You were poisoned, Yap.

There is a one type of scorpion, the little orange ones, that injects poison when they hit you. You need the venom resistance medicine (the Doc gives you one or you can steal it off his shelf, can't remember which)  or enough HP to wait it out or enough stimpacks to keep fighting the venom till it wears off. The killer wasps work the same way but much, much faster. You need to back away fast via the S key and keep shooting but don't let them get within striking range.

I don't think karma is such a big deal in this game. Obsidian has odd ideas when it comes to punishing you for looting people who you just killed in self defense. As far as I can tell karma in this game is pretty meaningless. It is completely seperated from reputation which seems to be what actually affects gameplay. Reputation hinges on actions and quests and not looting. I finally just started ignoring karma. Not sure if it's broken or what but it seems to be meaningless. I say just loot away. I did sort of come up with a code of who to loot and who not to loot but the red font had nothing to do with it.

I seem to remember a couple of characters giving me odd remarks which might have been my karma but I never did see it quantified and like I said, I ignored it with no visible results. Maybe it affects Luck? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the reason the game gave you bad karma for looting foes was that apparently until the end is near there is often a mathematical possibility to change your reputation status with a faction and that would mean you were stealing instead of looting. Not sure if that is true or not though. Like I stole everything from the Doc at the beginning without any karma hits at all. Maybe the game wants you to load up early???? It's weird for sure and I may be totally wrong with my speculations.

Like with the Legion, there seems to be a certain set of dialogue checks and quest choices that finally make or break your reputation with them and that at that point I believe the karma system changes with regards to looting them. I actually ran a few quests for the Legion just because I wanted to get to talk to the big dog. There IS a major pivot point in the game that depends a lot on your reactions to the Legion. I think if you cozy up to them too much and raise your rep with them too high, it changes things drastically with the other factions. Also I did things with other factions that I was sure would damage my rep with them but found I was able to still deal with them as friends. Things just aren't black and white in this game. But over all reputation seems to be the indicator to watch. And my dealings with the Powder Gangers never did make sense. I tried to get on their good side just to see if I could do it but could never even get them to talk to me. I guess I really got them mad at me early on and I also think reputation with them is a buggy mess.

I started again a few days ago with another character in hardcore mode but haven's gotten too far yet. I'm interested in how playable the game will be with the drastically changed healing mode. In hardcore mode stimpacks don't instantly heal you which changes how you approach combat quite a bit. Ammo also has weight and you have to eat, sleep and drink or you lose health. I suspect it'll get old fast as it will limit how much combat I can undertake. Might just be a lot of running. Also you can't fast travel with low health if you will die before arriving at your destination, meaning I would have to run and find a place to heal up…ala System Shock 2 I guess. And of course companions die permanently. So much more sneaking and talking I'm thinking. And running…lots of running. And more reloading.