Monster Poisons in AD&D

I've been looking over some of the creatures in module T1 recently and noticed something unusual. Within the module are two creatures with poison - dangerous to most characters, but usually fatal to 1st level characters. There seems to be no rules written on MONSTER poison. All the rules in the game have to do with poisons used by player characters. However, poisons do many things in the real world, and death occurs by a number of ways.

SPIDERS inject poison by biting with their fangs. All spider poison (that I have read about) is neurotoxin. That being said, spider bites should paralyze, with death only occurring by paralysis of the respiratory and heart functions. Once immobilized, a spider will typically wrap their dinner in silk using digestive enzymes to break down the interior of the creature over time. Once tenderized, the spider returns to suck out all the juices, leaving a dry husk wrapped in spider silk.

SCORPIONS also use neurotoxins of various toxicity. These are usually fast-acting and extremely painful. The sting of a scorpion is therefore more in line with the usual "save or die" philosophy of AD&D.

SNAKES are of various types. Vipers have hinged fangs and inject their poison like a hypodermic needle. They have tissue-destroying venom that eventually kills due to bacterial infection. There are also short-fanged snakes whose venom is paralytic, killing by respiratory failure. Others have rear fangs in the back of their mouths. These snakes have venom that causes a slow death due to bleeding out. Only the short-fanged snakes are fast acting, the others take hours to days to kill. Of course, this does not take into consideration increased size with relation to humans.

The problem I have is the way the spells slow poison and neutralize poison work in regards to these various poisons. Death is death, regardless of how it happens, but in a game system with spells that can alleviate certain conditions leading to death, the path to death matters.

Per the AD&D rules, the huge spider in the tower of the moathouse grants a saving throw of +1 vs. poison. Those that fail are considered dead. No hp of damage (other than the bite) were caused. Most players HATE this game mechanic since it bypasses all their defenses, requiring only a successful attack to one-shot them into oblivion. First-level characters have poor saves against poison (except clerics), generally in the range of 13-14. Only dwarves and halflings have sufficient resistance to poison at these levels to possibly survive. A round in AD&D is 1 minute long. If a spider bites and the save fails, your character dies. There is nothing that the other characters can do to stop or slow this from happening. Once dead, the character is gone. HOWEVER, slow poison is stated as being able to bring a character back if they died to poison, if only for a little while. It has to be cast within a certain number of turns, however, and will not save these characters since they are some distance from Hommlet (about a league or two away). Therefore, the bite will kill anyone who fails the save. What then? The lone spider then faces the angry party who are likely to kill it quick. Should the spider continue to attack or grab it's dinner and flee like most normal spiders would do? I vote for the latter. It would return to its ledge above in the tower with the fallen PC, wrap it in silk, and then digest it with enzymes for later dining. Once above, the spider has cover from ranged attacks so the players are not likely to kill it, and the thing moves very fast, so it can return to its ledge possibly before the character is even missed (if they went into the tower alone).

The giant snake in the moathouse proper does bite damage of 1-3 plus poison. The poison does an additional 2-8 points of damage (!) if the save fails, or 1-3 damage if the save succeeds. This is NOT save or die poison, but it is damage poison. So how would slow poison affect this? Is it doing that damage every ROUND, or is it done after the injection? If the person is bit again, do they suffer more damage from the poison? None of these questions are addressed.

As an aside, a viper bite has the following effects in the real world:

1. the initial injection causes immediate burning pain, limb swelling, and discoloration.
2. 1-3 hours later the person is sick to their stomach, pulse slows, fever sets in, and person may pass into a coma
3. 12-24 hours later these symptoms pass but swelling and discoloration spread along with pus and tissue death, allowing bacterial infection to set in.
4. death may occur after a few days, but no matter what, tissue has died and the affected limb will never be right again, or horribly scarred.

Now THIS type of poison is what slow poison spells were made for. The pain response and swelling could be seen as the damage caused above by the Giant Snake. However, some other component should be part of this, perhaps a System Shock to avoid slipping into a coma after 1-3 hours, and perhaps another saving throw after 12-24 hours to avoid infection (which is the real killer). So making the save avoids all this unpleasantness, but failing causes the sickness, System Shock and additional saving throw later on if not treated appropriately. Either way, I can see a permanent loss of Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution from this kind of poison. Seems to be the route they went with 3rd edition though.... Do you think a cure disease spell is required to combat the infection after the poison has run its course?

I'm just a little annoyed that poison is treated differently in different modules, and sometimes by the same writer. Save bonuses seemed to be an afterthought in the DMG, since most creatures in the Monster Manual didn't list any (spiders are among the few I can remember, but that seemed to be size related, when in fact, the smaller creature usually has the more potent venom). It would have been nice to have an actual section written in the rules somewhere about how to treat poisons other than "save or die."