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View Full Version : Poison Use (Legality and Morality)



ElenionAncalima
2014-01-14, 02:06 PM
My players have recently stumbled upon some poisons (low grade stuff). One of the player wants to use them with one of his characters. However, another player has a history of being a stickler regarding following the law and ethical behavior (even though she never plays lawful characters *shrug*). The first thing that she asked me was about the laws on poison in the area.

I told them that while poison use is frowned upon, it is not explicitly illegal to have it, as some of it could have medicinal properties. I said that the only illegal poisons were deadly ones (any poison that targets constitution).

A huge reason that I ruled this way was to avoid an argumement breaking out between the two players, since every character she plays gets very legalistic and making poison illegal would mean she would never let any of his characters use it, ever, in any game...which would frustrate him as he is trying something different with his roleplaying

However, this situation made me curious how other people handle poison, in their games. When is is legal or illegal? Do oppose any kind of alignment restrictions for it use?

GybeMark
2014-01-14, 02:30 PM
I've never had a character/player make any differentiation between a poison and anything else potentially lethal. Are the characters permitted to carry weapons in the area, etc. Having said that, most of my playgroup is playing for "get together, drink beer, have fun" rather than "let's think about the implications of this fantasy society"... Still, it does seem like a good roleplaying opportunity for both the lawful-in-everything-but-name-character and not-necessarily-lawful-character.

Depending on setting, another interesting possibility is the characters cultures viewing poison as "evil" in addition to "illegal". As you said, some poisons may be beneficial, so a (presumably chaotic-good) healer who uses poisons to cure certain ailments may have to do so while trying to avoid the law and the judgement of her/his peers.

Yeah, this doesn't answer your "how do others handle poison in your games" question, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm going to try to weave some of the aspect into my game come Friday :smallsmile:

Mastikator
2014-01-14, 02:40 PM
Well, you could rule that poisons are legal to have if you're using them to develop antidotes or for other medicinal purposes, but directly poisoning people is assault and attempted murder, and since poison is always premeditated it is therefore NEVER self defense and always assumed that you are the unprovoked aggressor.
The only kind of poison that I can see being used without severe repercussions tranquilizers, neutralize an enemy without killing them.

But that's within civilized context, the law doesn't apply to adventurers, they see, they kill, they loot.

Gavran
2014-01-14, 02:47 PM
Killing is usually illegal, but that doesn't really matter when you're killing things outside the protection and jurisdiction of the law - whether that's bandits or beasties. I feel the same about poison use.

Necroticplague
2014-01-14, 02:50 PM
The only difference between medicine and poison is dosage. Even highly deadly neurotoxins and snake venom is medicinally useful if you dilute it enough. And even water is deadly in high dosage. Meanwhile, animals that naturally have such poisons are overwhelmingly neutral, so poison isn't intrinsically wrong. Just like in real life, their'd realistically be some control over access (like having an apocathary license). It would probably be frowned upon to use envenomed weapons and traps, because they require relatively little skill or cleverness:just a small prick, then you wait.

hamishspence
2014-01-14, 02:51 PM
Poisoning weapons ahead of time with nonlethal poison, to maximise "takedown" ability, can be consistent with self-defence. Indeed, it might be approved of in some settings- because it maximises the chance that an unprovoked attacker will be taken out of action without getting killed.

I could see a city guard being issued with doses of such poison, and expected to make sure that their weapons are properly poisoned before being used.

Expensive though.

Dawgmoah
2014-01-14, 02:54 PM
You DM the game, you write the laws for the Realm wherever that may be. Historically from the beginning of D&D using poisons on weapons was considered an evil act. But what about using them to protect your belongings (lock box, weapon locker, etc) in your own home? Illegal in the US of course but maybe not in your game.

Problem with poisons is they can be useful in so many ways, and if you use herbalism in your game, the same things good for you in a certain measured amount are also very bad for you in another amount.

My suggestion would be to stick with the "poisoned weapons are bad but everything else is not coverd." Using "knockout drops" would not be illegal but using them to kidnap someone would be sort of thinking.

Grek
2014-01-14, 03:27 PM
I sort poisons into Industrial, Weapon-like, Drug-like and Illegal poisons.

Industrial poisons are anything with legitimate uses in manufacturing, alchemy and so on and so forth. Examples include: Arsenic (used in green paint), Ungol Dust (used to fumigate for giant insects, who universally have low Charisma) and Sassone leaf residue (one of the better poisons for use on animals). They can be owned by pretty much anyone who can afford it, but the police may give you odd looks if you're carrying around gallon jugs of mercury and you're not an alchemist or a hatter.

Weapon and Weapon-like poisons include all the Inhaled Poisons (with the exception of Ungol Dust), almost all Injury Poisons and the following Contact Poisons: Malyss Root Past, Terinav root and Dragon Bile. Obviously, if you throw a shell of Insanity Mist into a crowded barroom, that's like a dozen cases of assault, but the same is true if you used an acid flask. Likewise, if you're stabbing someone with a knife, the question of whether the knife is poisoned or not is largely irrelevant: either it was legal for you to be stabbing them (in which case using poison too isn't an issue) or it wasn't (in which case you're already in trouble for attempted murder).

The third category includes everything you might plausibly try to feed to yourself, either as a sleep aid (in the case of Oil of Taggit) or as a way to get high (Striped Toadstools, Id Moss). Usually the former is legal, and sometimes the latter is too as long as you're not a vagrant.

The final category is stuff that has no legitimate use. It includes most of the ingested poisons (exceptions are listed previously), Nitharit and Black Lotis Extract. You're pretty much only going to be using these to murder people, so they're not legal anywhere that murder isn't.

Some things get reclassified from area to area, with Burnt Othur Fumes, Ungol Dust and Shadow Essence being the most common to get banned entirely. These have the ability to permanently paralyze someone or put them into a coma, and people fear them for that.

Yora
2014-01-14, 03:54 PM
The setting in which I run my campaigns mostly doesn't have any legal codes and unless the local lord considers something to be a serious threat to his domain, it won't be regulated. If some drug gets out of hand, it might get banned, but poison really is just another weapon. Possibly one that isn't gentlemen like, but if you want to murder someone you could also just get three strong men with knives or a bow at short range and attack when the target is walking down the street. The chance of someone getting at your food is probably even lower than that.

Morally, there isn't anything particularly wrong with poison either. If you have already made the choice to kill someone, the choice of weapon doesn't make it any better or worse.

veti
2014-01-14, 03:56 PM
Poisoning weapons ahead of time with nonlethal poison, to maximise "takedown" ability, can be consistent with self-defence. Indeed, it might be approved of in some settings- because it maximises the chance that an unprovoked attacker will be taken out of action without getting killed.

Yeah, this. I think a lot depends on the socio-economic structure of your setting.

Does it have a hereditary aristocracy, who are raised from birth to wear platemail, ride warhorses and swing huge heavy weapons? Then you can bet poison is going to be frowned upon. Also stamped, spit, generally ruthlessly crushed upon. In that society, anything that levels the playing field between the knight and the peasant is Not Going To Be Allowed. (Possibly, CHA-based magic might be seen the same way.)

On the other hand, if it's a more meritocratic society, where people are expected, or at least allowed, to make their way up the ranks - then it's probably more openminded about these things.

Tengu_temp
2014-01-14, 04:00 PM
Historically from the beginning of D&D using poisons on weapons was considered an evil act.

I consider this a combination of an artifact from the oldest games, when lawful was the same as good and chaotic was the same as evil, and a ham-handed attempt to stop players from using poison to solve all their problems. Because poison was both very powerful and very cheap back then.

Using poison might be unethical only for one reason: because it causes pain for its target long after the fight is over. But then, so does dismemberment, and I don't see anyone ever saying that hacking an enemy's limb in combat is immoral. Poison is a tool; it could be used for evil, it could be used for good.

Yora
2014-01-14, 04:00 PM
Though "relaistically" poisoning weapons to take a prisoner alive doesn't work. Once sharp blades are flying around, people will get seriously injured and you need to have your enemy dead as quickly as possible before you get fataly injured, with even half-seconds counting. Trying to only scratch your enemy and then running away hoping he'll fall over unconcious within the next 20 seconds or so isn't practical.

Knaight
2014-01-14, 04:35 PM
I told them that while poison use is frowned upon, it is not explicitly illegal to have it, as some of it could have medicinal properties. I said that the only illegal poisons were deadly ones (any poison that targets constitution).

A huge reason that I ruled this way was to avoid an argumement breaking out between the two players, since every character she plays gets very legalistic and making poison illegal would mean she would never let any of his characters use it, ever, in any game...which would frustrate him as he is trying something different with his roleplaying

The player with legalistic characters needs to ease up and let other people play their characters. She has no business with "never letting" another player do something with their PC.

That said, regarding poison: I have this vary by society. If a society has grown out of a hunter culture which routinely poisoned their arrows with poison from a frog's skin because they were hunting all sorts of horrifically dangerous things in a jungle, they probably are entirely fine with poisoned weapons being employed against horrifically dangerous beasts, and possibly entirely fine with poisoned weapons being employed where weapons in general are considered acceptable. A society which grew out of an agrarian area where poison was mostly only seen as a tool for assassination will likely have a dimmer view of it. So on and so forth.

Slipperychicken
2014-01-14, 04:55 PM
Reasons to ban poison:


Objectively Evil (as in D&D): The universe has decreed it is evil.
Ethically wrong: Inflicts excessive pain.
Dishonorable/cowardly/etc: It does not take "true" skill-at-arms, a real warrior would never resort to such depravity etc.
Religious objection (a prominent religion might call it evil and forbid its use).
Equalizer: The common folk who prepare the nobles food can poison it, and the nobles ban poison to keep the commoners down.


That said, I think it would only matter if you get searched and someone discovers the poison. In that case, you could probably get away with it if you have some manner of "alchemists license" (whether forged or legit) which permits you to own some quantity of poison and create antidotes.

Deepbluediver
2014-01-14, 05:03 PM
I think that it depends on what kind of setting you are trying to achieve. Both the "anything goes" and the "tightly regulated/banned" versions have arguments to justify or allow them in my book.

Morally, I agree with the people who think of it like any other weapon; it's not inherently evil, particularly if you use it to incapacitate someone you might otherwise have had to kill, and ultimately judgement falls on the character's actions, not on their tools.

Legally (and roleplay-wise) my personal favorite was actually a setting in which it was almost universally banned. The good guys argued that it didn't have any real purpose except subterfuge, blackmail, or assassination, and had no place in civilized society.
The bad guys just didn't want it used against them.

The occasional exception was made for someone who wanted to use it for their job, such as a trapper looking to harvest animal hides, but for the most part it was a black-market item, which helped explain it's cost and rarity, without putting it entirely out of reach.

In my experience, the poison rules are a little wonky, and the biggest thing you need to be careful of is to not make it easy for the players to coat everything they touch in the stuff (it can be fairly powerful if you're creative) like some kind of a demonic snail.

Necroticplague
2014-01-14, 05:52 PM
Though "relaistically" poisoning weapons to take a prisoner alive doesn't work. Once sharp blades are flying around, people will get seriously injured and you need to have your enemy dead as quickly as possible before you get fataly injured, with even half-seconds counting. Trying to only scratch your enemy and then running away hoping he'll fall over unconcious within the next 20 seconds or so isn't practical.

Ranged weapons. There are some things that aren't very lethal on their own, but you can conviniently just smatter them in poison and apply from range. Darts are a good example, shutiken are a lesser one. Blades don't have to be flying and then running. Sure, poisoned blowdarts from the blue are cowardly, but cowardice is better than dying. Of course just knocking someone out with poison that fast isn't likely: sedatives and paralytics are finicky to use like that, with you typically either underdosing, doing little, or overdosing, where they just go to sleep and kiss waking up goodbye.

ComatosePhoenix
2014-01-14, 06:00 PM
Poison is a problem. unless you plan on playing death games with a Sicilian, I can't think of any constructive uses for a lawful character. Yes you can coat your weapon with paralyze powder and if its fast acting enjoy a free hit later on. But when I think poison I think planting it somewhere. poison wine, poison apples, poison potatoes, poison blood... Hmm. blood laced with holy water...

Anyway, if the lawful character wants the poison let him have it. Let the character deal with the moral complications of the use.

also the law is usually amoral. Murder is murder, and the means of the murder should be irrelevant. On the other hand a lawful character should have the means to painlessly efficiently execute miscreants. Especially with the difficulty in carrying the Executioner's axe, or setting up a gallows, and Good luck getting a proper firing squad organized when your victim criminal is able to cast repel missile.

Angel Bob
2014-01-14, 06:01 PM
My players totally love poison, at least for poisoning weapons. They do it all the dang time and don't give a damn about the moral implications. Of course, I suppose poisoning a weapon that you're already swinging at somebody else isn't gonna complicate much. :smalltongue:

Knaight
2014-01-14, 06:20 PM
My players totally love poison, at least for poisoning weapons. They do it all the dang time and don't give a damn about the moral implications. Of course, I suppose poisoning a weapon that you're already swinging at somebody else isn't gonna complicate much. :smalltongue:

Plus, it's not like fire and acid are uncommon in many games, and those are just as nasty.

Slipperychicken
2014-01-14, 06:26 PM
Plus, it's not like fire and acid are uncommon in many games, and those are just as nasty.

Poison is more suspicious and easily banned, since it has very few uses which aren't murder.

Knaight
2014-01-14, 06:33 PM
Poison is more suspicious and easily banned, since it has very few uses which aren't murder.

Sure, but that's not particularly relevant to the ethics involved in employing it in a combat situation. The rest of the tools involved (weaponry, magic, etc.) are pretty much specialized killing implements as well.