House-rule idea: All poisons available as ravages

[Jowgen]

Ravages have some cool stuff going for them, mechanics and flavor wise. They work on anything that's evil regardless of immunities, deal extra damage based on the targets charisma... really, that part of them seems like something that might actually scale up reasonably well to higher levels. The problem: there are like 6 ravages and they all suck.

So the simple idea: what if it were possible to create the ravage equivalent of any poison? Sanctified poisons, so to speak?

I'm interested in how balanced/unbalanced that would be, and also what prerequisites I should tie to this. For said prerequisites, I have a few ideas, some of them more restrictive than others; so input on which ones should be used or which might be overkill would be appreciated.

Going from least restrictive to most restrictive, my current ideas are:
- Crafter must use Holy water or other holy-aligned substance as an ingredient
- Crafter must be of good alignment
- Crafter must have an aura of good of at least strong, if not overwhelming strenght
- Crafter must craft within the confines of a consecrate, protection from evil or similar spell
- Crafter must possess the Words of Creation feat

[sleepyphoenixx]

Assuming that all poison related feats, spells and other abilities work equally well on ravages it would certainly be a valid tactic, but more something to supplement another combat strategy for one simple reason: effective poison is expensive (unless you cheat with Minor Creation).
Blowing a few thousand gp on a one-shot attack that is negated on a successful save isn't something you do just to kill mooks.

As for balance, that's a little tricky. Most of the really dangerous opponents you might want to use it on have charisma scores in the low-mid 20s, so any attack with a decent ravage is likely to be a SoD. That's the only way to really make it worth the investment though, so lowering the damage will just lead to nobody using them.
You have to decide for yourself if you want even more rocket tag in your game.

Crafting requirements are really more of an afterthought. Adding Holy Water to the base poison and channeling positive energy (Turn Undead) into it would be my choice, since it fits the flavor.

[IcarusWulfe]

I've always found the idea of good aligned poisons amusing.

[Nifft]

I don't like the idea of Ravages.

IMO what could work would be more intensive Holy Water effects: so not poison at all, but still a thing you can put on weapons to deal extra damage to Undead, Evil Outsiders, and things which might try to possess people (e.g. magic jar Necromancers and Fiends of Possession).

[martixy]

I've always found the idea of good aligned poisons amusing.
I've always found the idea of poison being aligned amusing. :smallbiggrin:


What you could do(and what I do) is uncouple alignment and simply treat these things as mundane and supernatural versions of the same mechanic. For different creatures or characters, or different situations it would perhaps make sense to only have one or the other.
And if you have to pass judgement, do so based on action, not on the tool. Morality is not a valid property for inanimate objects.

I mean if you're gonna do poison -> ravages, you might as well do it the other way around too. Heck, most of it is probably already done.

[Honest Tiefling]

Yeah, aligned poisons is silly. Beating someone to near-death so that their ribcage punctures a lung is totes okay, but slipping in a poison to avoid said beating is evil?

Having said that, it does seem like your system will heavily favor casters. Now, ravages are likely to be used by good aligned people so I guess the Poison Use class ability isn't terribly useful. Still, I somewhat associate slipping someone something the realm of our dear maligned friend, the rogue. Is the idea to limit their creation to powerful NPCs so people don't go crazy with them? I mean, there's always that temptation for a neutral character to dump a bunch into the well after all. Still seems a bit odd they wouldn't be available to fighters/rogues who could probably use the loving.

[atemu1234]

Or just make poison not evil... being pragmatic does not make one a villain.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Or just make poison not evil... being pragmatic does not make one a villain.

I always treated ravages as more targeted poisons, just like afflictions are more targeted diseases. They are weapons developed by the forces of good designed to specifically deal with the forces of evil without risk of harming non-evil beings. I know this is not what the BoED says, but that is what makes the most sense to me.

[Nifft]

Or just make poison not evil... being pragmatic does not make one a villain.

The 1e PHB explicitly spells out that the reason a DM might want to make poison use impossible for Good characters is that easy poison access is bad for game balance.

The whole alignment restriction thing is blatant and unapologetic in its artificiality.