of toxin and gunpowder

[Combat Reflexes]

Dear Playgrounders:

Is it possible, both from a game-mechanical and technical point of view, to coat a bullet in poison?

If it isn't, is there something in medieval-D&D that could be fired from a flintlock gun? Paintball-shaped bullets containing contact poisons? Hollow lead bullets with inhaled poisons? Needle-sharp rounds with ingested poisons fired directly into the stomach? (ok the last one is a bit off:smalltongue:)

please enlighten me.

[Ravens_cry]

Injury and contact poisons can be applied to a weapon, and that includes darts,so I don't see why it couldn't be applied to arrows, bolts, or bullets, sling or firearm.

[Thurbane]

Nothing I'm aware of from a game mechanics view (most likely something 3rd party, if it exists).

From a technical point of view - a lead ball with a hollow area inside, filled with injury poison, would probably be the best delivery system. Coating the shot with poison would mean most (all?) of the poison would be lost during firing, I would imagine.

Some further reading:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=278390
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28096

Or you could make the shot of a toxic metal, say Gehennan Morguth Iron (Arms & Equipment Guide).

[Kaeso]

Dear Playgrounders:

Is it possible, both from a game-mechanical and technical point of view, to coat a bullet in poison?

If it isn't, is there something in medieval-D&D that could be fired from a flintlock gun? Paintball-shaped bullets containing contact poisons? Hollow lead bullets with inhaled poisons? Needle-sharp rounds with ingested poisons fired directly into the stomach? (ok the last one is a bit off:smalltongue:)

please enlighten me.

I guess it's possible to dip a bullet in some contact/injury poison before firing it from a riffle. From a game-mechanical point of view it should be possible, but from a real life point of view I think it would make the gunpowder wet, which would mean the bullet can't be fired.

However, if you can somehow forge a bullet with a hollow inside that you fill with poison, and carve an X on the back of the bullet so it explodes on impact (kind of like a dumdum bullet (the Americans did this during the war of independance, except without the poison :p)), it should be possible to do it without getting your gunpowder wet.

It would be very inefficient though. In open combat it would be a waste of expensive poison-filled bullets and it's not even really good for assassinations because flintlocks tend to be very, very loud and smokey.

[Moriato]

I don't see why not. Not all poisons are heat sensitive, and many can kill in extremely small amounts. For example the ricin pellet used to kill Georgi Markov in 1978 was said to be smaller than the "ball" of a ball point pen and it was mostly metal, with just a few small holes for the poison. A musket ball could easily hold enough to kill an elephant. Several elephants, probably.

The only real question is whether the heat of being fired would destroy the poison. I'm sure there's some that it logically would, but others that wouldn't be affected at all. By RAW, you should be able able to simply coat the balls in poison, and that would work. In real life you'd have to find the right poison for the job, and find a way to keep it inside the projectile (not that hard) but it could be done, sure.

[Thurbane]

From a game-mechanical point of view it should be possible, but from a real life point of view I think it would make the gunpowder wet, which would mean the bullet can't be fired.
You could easily get around that by having wadding between the powder, and the projectile. I think the bigger issue would be that the intense heat and pressure of the gunpowder igniting, and the velocity with which the projectile traveled, would mean that most of the poison would have evaporated off by the time it reached it's target...

[Bhaakon]

I don't know of any game mechanic about it, but I don't see any technical reason why you couldn't do it (particularly with big, slow black powder slugs). You'd probably have to drill small holes in the ball to act as poison reservoirs--just dipping it in poison probably wouldn't work--and use something that would be dangerous in extremely small doses. Early firearms were much more adaptable in their ammunition, including lead balls, rocks, nails, specifically made arrows, pretty much anything that could fit down a barrel (some were specifically made for shooting random bits of hard trash, like a shotgun loaded with pebbles, nails, and potsherds) so specialty ammunition is not unbelievable (though hollow rounds weak enough to break open inside a person would probably break inside the barrel).

No one bothered with it in irl simply because bullets are so destructive, potent poisons are expensive, and the target was likely to die of an infection anyway.

[Combat Reflexes]

Thanks for the quick responses! :smallsmile:

So it is possible to poison someone with a rifle shot. As a DM I would say it depends on the poison whether the bullet has to be coated or filled.
The reason I am asking this is because one of my players absolutely has to play a pirate and gunpowder freak, but won't sacrifice the assassin's best friend (poison). We've been argueing about it for two sessions now, so I'm glad I can give him the green light.

I'm not planning to shoot someone with a poisoned bullet anytime soon, but when I DO need to, this information will come in very handy :smallwink:.

Oh, and on the loud and smokey point: In d&d, firearms are for adding drama to the fight/assassination, Getting hit by a blowpipe dart is boring.


ps. where can I find the Arms & Equipment guide? It gets mentioned a lot, but I have never seen one in my life.

[Thurbane]

ps. where can I find the Arms & Equipment guide? It gets mentioned a lot, but I have never seen one in my life.
It's an official WotC 3.0 product - but most of the content is perfectly usable with 3.5, with little to no conversion required.

Well worthwhile if you can grab it...I've seen copies on Amazon for very reasonable prices.

http://media.dandwiki.com/w/images/6/6c/ArmEquip.jpg