on simple concepts that could be freely combined. Unix became so successful that its now the dominant operating system - both Windows and MacOS are now under the cover more or less Unix, too.

The core idea here was already expressed by Albert Einstein: As simple as possible, but not any more simple.

So unsurprisingly I prefer a system build on simple concepts that allow amazing complexity and flexibility in other areas, too.

So thats why my favorite D&D to date is D&D5, which gets the closest on this idea. Its still far from perfect though. But it also has amazing flexibility compared to previous versions of D&D.

My main complaint about D&D5 is that they went too far in some places, and simplified the system too much. The whole concept of Advantage and DIsadvantage for example is overused and just poor. I also dont know why they removed the Delay action from D&D3 from D&D5. This was an absolutely essential function in The Temple of Elemental Evil to make the group cooperate with each other.

AD&D is full of strange absurd nonsense tables. The progression of saving throws in AD&D for example are strangely well hidden and was really hard to find out when I tried to fully understand Baldurs Gate 1+2. Its also a bunch of absolute nonsense. I cannot see any reasoning behind these values at all. The short version is that Thief and Bard for some reason get the worst saving throws in the end, while Warriors get the best ones.

The core problem with all D&D versions on the computer is of course that they are designed for tabletop and the dominant design principle

Still, D&D5 supports many more different setups than previous versions of D&D. One of my favorite part is that Bards, which was my initial choice in Baldurs Gate 1, are now actually a playable class. In AD&D they just sucked big time in every way, and in D&D3 they have still been a useless class.

The only remaining complaint I have about D&D5 Bards is that they can only inspire others. So you have a class that is one of the three skill classes, the other two being Rogue and Ranger, and they have a really good ability to push skill useage, but you're not allowed to use it for their own skills.

I usually end up not using this feature at all because guess what, my Bard is the protagonist and since she cannot inspire herself, nobody else needs these inspirations either. You can also sort of use them in combat but thats a PITA to do. Which is why I keep making Wyll into a Bard in all of my runs, just so I can have Inspirations on my protagonist as well, for the really hard checks.

Update: Part 3, Chapter 25 is now published.

BG3.5 - Hellraisers (Fanfiction)
Baldur's Gate 3.5: Hellraisers - an original fanfic story that is a sequel to Baldur's Gate 3 Fanfic: The Afflicted. It picks up immediately after the events of Baldur's Gate 3 as characters from the previous fanfic - Fiovay, Kai, Aelun, Vlyn, and the other members of their party - travel to Avernus. Their quest is to save Karlach but also to hopefully find and rescue Darson, Aelun's father, from the clutches of Demogorgon.

Here is the link to the blog site: https://baldursgate3hellraisers.blogspot.com/2025/10/baldurs-gate-35-hellraisers.html