Gradually saps HP. In turn-based games, it will deal a set amount of damage at the beginning (sometimes end) of each turn. If the game in question doesn't automatically cure status effects at the end of each battle, this effect almost always lingers until cured, often draining a bit of HP even outside of battle with each step you take. Some games (Tales of Symphonia, Pokémon, Golden Sun) have both regular poisons and stronger, more potent poisons that sap more and more health each time. This can sometimes get hilariously out of hand, as evidenced here
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Whether or not poison can cause death on its own is generally game-dependent; some games will stop poison damage once the character's life is low enough (usually 1 HP), while others will allow poison damage to kill the character.
- In Pathways into Darkness, poisoning is either caused by consuming the Brown Potion (which is required to pass a gauntlet of invincible monsters in one level) or a Venomous Skitter's attack. The Alien Gemstone also has a poison-like health drain unless kept in a lead box.
- Ghost Recon series:
- In Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, downed teammates will bleed out and die unless healed by the player or a medic within a minute or so. In the sequel, you only have five medkits to do so per mission.
- In Ghost Recon Wildlands, in addition to NPC bleed-out, the first time Nomad is KO'ed in a given firefight, their teammates have a limited time to revive them before they die for real. In Ghost Mode, death is permanent for both the player character and their allies.
- Spiral Knights uses Poison as a debuff status: Players afflicted with it only deal about half damage and cannot heal, while poisoned enemies suffer reduced attack and defense, and will take minor damage if a heal is used on them.
- Introduced in Patapon 3, poisoned units will have purple bubbles floating over them. Some items can be used to prevent or cause this status.
- In NetHack, poisoning is always fairly serious. It may result in permanent or semi-permanent loss of attributes. Food poisoning is fatal unless treated very fast.
- Darkest Dungeon has both Bleed and Blight. Variations aside, Bleed is usually less powerful but comes from powerful attacks, while Blight usually comes from attacks with low base damage but is very potent on its own, and different heroes and enemies have differing resistance to either or. Both can stack with consecutive attacks, though the stacks count down individually, and both can stack over each other for particularly devastating effect.
- The later Wizardry games featured both plague and poison, but poison worked conventionally while disease operated like Cursing (see below), and was the most dangerous status effect in the game.
- The Elder Scrolls: "Plague", in the form of Disease, has existed throughout the series dating back to Daggerfall. While the exact details vary between games, catching a certain disease (most often spread through infected animals and undead) will lower a number of your Attributes and/or Skills until it is cured.
- The Fallout games have stat-sapping radiation poisoning, with either time-delayed or instant death at 1000 rads, as well as conventional HP-draining poison status, such as that from Radscorpion and Cazador stings, which also causes Interface Screw in Fallout: New Vegas. The Dart Gun has this effect as well as instantly crippling its victim (see "Slow" status below). In Fallout: New Vegas, poison can be applied to melee and throwing weapons. FEV-laced water in Fallout 3's Broken Steel DLC (if you did the "Project Impurity" subquest) causes a drop in stats, and death if four bottles are consumed.
- In Drakensang, there are different types of poisons: certain poisons will deal you damage to your health bar but only last for a while, others will knock you out for a while, while others (usually listed as "Gangrene") will stay with you until you're cured and will affect your skills. All poisons can be cured with either antidotes, spells, or a Golmoon Tea cup + a high enough ranking in Antidotes.
