Poisoning the Poison Immune

[demigodus]

One of the players in a campaign I'm in is playing an archer that shoots arrows with poison on them. The problem is, at our level (15) most things are immune to poison either from spells, race, or as a class feature.

I'm wondering if there is some way, by RAW, to poison creatures that are immune to poisons. We have a counter for those immune via spells for magic items (Arrows of Greater Spell Storing with Greater Dispel Magic stored in them), but that still leaves a ton of stuff immune to his shtick.

We have access to Druid and Wizard casting if that matters

[Hirax]

PAO them into something that's not immune to poison. Though that likely obviates your need to poison them in the first place. Serpent Kingdoms and Tome of magic have spells that can remove extraordinary and supernatural abilities on certain things, so if the immunity results from one of those things that can help.

[Mithril Leaf]

Remember to be careful what you wish for. With a method like that, a wizard with minor creation, and a few buckets, the campaign might come to an abrupt end.

[demigodus]

Found the spell in Serpent Kingdom to remove ex/su abilities. Sadly, that still doesn't solve the issue of demons, devils, undead, constructs, oozes, etc. that are immune to poisons due to race.

[gallagher]

Are you able to get any ravishes? IIRC they arent poisons and are thus not precluded

[eggs]

Poisons suck at high levels. If the player's specifically invested resources in poison abilities, retraining and Psychic Reformation are not bad options.

But for the only answers I can think of to your question:
Ravages are specifically not poisons,but act like them. If you're fighting evil things, they at least get around immunities (though on the same principle, most of the things that make poisons almost resemble viable higher-level options don't apply to ravages).

There are also two diseases I can think of that are generally treated as poison: the compsagnathus from Dragon Magazine, and the Ratfolk Alchemist from Pathfinder. (But poison and disease immunities generally come as a package deal, so those probably aren't helpful.)

But actually getting around the immunity usually means bringing in big and smashy enough tools that not using them to just end the fight is a bit silly.

[demigodus]

yeah, I realize they suck at high levels. But the player likes the concept of sneaking in the shadows, shooting people, and letting the poison kill them.

So I'm wondering if there are ways to make them work. Ravages could work, except that they are expensive as hell, and have pretty low save DCs

[Piggy Knowles]

Undead immunities can be handled by Spark of Life, a level 3 cleric/level 4 druid spell from the Spell Compendium.

Downsides to the spell are the fact that it's a single target Will-negates touch spell. Upsides are that all undead immunities are removed, including ability damage, fatigue/exhaustion, nonlethal damage, sneak attacks, sleep, death effects and (yes) poison.

If you've invested a lot of resources into ability damage or poison, it can help, but generally if I'm going to be hitting undead enemies with a Will-negates effect, I'd rather it be Command/Control Undead or Undeath to Death.

Also not sure of any equivalent spells for oozes, constructs, etc.

[demigodus]

I guess I could use Spark of Life as a basis with the DMG rules for custom spell research to try to get something.

Even if I agree that the spell isn't worth it when used by a caster, in spell storing arrows, fired by a party member that shoots minimum of 8 arrows a random, it can still be very effective in spreading some poisonous love ^^

[animewatcha]

For things that need to breathe and aren't underwater breathers, aboleth mucus from savage species. It isn't a 'poison' per say, but has the victim that fails the save ( i think dc 19 ) be unable to breathe ( unless is underwater and can breathe underwater if victim needs to breathe air to live ) for 3 hours.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by demigodus

Even if I agree that the spell isn't worth it when used by a caster, in spell storing arrows, fired by a party member that shoots minimum of 8 arrows a random, it can still be very effective in spreading some poisonous love ^^

Spell Storing never works with arrows, for two reasons:

• The arrow isn't wielded after firing.

  Any time the weapon strikes a creature and the creature takes damage from it, the weapon can immediately cast the spell on that creature as a free action if the wielder desires.

• The arrow is destroyed on impact, meaning it's no longer Spell Storing.

  Generally speaking, ammunition that hits its target is destroyed or rendered useless, while normal ammunition that misses has a 50% chance of being destroyed or lost.

  A damaged magic item continues to function, but if it is destroyed, all its magical power is lost.

[Mithril Leaf]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Spell Storing never works with arrows, for two reasons:

• The arrow isn't wielded after firing.
• The arrow is destroyed on impact, meaning it's no longer Spell Storing.

Hey, no need to ruin their fun. Assume it works until ruled by the DM otherwise.

[demigodus]

Originally Posted by animewatcha

For things that need to breathe and aren't underwater breathers, aboleth mucus from savage species. It isn't a 'poison' per say, but has the victim that fails the save ( i think dc 19 ) be unable to breathe ( unless is underwater and can breathe underwater if victim needs to breathe air to live ) for 3 hours.

Holy, that is scary for 20 gp. Next time I have a low level adventure, I'm getting a few of those.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Spell Storing never works with arrows, for two reasons

While I'm pretty sure that, by RAW, you are correct, the DM seems fine with it so far (he was the one to point us to Greater Spell Storing after the other player asked about Spell Storing arrows that store up to lvl 6 spells).

So at least, in my current game, they are allowed. At least until the DM sees those arguments anyways...

[Tokuhara]

I'm a Pathfinder player, and sadly, this issue came up in my last campaign:

The party Alchemist was very Bomb/Poison focused and realized that at even before 15th level, the amount of things Immune or Highly Resistant to poisons were so staggering that he simply made poisons so he could sell them. I mean yeah, he was making a rather nice net profit as an adventurer/apothecary, but he wasn't having fun anymore. So my DM improvised and gave monsters that weren't immune to poison class levels to balance the scales so he could use his poisons.

At the end of the day, beyond the Optimization, theories, and rules, D&D/PF is a game and games are meant to be fun. If one player isn't having fun because the DM is throwing a lot of monsters that are immune to what he's doing, then the DM has failed

[demigodus]

Well, to be fair the guy mostly started to look into this after my Druid (with Friendly Fire cast on himself) proceed to murder one of his party members right in front of him. And he realized that he can't shoot me, and even if he someone stabs me for minor damage, he can't poison me.

So it wasn't the DM's fault in this case. He mostly started looking into ways to kill me, hence I decided to try to give me pointers. I started this thread because I was just clueless on getting around the poison immunity.

[awa]

i believe drow of the under-dark had magically infused poisons that bypassed immunity to poison. ( i don't own the book so i cant check)

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by awa

i believe drow of the under-dark had magically infused poisons that bypassed immunity to poison. ( i don't own the book so i cant check)

Yes, they're on pages 94-95. Basically the creator needs both Craft (poisonmaking) skill checks and to cast a different, specific spell for each magic-infused poison they make. Differing from the other item creation rules, it's not possible to use cooperative crafting for magic-infused poisons; the poison maker must also cast the spell.

[Grollub]

I've also seen poisons in a module that were "abyssal poison" that specifically said people immune to poison were not immune to this.

[Techwarrior]

Ask your DM for permission to concoct a 'special poison' for those with immunity.

Originally Posted by Dungeon Masters Guide, page 297

Oozes, plants, and certain types of outsiders (such as Taa'nari) are immune to poison, though conceivably special poisons could be concocted to specifically harm them.