I've really seen just two types:

1) RPGs in which you can purchase an antidote at any nearby town. Resurrection is expensive but still affordable, so you don't really care too much when a character gets poisoned.

2) RPGs in which you are absolutely fucked if a character gets poisoned. Antidotes don't exist in the game, and cures/resurrections are done at a temple which always charges you more money than you can ever afford. You may as well just reload your last savegame when a character is poisoned.

Have any RPGs managed to find a reasonable middle ground where the Poisoned status is neither inconsequential nor an irreversible death sentence? Because I don't ever remember any.

I agree with this observation, and yes, it would be nice to have a middle ground.

IIRC Betrayal at Krondor handled poison better than any game I've played since, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly. (LOL-Been a loooooonnnnngggg time since I played that game).

Actually this is the game that led me to make this thread, my current "RPG to play comfortably in bed on a laptop".

No antidotes (at least I haven't come across any yet). Temples charge you money like a jewelry store in Monaco. I've had to basically keep camping until the Poison status wears off, but by the time that happens, you're out of food and enemies don't just respawn (at least, I haven't come across enemies where I've previously encountered them when going up-and-down, up-and-down the west coast road), and then my party is starving because they're low on gold and haven't looted rations off corpses (or those rations are already poisoned/spoiled).

Do you use those herbs packs?

The only pack of herbs I've come across so far were to coat my weapons for additional damage. I think I looted it off a bandit in those dwarven mines.

I tried to get into BaC earlier last year and was worried at what looked to be a very difficult learning curve to get used to the mechanics. I kind of filed it under "when I have more time" category (as I did many years ago...).

The game's actually not very difficult - key is to read the manual. It's actually very well-written and a good read by itself, and when you get a better understanding of the game's mechanics, you'll suddenly be able to play much better as well.

Do MUDs count? Because if so, Achaea. There are a lot of different poisons and venoms in the game. Not all of them are cured by the same thing. You either have to brew your own cure and carry it in advance if you are a Forestrial class, or purchase it from a shop or other player and hope you don't run out. Resurrection is possible, but death only delays the game slightly, especially at lower levels. Basically, at low levels you don't mind dying, and at high levels you are prepared enough to not die or else have enough connections through City, friends, House, religion, market-chatter, to buy a resurrection. At low levels you are more inclined to be fighting NPCs which you can predict what kind of poison or venom they might use and learn how to cure them. At high levels you are more likely to be fighting PCs and so have no idea what they might use on you, and have to act on your toes using everything you learned while exploring to counter them.

Honestly some of the best times I had were when I was new and learning to deal with different poisons. One time I accidentally got blinded, and learned that I had the wrong potion for curing blindness. Then I stumbled around trying to find a shop in a nearby town while running/tripping through the forest trying not to die from the random critters that I couldn't even see (bears, badgers, snakes, etc). I managed to make it all the way through a mountain range I definitely was not supposed to cross, and into a town that my city was neutral-hostile to depending on the time of month. Somehow I made it to a shop, bought a cure, and then booked it like mad before anyone noticed I wasn't supposed to be there. Good times. :D

I don't care about the mechanics so much, but one of my major beefs with an otherwise fantastic game is the poison effect in Divine Divinity. There has to be a better way of exhibiting illness than to make your character spasm every two or three steps; it's almost like you caught torrets syndrome rather than got poisoned. It doesn't really even mess with your health that much, it's just flat out annoying.

Hmm.. RPGs have probably dealt with disease better than poison in a lot of cases, especially the Elder Scrolls games - they had Lycanthropy too, with I guess is a disease too...

Oh, guess my memory failed again. I thought I recalled being able to take some sort of potion or herb, and it allowed your character to survive, but he was incapacitated until he got lots and lots of rest. Which seems to be an okay way to deal with it.

so you've actually seen the only type
get poisoned => get cured for money :)

Next time you are poisoned, try these - if you find them. I remember they should help, but it is some time I played BaK.