Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Hold Person vs Drow Poison, a Mathhammer Bonanza

Yep that is not missing, I promise. I didn't do great later on in the post of explicitly stating everything but it's absolutely part of the calculus. For the sake of whiteroom analysis we assume we're starting with all 4 of our heroes able to freely rearrange their turns and the boss at the end. It honestly doesn't matter the relative initiatives, if the boss is the only enemy all players will always go between the boss and the next time the boss has a turn, and players adjacent in initiative can always choose their turn order. So while one could argue over the realism of the setup which is primarily done for convenience, based on the game mechanics it's actually not too far off from a standard scenario, based on how turn mechanics work in the game.

That save is why it's for example 13% of cases where the boss gets a turn - 9% chance of them having passed all saves so far, plus of the 9% where the scout was the only one who went after they got held, in 45% of those cases the boss makes their save at the beginning of their turn, thus 13%. For the poison it's absolutely the case as well, for continual effect poisons like the Drow poison or the Crawler Mucus, they get a save at the beginning of their turn, and worse, if they succeed, they're inoculated. That'll come into play heavily when it comes time for crawler mucus vs hold monster, but regardless, not missed, and the odds are not overstated.

They may be inapplicable to a given scenario which will have its own odds calculations, but you can envision basically any setup you want, the difference in efficacy between hold person and the drow poison is simply too severe for it to practically matter, the conclusion will always be the same - Hold Person is a far more reliable and effective form of CC than Drow Poison, and being Paralyzed while a Martial with GWM or Sharpshooter has a turn to exploit that paralysis is an outright death sentence. It's basically a 2nd level "Save or Die" effect. Even in the situation you describe (which is worst case scenario), that's 36% of the time where the boss does nothing, stays paralyzed, then dies immediately after. Ridiculously good.

Edit: Also of note, and imho just as important and arguably far more important, once they fail the boss *does not* get any saves *outside* of the start of their turn. So if they fail that one, that's it, they're done for. If you get them at any point prior to their turn, you're guaranteed to have them until their turn occurs. That's why the numbers are how they are, but imho your perspective is a bit flipped, it's more that they *only* get a save at the start of their turn, not when damage occurs or under any other condition.

@JandK it's in the top, the immunity is referred to as "inoculated", it lasts 2 turns and is poison type specific, you can be inoculated against multiple types of poisons simultaneously though.