Poison

[Spacehamster]

So poison vial costs 100 gp and you can only use it once on a weapon or on 3 arrows/bolts, and it only adds 1d4 damage, so hardly worth it I presume? Also with the poisoners kit it says you use it to make poison but it gives no examples on what types of poison you can make, how much the ingredients would cost or any difficulties of the roll for making poison. Since my char will have levels in assassin it would be nice rp wise to craft and use poisons so any help with that would be swell. :)

Spacehamster to infinity and beyond

[MustacheFart]

So poison vial costs 100 gp and you can only use it once on a weapon or on 3 arrows/bolts, and it only adds 1d4 damage, so hardly worth it I presume? Also with the poisoners kit it says you use it to make poison but it gives no examples on what types of poison you can make, how much the ingredients would cost or any difficulties of the roll for making poison. Since my char will have levels in assassin it would be nice rp wise to craft and use poisons so any help with that would be swell. :)

Spacehamster to infinity and beyond


This bugged me as well. What's worse is every other poison listed in the game also applies the poisoned condition to the target and the effect explicitly mentions that. The vial of poison does not. If it applied the poisoned condition for a set period it would be worth something.

As it sits, it looks like we'll have to wait for the dmg before we have poisons to use.

[Spacehamster]

This bugged me as well. What's worse is every other poison listed in the game also applies the poisoned condition to the target and the effect explicitly mentions that. The vial of poison does not. If it applied the poisoned condition for a set period it would be worth something.

As it sits, it looks like we'll have to wait for the dmg before we have poisons to use.

Yeah cause 100 gp for a one time use that lasts 1 minute, only does 1d4(2d4 on crit) and have a piss easy saving throw to resist is pretty much completly useless. :(

[Theodoxus]

Until the DMG comes out, which will presumably have actual crafting rules and poison rules, my group decided to go with this houserule in the interim.

Using the Poisoner's Kit, you can craft a poison that has the same DC as what you rolled to craft it. Still does 1d4 poison damage. We handwaved the crafting time - concocting a poison with materials on hand was ruled faster than brewing a healing potion from herbs and spices.

I can understand from a balance/money sink perspective why a vial of poison costs so much - but it really shouldn't. a d4 damage once an application is ridiculously small for 100 gold and 20 days crafting time. Especially with a DC of 10 - that'll succeed 50% of the time just as a base, and most critters have a bonus to Con, if not outright proficiency with the save.

I'm definitely interested in how the DMG handles poison crafting.

[Spacehamster]

Until the DMG comes out, which will presumably have actual crafting rules and poison rules, my group decided to go with this houserule in the interim.

Using the Poisoner's Kit, you can craft a poison that has the same DC as what you rolled to craft it. Still does 1d4 poison damage. We handwaved the crafting time - concocting a poison with materials on hand was ruled faster than brewing a healing potion from herbs and spices.

I can understand from a balance/money sink perspective why a vial of poison costs so much - but it really shouldn't. a d4 damage once an application is ridiculously small for 100 gold and 20 days crafting time. Especially with a DC of 10 - that'll succeed 50% of the time just as a base, and most critters have a bonus to Con, if not outright proficiency with the save.

I'm definitely interested in how the DMG handles poison crafting.

im hoping that they add many different poisons in it and if you had skill in nature you could track down ingredients during travel/downtime to remove ingredient costs. Would also be nice rp wise. :)

[MustacheFart]

I just wish they had added the line "the target becomes poisoned for 1 min." to the description of the poison vile in the phb. If they had done that like they should have I would be completely fine. It would mean that it actually had a use even with the low save.

It would also mean that I could dip 3 arrows in it and pepper the Half Dragon champ with my longbow "Dr. Pepper" to possibly increase my odds of victory.

[Spacehamster]

It would also mean that I could dip 3 arrows in it and pepper the Half Dragon champ with my longbow "Dr. Pepper" to possibly increase my odds of victory.

Haha dr pepper! Have a cookie for that awesome weapon name. :p my weapons will be my heavy crossbow "impaler" and two custom made heavier schimitars 1d8 with only finesse instead of light, named "fang" and "claw".

[Fwiffo86]

We went with a similar system.

Maintained crafting time and cost but added the following:

PB = Proficiency bonus

1 vial = 1 weapon, remains poisoned for successful hits = PB
1 vial = 1 + PB arrows

damage = Poison 1d4+PB

Causes Poisoned condition for 1 round
Con DC to avoid 8 + PB + Int mod

Refinement option
Re-brewing the same poison increases potency and/or duration.
Time to craft: 10 days
Add +1 round to poisoned condition or +1d4 to the poison damage


It is important to realize that with this rule, the save DC is only for avoiding the poisoned condition. You take the poison damage anyway, minus any immunities/resistances to poison

[Easy_Lee]

20 days to craft one vial? That must be some kind of joke on their part. But I already hated the crafting rules.

[Demonic Spoon]

The crafting rules make sense for things like armor and weapons in which the primary limiting factor is the amount of time you need to spend working on it to craft it.

They make less sense for things like poisons and potions which are more limited by material availability.

[Fwiffo86]

I don't know about the times. It takes a long time to brew beer using archaic methods and tools. I can only imagine how long it actually takes to collect, distill, refine, distill again, refine again, etc the amount of material you need for a poison.

It may even be that you need say 5 pounds of X flower to create 1 single vial.

[Yagyujubei]

We went with a similar system.

Maintained crafting time and cost but added the following:

PB = Proficiency bonus

1 vial = 1 weapon, remains poisoned for successful hits = PB
1 vial = 1 + PB arrows

damage = Poison 1d4+PB

Causes Poisoned condition for 1 round
Con DC to avoid 8 + PB + Int mod

Refinement option
Re-brewing the same poison increases potency and/or duration.
Time to craft: 10 days
Add +1 round to poisoned condition or +1d4 to the poison damage


It is important to realize that with this rule, the save DC is only for avoiding the poisoned condition. You take the poison damage anyway, minus any immunities/resistances to poison

Ive been looking for a system of basis for poison craft and I like your solution. I want my character to be based deeply in alchemy and poisoncraft but it's frustrating having nothing to work from.

another thing to think about is milking from the various familiars available in the PHB, the imp and pseudodragon both have decent poison options for dmg and control respectively and I think they could be adapted to this system.

I also want to incorporate poisons made from plants and herbs I can find while we travel but have been having trouble adapting the various 3.5 options into 5E since I'm not sure how to balance them in the long run, so if anyone has ideas on the matter I'd appreciate it.

[Fwiffo86]

I also want to incorporate poisons made from plants and herbs I can find while we travel but have been having trouble adapting the various 3.5 options into 5E since I'm not sure how to balance them in the long run, so if anyone has ideas on the matter I'd appreciate it.

Thank you for enjoying my system.

As for adaption of 3.5 options... I don't think that is going to work, unless you drastically change how attribute damage works.

You might try something like this:

Poison (catchy name here)
Damage: PB Poison damage to (attribute here)
Con DC: 5 + PB + Int mod (att damage is way more powerful)

Refinement:
+10 days, +1 DC (max +3 [brings it equal with a normal poison save]
--OR--
+10 days, +1 Damage (Max = double PB).

Attribute damage does not cause Poisoned condition.

[Demonic Spoon]

I don't know about the times. It takes a long time to brew beer using archaic methods and tools. I can only imagine how long it actually takes to collect, distill, refine, distill again, refine again, etc the amount of material you need for a poison.

It may even be that you need say 5 pounds of X flower to create 1 single vial.

Presumably you'd be able to distill most of the materials in larger quantities than enough for one vial.

[Fwiffo86]

Agreed. Here is something else I thought about...

Heal pot creation cost is only 25 gold, not 50. (i kept this from the play test)
At 5 gp/day, it takes 5 days to make one potion. (i know the rules say 10 days)

A vial of poison is roughly equivalent to a heal potion. (at least thematically)
1 vial of poison costs 100 gp.
Assume a 100% markup for it being illegal.
Now its 50 gp.
Assume creation is half the cost of retail (just like the heal pots)
Now its 25 gp.
At 5 gp/day = 5 days to brew a single vial.

At the listed PHB version, you really get 4 vials / 20 days of crafting.

[Spacehamster]

Could make a list of poisons all with a crafting dc and some made up herbal ingredients and have your character roll nature checks when out in the field and if he finds anything you roll on a list of the herbs and see what you found. And on offtime between missions you can tell dm that your character spent his/her time out in the wilderness looking for ingredients and dm could let you roll a few times on the list depending on how long the downtime were. :)

[Snails]

The crafting rules make sense for things like armor and weapons in which the primary limiting factor is the amount of time you need to spend working on it to craft it.

They make less sense for things like poisons and potions which are more limited by material availability.

If it takes a jewelsmith 10 days to craft a fine silver ring, obviously it should cost 100 days to craft a fine gold ring.

That is pretty funny, now that you mention it.