Poison in literature and in gaming

[Particle_Man]

In fantasy literature, there are many tales of poison that, either slowly or quickly, will kill its victim. The poisoner in Best Served Cold, for example, is very effective at killing people outright (and often within moments) with the slightest drop of poison, rarely needing a weapon at all (and if so it would be a minor one, like a blowgun dart).

In D&D this is almost impossible to do by itself. You can maybe weaken someone with ability damage (which varies from annoying to very annoying) and *maybe* knock an animal or stupid person unconscious with int poison, but really, the only "killer" poison is the one that does con damage, and that doesn't always kill the victim either (often you need a combination of con damage and good old fashioned hp damage, usually from a weapon).

I can see why games move away from "save or die" poisons (I think the last holdout in 3.x was the green part of the prismatic spells, but that is hard to bottle), but in D&D it is odd because there are "save or die" spells and "death from massive damage" effects. Poison, however, is basically a way of wearing down an opponent, only you use ability score points as the ablative marker instead of hit points.

[EvulOne]

My guess is, is that poison is fairly easy to get for almost any adventurer, the 'save or die' spells are a little bit higher level and only available to the spell casters. Since it's generally easier to get, it needs to have a less effect. Plus the game is centered on the players abilities and magics, not assassination techniques.

[mabriss lethe]

Because its "not heroic"

Poison in 3.5 was created primarily as a DM's tool. The rules do quite a bit to discourage PC use. It's rather expensive considering its effectiveness. It requires special abilities to use safely, its use is treated as an Evil act in most sources, and many monsters are immune/have ridiculously high fort saves.
From a DM's perspective, it's great. It weakens PCs in a manner that you can control to a fairly high degree. PC immunity is harder to come by and they generally have lower stats than monsters, so the save dcs stay viable for longer.

[Zanos]

Black Lotus Extract will kill anyone who can't make the save almost all of the time, since it does 6d6 total constitution damage. The more lethal poisons are gated behind high GP costs for obvious balance reasons. Sure, SoD spells exist but they're the domain of high level adventurers and monsters.

[Starbuck_II]

Why Core of both D&D and Pathfinfder shy away from True damage as a poison effect; both have non-core boosts.

For Pathfinder:
1) Fire Jackal Saliva: (Dhabba Spittle) This poison burns the flesh near the point of injury as well as sickening the victim.
Type poison (injury); Save Fortitude DC 12; Frequency 1/round for 6 rounds
Initial Effect 1d6 acid damage plus nausea; Secondary Effect 1d4 Dex; Cure 1 save.
Cost: 50 gp for 1 dose (liquid).

2) Red Tears: Save Fortitude DC 15; Price 50 gp
Frequency 1/rd for 10
Effect 1d6 damage, Counts as a Bleed effect; Cure 1 saves

Technically: since bleed can deal damage.
3) Vampire’s Kiss (Injury) Save Fortitude DC 15
Frequency: 1/rd for 2 rd
Effects Initial 1d2 Con; Secondary: Bleed increases by 1 for 1 min (from non-poisons)
Cure 1 save
Price 75 gp

3.5:
Blister Oil: When the oil touches bare skin, the victim must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to avoid painful red blisters that spring up on the affected area of skin, dealing 1d4 points of damage per application used. In addition, the victim takes a -2 penalty on Dexterity-based checks, including Reflex saves, for 2d4 days.


1d4 can kill low con Wizard/Commoners

Slow Death: Deals 1d6/rd till succeed on save, cost: 250gp

[Particle_Man]

Black Lotus Extract will kill anyone who can't make the save almost all of the time, since it does 6d6 total constitution damage. The more lethal poisons are gated behind high GP costs for obvious balance reasons. Sure, SoD spells exist but they're the domain of high level adventurers and monsters.

How high level is high level? Phantasmal Killer comes online for Wizards at level 7 (although it is Save or Save or Die, technically).

[Crake]

How high level is high level? Phantasmal Killer comes online for Wizards at level 7 (although it is Save or Save or Die, technically).

Well, I believe black lotus is 3000gp 4500gp per dose, though you can drop that to 500gp 750gp if you craft it yourself according to the complete adventurer poison crafting rules, since it only costs 1/6th to craft yourself.

Edit: Even with complete adventurer essentially multiplying the crafting time of poisons by 10, in that you craft in gp per week, not sp, 4500gp will still take a LONG time to make even 1 dose, 5 weeks if you're exactly hitting the craft DC of 30. Consider speeding it up by using some kind of renewable source of the fabricate spell.

If you allow backported pathfinder material though, signature skill (craft alchemy), and the alchemist class can drop that to 1.25 weeks, and further boosting your check to 40 for accelerated crafting drops it to 0.7 weeks. Additionally, you could get the master alchemist feat which would also increase the number of doses you craft by your int modifier, so with 18 int, you could make 4 doses in about 5 days, almost 1 each day.

[Zanos]

How high level is high level? Phantasmal Killer comes online for Wizards at level 7 (although it is Save or Save or Die, technically).
9th for "standard" SoDs like flesh to stone and slay living. Phantasmal Killer is pretty terrible since it hits the two strongest saves in the game for basically nothing if they pass either.

FWIW I'm pretty sure this isn't entirely inaccurate; I'm not aware of any poisons that are especially easy to make in a pseudo-medieval setting that are going to instantly drop someone. Toxins and irritants, or making someone sick enough to succumb to disease, sure.

Keep in mind that anyone can use poison. Well, mostly.

[Kayblis]

Using poison is considered an Evil act, and the only class that outright can't do such acts is the Paladin. Even good Clerics aren't so strict, although they shouldn't do it.

Instead of trying to outright kill with poison, do the next best thing - Drow poison puts you to sleep. Sure, it's a low DC(13 injury), but it's 75gp a shot. At 1/6 cost, 12.5 gp for a chance at Uncounsciousness followed by Coup de Grace is a much better investment than Black Lotus Extract.

[Darrin]

In the real world, poison is used almost always used by someone in a weaker social/political position. It's a tool used by someone who is oppressed or dominated by a much more powerful person. Using it doesn't involve confrontation and the poisoner generally wants to avoid any reprisals or repercussions.

In D&D, poison usually appears in three different situations: 1) as part of a trap, 2) a monster ability that increases lethality, or 3) a way for a lower-level character to "hit above his weight class" (i.e., winning encounters that would normally kill them in a straight-up fight).

The third situation is usually what creates the most problems, which is why you see multiple structures put in place to restrict access to it. The first structure is usually alignment, by branding the use of poison as an "evil act". However, this is problematic... is killing a goblin by burning him to death any less "evil" than a poisoned dagger? If you can, avoid these arguments, as they tend to be a warren of contextual rabbit holes full of landmines. The second structure is DM Fiat. Most of the poison information appears in the DMG, and the DM is given specific instructions to restrict access to poison for most PCs. The third structure is GP cost... and this is the most problematic, as it's somewhat easy in D&D for a PC's wealth to become uncoupled from his level advancement.

The price lists for poisons makes this problem worse, as they are static and don't take into account any other factors. Is the poison available locally on the open market, or is it a black market item? What sort of laws exist around the manufacture/distribution/sale of poisons? Are there social structures that discourage or actively punish this sort of activity? Is the party flush with cash outside of their expected WBL? At lower levels, a 4500 GP price tag may feel like an insurmountable obstacle. At 15th level, that's almost pocket change for some PCs. Ideally, you want the cost of the poison to be high enough that the PC has to do some cost/benefit analysis and take on some measurable amount of risk when they decide to use poison. But since those price lists don't change as the PCs go up in level... the whole equation gets whacked. Even assuming that price is still a concern, there are loopholes... a Chaos Flask, for instance, can reduce the price of Black Lotus Extract down to 100 GP.

3rd Edition attempted to change the role of how poisons work in the game. In previous editions, it was more of a save-or-die effect, but this is problematic for game balance. 3E attempted to move poisons into something more like a condition with a duration and various methods to counteract it. It wasn't entirely successful, as the price list problem still exists. Essentially, the cost and availability of poisons doesn't scale up as the PCs gain levels. At 1st level, most of the effective poisons are out of the reach of PCs. That changes around 3rd/4th/5th level mostly because the PCs are now swimming in gold compared to a commoner or expert craftsman. This leaves "Don't be Evil" and "DM says NO" as the only constraints on the availability of poison.

[Pleh]

In the real world, poison is used almost always used by someone in a weaker social/political position. It's a tool used by someone who is oppressed or dominated by a much more powerful person. Using it doesn't involve confrontation and the poisoner generally wants to avoid any reprisals or repercussions.

Snip

The price lists for poisons makes this problem worse, as they are static and don't take into account any other factors. Is the poison available locally on the open market, or is it a black market item? What sort of laws exist around the manufacture/distribution/sale of poisons? Are there social structures that discourage or actively punish this sort of activity?

These problems further compound one another. Even if Name Brand Poison is illegal to purchase, what about common items that can serve the same function? I know the medieval setting doesn't exactly have dangerous cleaning chemicals our society has, but what is so illegal about buying or collecting some of those flowers that people know are toxic? What if I just like the way they smell or look?

Would a medieval society even have laws restricting access to particular products? How much of a problem to society does poison need to become before authorities take action?

And we have freakin' MAGIC that can just create poisonous materials. How does that affect the supply and demand on the black market?

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On a totally different note, I remember working some time back on homebrewing some poison rules so they would have different effects based on dosage. The danger of poisoning someone's food is being able to trick them into consuming a dangerous dose without realizing it, but it does require that you use a lethal dosage in the food (which also means you need to be careful with how detectable the poison is). Sure, you can lace a blade with poison, but it has to be a strong enough of a poison for a tiny amount hitting the bloodstream to affect the target. That is some pretty weaponized stuff if a mere cut can do more than cause skin irritation.

If we want to preserve verisimilitude, there should be an absolute lethal dosage for every consumable material in the game (but it also would have to be balanced against racial tolerances for particular materials) and then other effects and symptoms for varying dosages (again, modified by racial features). And we haven't even touched the fact that a world with magic monsters probably has some Supernatural poisons (I mean more so than what is already there, like a Poison of Nondetection or a Poison of Transmutation or straight up Necrotic Poisons).

But this could get to be nightmarishly difficult to track as a subsystem (and would invariably lead me to further fleshing out the alchemical substystem along with it), which is why I haven't been doing a lot of work on it recently.