How about having Assassin daggers/poison weapons actually do poison damage directly, either on critical hits or all the time.

I think that is a great suggestion to improve the Path of the Assassin, but it should be only possible with traits:

Poison Strike: New trait -> Activate the trait to inflict 33 % of the attack as poison damage per turn for 3 turns with a melee attack, 2 turns cooldown

Poison Arrow: New trait -> Activate the trait to inflict 33 % of the attack as poison damage per turn for 3 turns with a ranged attack, 2 turns cooldown

I would just have the traits add poison damage and dot.

The traits should scale with the attack, because they are otherwise either too weak or too strong.

I like it, but it should be noted that Poison is currently the "dot" damage. All the poison damage in the game (with one exception) is currently damage over time. This gives it a certain character to play with and play against. It makes it strong against high initiative units, but a slower unit (ranged/mace) does not have the same desire to protect against it.

Adding direct poison damage means giving up on that distinction. It becomes just another damage type like Fire or Cold.

I would personally rather have a DoT debuff that somewhat scales with the attacker, and give the assassin other anti-defense traits such as ignoring 10% or 15% of enemy armor.

Full disclosure: I have direct poison attack on some stuff in my mod.

im trying something cooler, i gave all daggers bleeding effects (which is similar to a poison, just stronger because its not reduced by resist/poisons def ) basically each attack  deal few more dmg for a few turns(not many, its supposed to be less dot than poison) (being true damage also solve the problem of dagger being so inferior against armored ppl)

also i made few stats to modify strenght of bleeding and its length and traits for champions to improve in many ways bleeding, so basically i can build an assassin based on this kind of new gameplay, hitting few times but with greater effect, debuffing your target to maximize your next attacs etc etc

now im working on troops, im thinking of some building like assassin guild and few traits to improve it and making it someway viable maybe giving bonus crits to bleeding targets etc so daggers stats are good again

its just one of the many possible ways but its kinda working well i have to say it seems very cool

Sounds like a good idea, and would help keep the distinction between poison damage over time versus other attacks being instant damage.

I implemented the tiered poison idea I mentioned earlier in my latest mod. A strike from Poisoned Blade has a random chance to do one of three 1-3 poison damage spells. That means it can stack 3 times, but each stack only has a 33% chance of being applied. So you might get lucky and do all three in 3 strikes, or you might have to attack several times to get that last one to apply. Given that daggers essentially do 1-2 damage through most of the game, it is nice to be able to give this to Assassins to make the dagger a viable choice. 

The danger is in the human poisoning the whole army, which does massive damage overall. The AI won't switch targets for the sake of poisoning. Humans do it every time. So there is no real hope of balancing the use of poison in that respect. At least making it stack helps the AI a little. 

It should also be noted that bows can't do poison damage. If you are modding the game, I suggest adding poison damage to the bow poison spell in corespells or deleting the bow with poison.

I really like the bleed idea. I might add that to all serrated weapons. 

yes this is the greatest problem i encounter that i have to think 10 times how to make things not so nerfed for ai

i wanted to add a whole tier of things to improve this even more like quivers with firearrows, poisoned arrows etc, if i have time but yeah even giving a basic attack something may help archers, but then maybe archer troops would be too good? they are already enough good dunno

but on a side note the i added whole bleeding mechanics to throwing knives, they were so crap i almost forgot they existed now with bleeding (or poison if you like it) its quite a decent thing to do

Basically you are suggesting that we can have different throwing knives. Nice.. I'm waiting for throwing axes with a chance to knock target prone

but like portable throwing axes like knives or just throw your main weapon?

something like a ranged attack and then you are disarmed for 1 turn for example?

I was thinking an axe weapon could add an ability to throw two axes in each tactical battle. A special attack from the one-handed axe to make up for its colossal failure as a weapon. But then I realized that a unit with five soldiers can still only throw one axe, making it useless for trained units.

In my mod I have a blunt tip arrow that changes the attack type to blunt and has a 25% chance to knock the unit prone.

I also have a bolas that knocks a unit prone for several turns, but It doesn't have a fancy effect or icon yet. 

well cant you just make trained units multiply it?

throwing knives just have a fixed dmg but you can make throwing axes use actual dmg of the troops, if you want

There's no good way for modders to multiply damage after the amount of members in a unit. The reason is that 5 strikes with 4 cutting attack is not the same as 1 strike with 20 cutting attack.

So the way they multiply damage for fireball can't be used in reverse? (5 mages do 1x25 damage, 3 mages do 1x15 damage)

its not like everything in troops need to be 5 attacks for each skill or the hell will freeze

anyway if you really want it just make a long xml

modifier1

apply dmg

get troops count>0 *dmg

modifier 2

get troops count >1 *dmg

rinse and repeat

the time for cpu to make those calculations is anyway so fast it cant matter, just boring to write it all down

I was thinking hatchets... portable throwing axes.  But whatever tickles the modders fancy really.

There is no such operator for comparison ">", but if you have an idea how to accomplish it I am obviously all ears. It is keeping me from being able to add special abilities to units.

there is...

check all is target worthy stuff

they all are about  is hp >20, is armor >10 etc etc

Heads up, direct poison attack was added to two bows in 0.983. Let the direct poison attack weapon crafting begin!

You could also just activate a poison dot on assassin critical hits, as a trait?
So when the assassin crits, the unit is "certain to die" from poison.

Sincerely
~ K

From a modding perspective, there is no way to trigger stuff off crits like that.

I figured as much, although I personally think those are some of the interesting triggers.
Just means the developers needs to work harder!!

Sincerely
~ K