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Wraithy
2007-05-16, 09:00 AM
hello fellow dungeoneers. (god that sounded cheesey)
i'm thinking of turning my current PC into a poisons user (in 1 level he gets poison use)
however the DM of my gaming group has made us all dirt poor, and honestly i can't blame him, last session we attacked the occupants of some not so empty ruins just because they had guards with torches patrolling the area (it was 2 hours before i pointed this out to the others).
being a level 2 ninja with 11 silver pieces to his name and a copy of the complete adventurer which has been delayed in the post for over a month (despite paying for fast delivery, thankyou amazon); i have decided to craft my own poisons!
after looking in the DM manual and not finding answers to my questions i turned to my DM and gaming group, now they are all as confused as i am.
once again i look to forum surfing deities for answers.

the first question was simple: how do you CRAFT a poisons?
that was easy, but it only means creating the poisons.
how do you get the engredients?
also easy, find them in the wild, but that doesn't tell you what to find.

now if anybody wants to skip the rant START READING HERE:

does anybody have recipes for poisons, their DCs, their effects, etc?
poisons from books, other sites, even new ones.
also any tips for identifying which poison was used (this one really baffles me)
any RP tips; pranks involving embarassing nonlethal poisons, how to act around who.
if you know these things or any other related stuff, please post and help put the blood of countless NPC's and monsters on my hands

- Wraithy

Closet_Skeleton
2007-05-16, 09:24 AM
the first question was simple: how do you CRAFT a poisons?
that was easy, but it only means creating the poisons.
how do you get the engredients?
also easy, find them in the wild, but that doesn't tell you what to find.

Most poisons have to be harvested from Monstrous Vermin (see Monster Manual).

For in the wild you'd need a survival check if you kept it abstract.

Inyssius Tor
2007-05-16, 09:27 AM
Craft: Poisonsmithery.
You pay a third of the base price, DC is whatever your DM says it is, and the poison is complete after the number of Craft checks you've made, multiplied by the craft DC, is equal to the price of the poison in silver pieces. It takes one week per check (or one day per check, if you divide each of your Craft results by ten). Alternatively, you could spend your week making Profession: Assassin checks and use the proceeds to purchase poison from somebody else.

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-05-16, 09:40 AM
the first question was simple: how do you CRAFT a poisons?
Same way you craft anything else. Though it should be noted that sources such as Book of Vile Darkness and Complete Adventurer have a raw material cost of one-sixth the final product, whereas most other items have a raw material cost of one-third. Those books also provide craft DCs for creating the poisons.


how do you get the engredients?
That's ultimately up to the DM.

There are likely a number of poisons that can be crafted using otherwise innocuous, legal, and commonly available products. That certainly leaves room for, "I go to the market to buy my ingredients," just like you do to buy almost anything else.

For other poisons, you may need to deal with whatever passes for the black market in your campaign world.

Or you might need to harvest them yourself. Most poisons are named in such a way as to indicate their source. Id Moss, for instance, is a moss. It can be gathered from the forest or even grown in your basement. Carrion crawler brain juice requires you to go crawler hunting. Want some viper poison? Milk a snake. And so forth. Some less obvious poisons would require a DM call, of course. I believe a recent issue of Dragon magazine expanded the rules on poison harvesting. I'll get you the issue number if I can find it.

Note that even if you have a ready supply of raw poison, you still need to make a craft check and possibly spend a little bit of coin. This helps you refine and preserve the poison, enhancing its effectiveness and preventing it from degrading over time.


poisons from books, other sites, even new ones.
Book of Vile Darkness added a few new poisons. Some of them may have been included in Complete Adventurer, but I'll have to check on that.

There are some interesting poisons in Bad Axe Games's The Book of Unusual Treasures

Don't be afraid to work with your DM and homebrew a new poison if you're up to the challenge. :smallbiggrin:

Wraithy
2007-05-16, 09:45 AM
nice, any guides for homebrew poisons?
also any pranks?

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-05-16, 09:50 AM
nice, any guides for homebrew poisons?
I think there's an online tool somewhere that lets you input Initial and Secondary Damage as well as the Fort DC and calculates a recommended price for you.

Can't find it at the moment, though.

Fax Celestis
2007-05-16, 10:04 AM
There's also some excellent poisons in Complete Adventurer and Complete Scoundrel. The ones in Scoundrel are inordinately cheap.

There's also Dungeonscape's poisons, which are extraordinarily lethal. DC 44 fort save or take 2d6 Con and 1d4 Dex as a primary and secondary? DC 27 or take 1d6 Con primary, death as secondary? Yes please.

Fax Celestis
2007-05-16, 10:05 AM
Craft: Poisonsmithery.

You don't "smith" a poison, you "refine" it.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-05-16, 10:11 AM
Isn't it Craft (alchemy) anyway?

Wraithy
2007-05-16, 10:17 AM
you don't NEED magic to make poisons, alchemy CAN be used though.

luckily i know someone who owns a complete scoundrel, i suppose i should get dungeonscape, is it any good?

Quietus
2007-05-16, 10:17 AM
Isn't it Craft (alchemy) anyway?

Craft (Poisonmaking), as I remember it.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-05-16, 10:22 AM
you don't NEED magic to make poisons, alchemy CAN be used though.

Does alchemy need magic?


luckily i know someone who owns a complete scoundrel

Yes. I know a few Complete Scoundrels myself.


i suppose i should get dungeonscape, is it any good?

Some people like it. Others hate it because they see it as badly layed out and the Factotum as broken. You can do without it though.

Fax Celestis
2007-05-16, 10:22 AM
luckily i know someone who owns a complete scoundrel, i suppose i should get dungeonscape, is it any good?

Yes. Yes it is. And it's coauthored by your favorite cartoonist.

EDIT:
Some people like it. Others hate it because they see it as badly layed out and the Factotum as broken. You can do without it though.

Factotum, broken? Says who?

Wraithy
2007-05-16, 10:38 AM
alchemy does need magic.
would it be viable to substitute the cost for survival checks?
how long would it take to make a gallon of poison? (for a lvl2ish character)
at the moment i don't really need superpowerefull poisons, just enough to deal with encounters at my level, and maybe sell some leftovers (not likely though)
would it be possible to make concentrate/more powerfull versions of existing poisons, would you increase the craft DC by the same amount as you increase the poison DC? (drow poison could use a higher DC)

Quietus
2007-05-16, 11:33 PM
alchemy does need magic.
would it be viable to substitute the cost for survival checks?
how long would it take to make a gallon of poison? (for a lvl2ish character)
at the moment i don't really need superpowerefull poisons, just enough to deal with encounters at my level, and maybe sell some leftovers (not likely though)
would it be possible to make concentrate/more powerfull versions of existing poisons, would you increase the craft DC by the same amount as you increase the poison DC? (drow poison could use a higher DC)

I'd say, in doing something like that, increasing the DC to craft at the same rate you increase the DC of the poison would be a bit too easy to pull off. It doesn't take long until PC's can take 10 and get 25-30 if they focus on a particular skill.

Personally, I would say that to increase the DC of the poison's save by +2, you could voluntarily increase the DC to create it by +10. That seems, at least as a knee-jerk reaction to the idea, to be a fairly reasonable way of going about it.

ShneekeyTheLost
2007-05-17, 12:10 AM
Pranks involving poisons:

Anything with hallucinigenic properties is always potentially entertaining. Better make sure it has a narcotic component to keep the trips happy. The problem is in the application.

You see... some things need some fairly invasive methods of application (like blood agents, which require getting into the blood stream) which generally go beyond the boundaries of 'prank'.

Depending on what you call a 'poison' (and many of these would require a Survival check)

obtaining the scent glands of a skunk and applying them to the INSIDE of a fighter's full plate. When he dons the plate, the glands are squeezed, the scent sprays all over the inside of the full plate. He smells like he pissed off a skunk until he gets the inside of his plate washed, which is significantly more difficult than washing the outside.

Poison Ivy Oil is always good for a few laughs (applied on the handles/hilts of weapons, carefully coated on the inside of clothing... the possibilities are endless).

Putting something that gives people the runs in someone's stew also qualifies as a prank.

"We have secretly replaced his Guacomole with Wasabe... let's see what happens next..."

You see... most poisons are too deadly to be deemed 'pranks'... but there's SOOOOooo many things out there you can use, if only your mind is depraved enough to come up with it...

Shhalahr Windrider
2007-05-17, 07:39 AM
Before I answer the following questions, I'll mention that I've double-checked the poison making rules in Complete Adventurer, and have noted a few other details:

The raw materials costing one-sixth the base cost only applies when the raw materials are readily available. So if it's a type of poison whose ingredients you can legally find in an open market or the ingredients happen to be growing in abundance in the forest next to the town, that price reduction applies. However, if you have to go to the black market or traipse all over the country side, raw materials may cost up to three quarters of the base price.

Also, weekly poison making checks yield progress in gold pieces rather than silver pieces. This makes poison quick to make despite their high price.


would it be viable to substitute the cost for survival checks?
If the RAW materials can be found in the wild and your DM is willing, sure it would. I think that Dragon magazine I mentioned even covered that. (Haven't found it yet, though.)

Of course, your DM is also within his or her right to rule that the cost of crafting a poison also includes additional ingredients or equipment that you cannot scavenge in the wild, resulting in a negation of only part of the cost.


how long would it take to make a gallon of poison? (for a lvl2ish character)
Depends on the size of a dose, the characters' craft check, the poison's craft DC, and the poison's price. Aside from the exceptions outlined above, the standard rules for crafting and time required apply.

Now, I would assume that a single dose of most poisons is in the neighborhood of half an ounce. That gives us about 256 doses per gallon.

So, let's say we have a level 2 character who's invested some energy into Craft (poisonmaking). Let's call him Bob.

Bob has a +9 Craft (poisonmaking) check from max ranks, +2 Int modifier, and some other +2 source that really doesn't matter for our purposes.

Bob decides he wants to refine some Bloodroot poison. That's a relatively inexpenisve poison. The plant from which it is extracted grow in abundance nearby, so he also has a ready supply of materials.

Now, according to Complete Adventurer, bloodroot has a Craft DC of 15. This makes it possible for Bob too take 10 and succeed on making the bloodroot. As he's interested in making rather large batches, he wants to take his time and chooses to go ahead and take 10.

So, to measure a week of progress, we take his check (10+9=19), and multiply it by the Craft DC (15). That is how many gp in progress Bob has made. He has made 285 gp progress. Bloodroot costs 100 gp per dose, which means Bob has created 2.85 doses of bloodroot poison after one week. Assuming that one dose of bloodroot is half an ounce, it will take him approximately 90 weeks to create a gallon of bloodroot.

His progress can be sped up by increasing his check modifier. For instance, if Bob has two assistants named Jack and Jill (they're siblings), he can potentially make 3.45 doses of poison per week (assuming his assistants are successful in their checks to assist), which yields a gallon in just over 74 weeks.


would it be possible to make concentrate/more powerfull versions of existing poisons, would you increase the craft DC by the same amount as you increase the poison DC? (drow poison could use a higher DC)
It would certainly be possible. An increase in DC should also be reflected in an increase in poison market price.

Your suggestion for increasing the Craft DC at the same rate as the Resist DC is probably a little off, though. Skill checks increase much faster than Save bonuses. That would allow a poison master to easily create impossible-to-resist poisons by mid-levels. I'd suggest increasing the Craft DC by at least two for every one-point increase in the poison's resist DC. For some poisons, you'll probably want to increase it even more. Such a rate would also help explain why the more virulent versions are so rare.

[hr]EDIT
Found it!

It was a bit further back than I remembered. Last November's Dragon #349 (http://paizo.com/dragon/products/issues/2006/349). It's in the "Adventurer" Class Acts section.

In addition to reprinting the rules and Craft DCs from Complete Adventurer (only for poisons in the DMG), it covers how to determine if raw materials are available, harvesting raw materials, and give info on a Poisoner's Kit item.

To determine if a poison is available, you can make a Gather Information check (DC 10 + modifiers from a table accompanying the article). Succeeding by 5 or more lets you purchase them at the 1/6 rate, while normal succes lets you purchase them at the 3/4 rate. Failure means you cannot find any at all. Failure by 5 or more alerts the authorities to your actions. What happens then depends on what the authorities think of poisonmaking.

You can harvest materials on your own, you make a Survival check whose DC is equal to the craft DC for the particular poison. If successful, you gather raw materials whose value is equal to 10 times your check in silver pieces. Once harvested, raw materials only last 1d6 days. A Craft (alchemy)* can extend the shelf life by a week or more.

The Poisoner's Kit costs 100 gp. Like other kits, it grants a +2 bonus on Craft (poisonmaking) checks as well as a few other skill checks.

* Note that you only have to be a spellcaster to craft alchemical items. Since a Craft (alchemy) check to extend material shelf life does not involve creating an alchemical item, even a non-spellcaster is elegible to make this check.

Wraithy
2007-05-18, 11:05 AM
wow, this thread has helped me loads.
and now that my copy of the complete adventurer has arrived i can finally begin poisoncraft.
thankyou all for the info

Fax Celestis
2007-05-18, 11:31 AM
Ooh! Don't forget CScn's Poison Master and Poison Expert feats!

Arbitrarity
2007-05-18, 06:42 PM
Kind of sad you can't use economies of scale with poisons. You can't even make a big batch at once.

ArmorArmadillo
2007-05-19, 01:03 AM
hello fellow dungeoneers. (god that sounded cheesey)
i'm thinking of turning my current PC into a poisons user (in 1 level he gets poison use)
however the DM of my gaming group has made us all dirt poor, and honestly i can't blame him, last session we attacked the occupants of some not so empty ruins just because they had guards with torches patrolling the area (it was 2 hours before i pointed this out to the others).
being a level 2 ninja with 11 silver pieces to his name and a copy of the complete adventurer which has been delayed in the post for over a month (despite paying for fast delivery, thankyou amazon); i have decided to craft my own poisons!
after looking in the DM manual and not finding answers to my questions i turned to my DM and gaming group, now they are all as confused as i am.
once again i look to forum surfing deities for answers.

the first question was simple: how do you CRAFT a poisons?
that was easy, but it only means creating the poisons.
how do you get the engredients?
also easy, find them in the wild, but that doesn't tell you what to find.

now if anybody wants to skip the rant START READING HERE:

does anybody have recipes for poisons, their DCs, their effects, etc?
poisons from books, other sites, even new ones.
also any tips for identifying which poison was used (this one really baffles me)
any RP tips; pranks involving embarassing nonlethal poisons, how to act around who.
if you know these things or any other related stuff, please post and help put the blood of countless NPC's and monsters on my hands

- WraithyTalk to the DM, unfortunately Crafting in D&D is a buggy system, as it is built around weeks, which don't really scale in any significant way to the game. (You can level from 4 to 6 in a week of in-game time, based on how your campaign goes.)

Ask if you can redo Poison Crafting, so that-
1. You make a check at the end of each session.
2. You can make a number of doses of poison per session equal to your INT mod.
3. For each dose, you make a Craft (Poisonmaking) check against the poison's DC, success indicates you make it at 1/3 price, failure indicates you don't and lose 1/3 the price in raw materials. You can make an additional dose on each attempts by adding 10 to the Craft DC.
4. If you slay a monster with harvestable poison (DM's discretion), you may harvest it with a Craft (Poisonmaking) equal to the DC, at no cost.

If you think this is overpowered or too easy; ask yourself you should have to max out a skill and take two weeks (an entire level) to knock 2/3's off of the price of one dose of a low quality poison that your enemy will probably make his save against anyway? Sadly, I'm really not exagerrating.

PinkysBrain
2007-05-19, 06:10 AM
The enemy might make his first save, but poison users are generally either archers or throwers ... they force a lot more saves per round than 1.

Of course this type of combat gets expensive very fast, even if you craft your own poison.

Ranis
2007-05-19, 08:18 AM
Wraithy- I highly recommend getting the Complete Scoundrel. It will be infinitely helpful in your poisoneering.

artaxerxes
2007-05-19, 10:31 AM
The D20 Modern web enhancement has rules for creating poisons, as does the Book of Vile Deeds (IIRC).

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/we/20021103a

Eaily modifiable to D&D.

OzymandiasVolt
2007-05-19, 12:00 PM
The d20 one is kind of silly though, as it treats 2d6hp damage as being more powerful than 3d6 ability damage.

ArmorArmadillo
2007-05-19, 02:33 PM
The enemy might make his first save, but poison users are generally either archers or throwers ... they force a lot more saves per round than 1.

Of course this type of combat gets expensive very fast, even if you craft your own poison.If you're willing to spend 2000 a combat to use five doses of poison, while, meanwhile, the cleric just hits them with a Moonbolt and does more damage than you would have anyway.

Wraithy
2007-05-19, 06:00 PM
i'll stick with the current production system for poisons, i'll probably make most of my poisons out of plants.
i'm also going to take a poison specific prestiege which increases the save DC and damage of poisons i craft.