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Wraithy
2007-06-06, 03:28 PM
this is designed for a greyhawk campaign.

Years ago during the great wars against Vecna and other powerful necromancers; the churches of good deities combined forces with master herbalists to improve the potency of holy water. It was hoped that by mass producing these formulae; the church could distribute them to areas in place of much needed clerics and paladins. With the cleric-less villages and towns no longer without defence, the essential turning power could be directed where it was needed most, the battle field. For years there was no success until finally, sick of the wars, the thieves’ guilds offered their poison experts. Their combined efforts soon bore fruit in the form of Holy-Vein poisons. However the poisons were too difficult for the churches to craft to be mass produced. The poisons were distributed to sniping marksmen, who fired their arrows at the liches and other undead generals as well as at particularly powerful undead. After the end of the wars the factions who crafted the poisons were divided: the churches wished to give them to the civilians as cheaply as possible for their own protection, but the thieves’ guilds wanted to turn out the poisons for a profit. After separating the two factions could not achieve their aims, the thieves’ guilds could not obtain enough holy water without alerting their activities to paladins and other law enforcers. The churches did not have the expertise to craft the poisons either. With neither side able to craft the poisons, they soon were confined to the pages of history. Records of the Holy-Vein poisons are easy to find, however many people are not interested because of their lack of relevance to the churches or thieves’ guilds.

To craft Holy-Vein poisons add 5 to the DC of the craft check, add holy water to the regular poison ingredients.
Only creatures affected by holy water can be damaged by these poisons, eliminating the chance of non evil outsiders/undead poisoning themselves while using the poisons.
Any creature affected by a poison that does constitution damage witch does not have a constitution score (undead) still take damage, undead creatures witch are affected by constitution damage by Holy-Vein Poisons take damage to unholy-constitution, a creature’s unholy-constitution equals their hit dice added to their charisma modifier (even if the modifier lowers the score) to a minimum of 1,
eg: human commoner zombie’s unholy-constitution = 1 (hit dice:2 + charisma modifier: -5), once a creature’s unholy-constitution reaches 0 it disintegrates, unholy-constitution can only be brought back to normal after damage when any negative energy affects the creature, undead within 30ft of a necromancer or any other undead witch is it’s master adds either their master’s charisma modifier or their own (whichever is larger) temporarily.
The fortitude save is now charisma based, incorporeal creatures gain a +2 bonus to their fortitude save, and any undead with turn resistance add it to their fortitude save.
Undead are still unaffected by paralysis and sleep effects, but demons and other evil outsiders usually unaffected by poisons (due to the holy water content) are affected by these.
The cost to create Holy-Vein poisons is 1-1/2 times the regular cost of the poison it is based on.
Someone can learn about Holy-Vein poisons with a knowledge religion, dungeoneering, or history check with the following DCs:

10: there are some poisons which can affect undead and even evil outsiders
15: they contain holy water and were created by the churches and the thieves’ guilds
20: all of the information mentioned here

Any character with ranks in craft poison can also learn the secrets methods of crafting Holy-Vein poisons.
Any character that gets a 15 on their check can use an appropriate gather information check to access records at churches, old thieves’ guilds, and some other historical records.

P.S. the idea of Unholy-constitution is that once it drops to 0, the undead's link to the negative energy plain is severed and they discintigrate

Triaxx
2007-06-06, 07:26 PM
Could an Unholy-Vein poison be created, using Unholy water, and a healing potion? Same idea, but extra effective against Celestial creatures?

Wraithy
2007-06-07, 02:47 AM
in theory, but would a healing potion improving a poison really make sense?

Triaxx
2007-06-07, 10:38 AM
It's not really being added to the poison but is it's own sort of poison in it's own right. Holy-vein is very effective against undead. It's a normal poison, and holy water. So against a celestial, you'd use a Healing potion, and Unholy water.

Wraithy
2007-06-07, 10:39 AM
there is unholy water? anywho i suppose you could do that if you want to