While perusing the Pit Fiend stat block, it says it has Damage Immunity to Poison and Condition Immunity to Poison.
Is that redundant or would just the damage immunity be enough? I can't see a creature being immune to poison being poisoned. Then again we have face palm arguments about other stuff, so fire away.
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Poison is a damage type. It’s convenient for the mechanics to compartmentalize things so that damage resistance only applies to damage. I don’t think it necessarily follows that immunity to poison damage would automatically confer immunity to poisoned conditions, because there are many many different ways to interpret “damage.” It does seem LIKELY that anything immune to being poisoned would naturally be immune to poison damage. But separating the damage from the condition is useful in the abstract.
I think this is one of the cases (I'm looking at you Two-Weapon Fighting and Two-Weapon Fighting) where the same words are used to describe different things. It would be perhaps more helpful to think of the poisoned condition as the sickened condition.
Any creature with immunity to poison damage would take zero damage from that attack.
Any creature with Damage Resistance to poison damage, would take half the normal damage from that attack.
Consider instead a Carrion Crawler tentacle attack states, "and the target must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. Until this poison ends, the target is paralyzed."
A creature that is immune to the poisoned condition wouldn't have to make that saving throw and isn't at risk of being paralyzed.
That said, creatures are often immune to both damage and condition at the same time, but not always!
"Poison" is used as a simplistic catch-all term for anything that is toxic in some way. Technically many things that do poison damage, like Scorprions and Spiders and such are not using poison: they're using venom. Poison and venom are not the same thing, but are both factored as poison in the game for the sake of simplicity. Likewise the Poisoned condition is more like a way of describing you are sickened by something toxic, which might not actually be poison - if you brought a Komodo dragon into the game world, for instance, it's bite would cause the poisoned condition, but in reality although their bites can make you deathly ill there's no poison or venom involved - it's from bacteria. The contagion spell is another example: it poisons you, and yet is a disease which is not a poison or venom.
Poison damage means it is something toxic physically damaging you: like necrotizing fasciitis - even though it's not actually poison (it's flesh-eating bacteria). The poisoned condition just means somethng is making you sick, which could be poison, venom, bacteria, viruses, non-descript spell/feature effect, etc.
Technically speaking a poison is only poisonous when ingested, inhaled through air or absorbed through skin while venom must be directly injected. A lot of references to the term poison in D&D is incorrect, because it's not intended to be real-world accurate, just a game-term catch-all description for a variety of different things that work similarly enough.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Out of curiosity, I looked for some creatures that were immune to the poisoned condition, but not the poison damage type. It is a short list (because over 400 monsters are immune to poison...), but here are some I found:
While perusing the Pit Fiend stat block, it says it has Damage Immunity to Poison and Condition Immunity to Poison.
Is that redundant or would just the damage immunity be enough? I can't see a creature being immune to poison being poisoned. Then again we have face palm arguments about other stuff, so fire away.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Poison is a damage type. It’s convenient for the mechanics to compartmentalize things so that damage resistance only applies to damage. I don’t think it necessarily follows that immunity to poison damage would automatically confer immunity to poisoned conditions, because there are many many different ways to interpret “damage.” It does seem LIKELY that anything immune to being poisoned would naturally be immune to poison damage. But separating the damage from the condition is useful in the abstract.
I think this is one of the cases (I'm looking at you Two-Weapon Fighting and Two-Weapon Fighting) where the same words are used to describe different things. It would be perhaps more helpful to think of the poisoned condition as the sickened condition.
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D&D Beyond FoundersThe poisoned condition is not the same as having damage immunity to poison.
If an Adult Green Dragon uses its Poison Breath attack, that does poison damage:
Consider instead a Carrion Crawler tentacle attack states, "and the target must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. Until this poison ends, the target is paralyzed."
A creature that is immune to the poisoned condition wouldn't have to make that saving throw and isn't at risk of being paralyzed.
That said, creatures are often immune to both damage and condition at the same time, but not always!
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"Poison" is used as a simplistic catch-all term for anything that is toxic in some way. Technically many things that do poison damage, like Scorprions and Spiders and such are not using poison: they're using venom. Poison and venom are not the same thing, but are both factored as poison in the game for the sake of simplicity. Likewise the Poisoned condition is more like a way of describing you are sickened by something toxic, which might not actually be poison - if you brought a Komodo dragon into the game world, for instance, it's bite would cause the poisoned condition, but in reality although their bites can make you deathly ill there's no poison or venom involved - it's from bacteria. The contagion spell is another example: it poisons you, and yet is a disease which is not a poison or venom.
Poison damage means it is something toxic physically damaging you: like necrotizing fasciitis - even though it's not actually poison (it's flesh-eating bacteria). The poisoned condition just means somethng is making you sick, which could be poison, venom, bacteria, viruses, non-descript spell/feature effect, etc.
Technically speaking a poison is only poisonous when ingested, inhaled through air or absorbed through skin while venom must be directly injected. A lot of references to the term poison in D&D is incorrect, because it's not intended to be real-world accurate, just a game-term catch-all description for a variety of different things that work similarly enough.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Wonderful explanations as always. Thanks guys!
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Out of curiosity, I looked for some creatures that were immune to the poisoned condition, but not the poison damage type. It is a short list (because over 400 monsters are immune to poison...), but here are some I found:
Astral dreadnought, dire troll, drow matron mother, pudding king, and star spawn larva mage.