PDA

View Full Version : Would drinking PURE poison work better then distilled?



Scowling Dragon
2013-04-14, 12:17 PM
Im just thinking, if I use some cantrips to make poison taste like whatever, and use more cantrips to color the thing for the right color, I could essentially have the person drink PURE poison, and they would be none-the wiser.'

But I was thinking: would this be more effective?

jindra34
2013-04-14, 12:24 PM
If your goal is just to kill them dead then yes. But an arrow/bullet/spell to the head does that as well. If your goal is to kill them subtley, then probably no, as keeling over right after drinking something is kinda a dead give away.

Oracle_Hunter
2013-04-14, 12:41 PM
Im just thinking, if I use some cantrips to make poison taste like whatever, and use more cantrips to color the thing for the right color, I could essentially have the person drink PURE poison, and they would be none-the wiser.'

But I was thinking: would this be more effective?
IRL he would be taking a higher dose of the toxic substance than otherwise, which would make it more likely to be fatal, yes.

In game, it depends a lot on how the system treats poisons :smalltongue:

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-04-14, 03:12 PM
I love the topics that come up on RPG boards... XD

Bastian Weaver
2013-04-14, 03:20 PM
Depends on the type of poison. Unless it's distilled in something that neutralizes poison, there really shouldn't be any difference. Of course, the recipient takes a larger dose of poison that way.

Moreb Benhk
2013-04-14, 03:31 PM
I would wonder how many poisons are actually liquid in their pure form. To my knowledge most organic and inorganic poisons are solids (at room temperature and pressure). Mostly they get dissolved/suspended in a liquid if the poison is administered in a liquid form. Of course there are a bunch of liquid poisons - methanol, mercury, bromine, etc. but comparatively they are not nearly as potent as other poisons. So sure you could get them to drink a mug full of methanol and die, or you could put a few tiny grains of something nastier in their actual drink (or their eyedrops or whatever) and they'd be just as dead, and the drink would be much less suspicious-looking once the cantrips wear off. Also once you give someone enough poison to kill them, they are dead. If you give them TEN THOUSAND TIMES AS MUCH POISON they are equally dead. But I guess the latter makes a stronger political statement.

Feddlefew
2013-04-14, 03:37 PM
Im just thinking, if I use some cantrips to make poison taste like whatever, and use more cantrips to color the thing for the right color, I could essentially have the person drink PURE poison, and they would be none-the wiser.'

But I was thinking: would this be more effective?

Unless you're trying to get them to drink mercury*, no.

Most poisons are already diluted in other substances, like water, or else they'd be (usually) white powders.

The LD50 (amount per kilogram of body weight it takes for someone's chance of dying to be 50%) for most substances that you would use are in milligrams or micrograms. That's one thousandth or one millionth of a gram, respectively. A few of the nastiest poisons are lethal at one part per billionth. You would be wasting a stupidly large amount of poison.

Now, using prestidigitation, you could take your vial of black lotus extract (or whatever) and trick someone into drinking it, but that's not pure poison so much as the result of soaking the poisonous parts of that plant in alcohol. It's probably got a lot of stuff in it that isn't poison**, like pigments and vitamins.

I'd still use prestidigitation on something your character has poisoned to make the poison harder to detect, because a lot of poisons taste bad or funny in some way. Although this isn't a good rule of thumb for identifying poisons, because some things (like arsenic and many deadly mushrooms) taste delicious.


*Technically elemental murcury isn't poisonous, and most of it will pass through a persons system. It's what a person's gut flora metabolize it into that are very, very toxic. Like metal mercury.

**At that dose. In large enough quantities most substances become toxic.

Edit:


I would wonder how many poisons are actually liquid in their pure form. To my knowledge most organic and inorganic poisons are solids (at room temperature and pressure). Mostly they get dissolved/suspended in a liquid if the poison is administered in a liquid form. Of course there are a bunch of liquid poisons - methanol, mercury, bromine, etc. but comparatively they are not nearly as potent as other poisons. So sure you could get them to drink a mug full of methanol and die, or you could put a few tiny grains of something nastier in their actual drink (or their eyedrops or whatever) and they'd be just as dead, and the drink would be much less suspicious-looking once the cantrips wear off. Also once you give someone enough poison to kill them, they are dead. If you give them TEN THOUSAND TIMES AS MUCH POISON they are equally dead. But I guess the latter makes a stronger political statement.

Well, the problem with a lot of inorganic poisons is that they have... other properties. Explosive and / or corrosive properties.

Florine gas, for instance, is a deadly poison. But if you're in a situation where you've been exposed to it you probably have bigger things to worry about. You know, like the room being on fire.... :smalleek:

Ravens_cry
2013-04-14, 03:42 PM
Distillation is a method of purification. It basically works on the fact that different liquids have different boiling points. If you heat something so that the liquid you want vaporizes but the impurity does not, that vapour, when condensed, will have greater purity than before. This is distillation. When making liquor, it takes advantage of the fact that alcohol has a lower boiling point than water. Depending on the poison's exact physical properties, distilled poison is the same thing as pure poison.

Xelbiuj
2013-04-14, 03:48 PM
"He takes a sip, his tongue immediately goes numb . . ."

Pure poison isn't subtle, sort of misses the point.

Moreb Benhk
2013-04-14, 04:06 PM
I wonder... in a DnD type universe... could you poison someone so bad that it kills their soul?

Iceforge
2013-04-14, 04:18 PM
Now, I can't remember names or the details of why it is, but there are some substances that are poisonious/lethal to digest (which I guess comes out to the same thing), where a small dose is lethal, but a very large dose is not, something about how they bind and the body reacts to the substance, where a large quantity will bind together and be rejected by your digestive system to such a degree, that it will just pass right through your system and come out, unabsorbed.

Edit: Ergo, more substance is not always more lethal, it depends on the specifics of the individual poison

Ravens_cry
2013-04-14, 04:19 PM
I wonder... in a DnD type universe... could you poison someone so bad that it kills their soul?
Only if they admit defeet.
One would have to be quite well heeled to purchase such a poison, but if they are, it's a shoe-in.

Slipperychicken
2013-04-14, 07:23 PM
I wonder... in a DnD type universe... could you poison someone so bad that it kills their soul?

Well, if you got that soul-storing sword, and poisoned it, you could get most of the way there.


A soul-destroying poison would have to be of Artifact-like quality and rarity. Just having it would make you a target for basically everything in the universe, whether they're trying to take it for themselves, or they want to learn its secrets, or destroy it.

TuggyNE
2013-04-14, 07:42 PM
Only if they admit defeet.
One would have to be quite well heeled to purchase such a poison, but if they are, it's a shoe-in.

Oh dear oh my, that's terrible.

:smallbiggrin:

dps
2013-04-14, 09:40 PM
Now, I can't remember names or the details of why it is, but there are some substances that are poisonious/lethal to digest (which I guess comes out to the same thing), where a small dose is lethal, but a very large dose is not, something about how they bind and the body reacts to the substance, where a large quantity will bind together and be rejected by your digestive system to such a degree, that it will just pass right through your system and come out, unabsorbed.

Edit: Ergo, more substance is not always more lethal, it depends on the specifics of the individual poison

If you swallow a large quantity of certain poisons, they'll cause enough gastrointestinal distress that you'll puke them up before enough to kill you gets absorbed by your digestive tract. A smaller quantity won't cause you to regurgitate it, and enough will get absorbed to kill you.

Ashtagon
2013-04-15, 01:54 AM
Im just thinking, if I use some cantrips to make poison taste like whatever, and use more cantrips to color the thing for the right color, I could essentially have the person drink PURE poison, and they would be none-the wiser.'

But I was thinking: would this be more effective?

In game terms, it would be treated as consuming multiple doses simultaneously. Whether that is more effective depends on how the rules treat poison. D&D, iirc (afb) would at most treat it as a circumstantial -2 penalty on the saves.

Realistically, physiological reactions would cause the target to reject a pure poison (vomiting or detecting oral effects associated with poison) before a meaningful amount (more than a single dose) could be absorbed, unless they were intent on chugging it down.

Aside: Distilled doesn't mean what I think you think it means. Perhaps you meant diluted?