Poison Stacking

[GutterFace]

I know poison(s) / diseases get a lot of bad press for having easily beatable saves at mid-high levels.

but are you allowed to coat a weapon in a few poisons instead of just 1?

[HighWater]

Dug around for you a bit. Couldn't find anything conclusive.


One dose of poison smeared on a weapon or some other object affects just a single target. A poisoned weapon or object retains its venom until the weapon scores a hit or the object is touched (unless the poison is wiped off before a target comes in contact with it). Any poison smeared on an object or exposed to the elements in any way remains potent until it is touched or used.

The SRD on poisons may suggest that when you apply the second poison you wipe the first one off, but to be honest I think it's refering to "touching an oject that is smeared with contact poison", not to a possible application of a second poison to the same weapon.

Strongest point in favor of your suggestion I could find was that Complete Adventurer has an weapon capsule retainer (p122) for alchemical weapon capsules (which include poison). There is a single-capsule variant, and a three-capsule variant. The single-capsule variant has an injury poison as the explicit example. The three-capsule variant can trigger all three capsules at once, suggesting you can apply up to three injury poisons to a weapon at the same time, with this device. (What else would you want to smear on your weapon as a swift action?)

So yeah, I think it probably works. On to the downsides:
- Using that much poison gets pretty expensive,
- giving an enemy three chances to roll a natural one on a save, is still not a very effective tactic,
- even higher risk of poisoning yourself if you don't have poison use, as each poison applied has it's own 5% self-poison rate,

[GutterFace]

good point....it was my thought that if you were an assassin Observing for 3 rounds and determined "clearly this is a strong monster" you would just dump more (kinds) of poison on your blade.

cross your fingers for low rolls :)\

[Gildedragon]

There are spells that force rerrolls on others and spells that lower saves so having a spell storing weapon that does that can be a good start. Weaken their con and fort and then hit them with poison.

[tyckspoon]

There's also at least one weapon property that magically poisons your target when you hit, another that increases the save DC for poisons, and I would swear there's a mundane modification that stores a dose inside the weapon and injects it when you stab something (although I'm away from references now and might be misremembering how alchemical capsules work.) So even if your DM says you can't apply multiple doses you can still poison a guy 3 times with one stab.

[Deaxsa]

There's also at least one weapon property that magically poisons your target when you hit, another that increases the save DC for poisons, and I would swear there's a mundane modification that stores a dose inside the weapon and injects it when you stab something (although I'm away from references now and might be misremembering how alchemical capsules work.) So even if your DM says you can't apply multiple doses you can still poison a guy 3 times with one stab.

Got any Souce for this stuff? I'm playing an anthropomorphic sea snake, and this... could be very very useful.

[Gildedragon]

alchemical capsules are from Complete Adventurer
as to more info, let me point ya'll to the excellent Poison Handbook by Akalsaris (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4854.0)