Can you milk poison or venom from creatures in this edition?

[ATHATH]

As the title.

This would work with familiars, right?

[Unoriginal]

As the title.

This would work with familiars, right?

For the title's question: yes, you can.

For the Familar: depends of your DM. Most would say yes, I would guess.

[Naanomi]

Familiars are spirits in the shape of animals, so I don’t think a GM would be incredibly off base to say it doesn’t work... but nothing explicitly prevents it

[Coffee_Dragon]

There are no rules that I know of, so like many other things, this comes down to group negotiation and DM adjudication.

In reality, harvesting poison is a full-time job that involves keeping hundreds or thousands of animals for the minimal amounts you get from each to add up to anything, modern refrigeration so it doesn't immediately spoil, and getting bitten on a regular basis. Scorpion serum is among the most expensive substances in the world, snake serum a few orders of magnitude cheaper but not inexpensive.

In a fantasy world, a lot of realities and practicalities can be ignored, handwaved or given a fantastic spin. Still, I'd say it's typically something people who are not adventurers do to make the prefab vials in the equipment list. I would never allow anyone to create a 100 gp vial of poison by telling their familiar to squirt, any more than I would allow them to make 25 gp acid vials by running around collecting spillage from Melf's Acid Arrow.

[Naanomi]

The rules are on page 258 of the DMG. Int(Nature) check on a creature that is dead or incapacitated for 1d6 rounds, fail by enough and you get poisoned.

[JakOfAllTirades]

As the title.

This would work with familiars, right?

For creatures in general, yes. I mean, those yummy poisons all gotta come from somewhere, right?

But no self-respecting wizard or warlock would mistreat their familiar that way, in my humble opinion. One who did would soon find themselves with a very hostile familiar, or without one altogether.

Just what you need, right? Your very own angry Imp... who hates you.

I could have sooooo much fun with that as an Evil DM, I'm getting excited!

[Unoriginal]

For creatures in general, yes. I mean, those yummy poisons all gotta come from somewhere, right?

But no self-respecting wizard or warlock would mistreat their familiar that way, in my humble opinion. One who did would soon find themselves with a very hostile familiar, or without one altogether.

Just what you need, right? Your very own angry Imp... who hates you.

I could have sooooo much fun with that as an Evil DM, I'm getting excited!

They're not animals or Imps. They're fey spirits who are utterly loyal to you even if you send them in the jaws of a troll.

[Coffee_Dragon]

The rules are on page 258 of the DMG. Int(Nature) check on a creature that is dead or incapacitated for 1d6 rounds, fail by enough and you get poisoned.

I take this to involve cutting out glands and such, so if you kill one of the monstrous beasts listed on that page, you can get a dose of the corresponding poison, e.g. giant snake -> serpent venom. It doesn't follow that if you kill a common viper you get a vial of generic poison.

[Unoriginal]

I take this to involve cutting out glands and such, so if you kill one of the monstrous beasts listed on that page, you can get a dose of the corresponding poison, e.g. giant snake -> serpent venom. It doesn't follow that if you kill a common viper you get a vial of generic poison.

You get the venom corresponding to the animal/monster, yes, but you don't have to cut glands, strictly speaking.

[Naanomi]

Nothing indicates it harms the creature you are gathering from... incapacitated is an option

[MaxWilson]

Nothing indicates it harms the creature you are gathering from... incapacitated is an option

Heh. So technically you could do this during combat on a creature incapacitated by e.g. Sleep or Eyebite, and then use the venom against the creature you extracted it, when it wakes up.

[A Fat Dragon]

I’d say gather an amount of Doses of Venom equal to half your intelligence modifier a Short Rest, but the animal must take a long rest before being able to have their venom harvested again (they can still use their venom though). If you kill a creature, you can spend an hour harvesting an amount of venom equal to 2 x your intelligence modifier, but somebody can only ever harvest from them once.

[Pex]

The DM of my paladin game lets us collect a vial, sometimes two, of poison from a poisonous monster we fought. We are allowed to use it to envenom a weapon for one round use, but generally its mainly used as a treasure source - to sell it for the gold pieces and sometimes as barter. My paladin isn't fond of the idea, but I let it go to acquiesce to the party's indulgence. I get my fair share of the party acquiescing to my indulgences. I never play a paladin who needs a rectal operation.

[Coffee_Dragon]

You get the venom corresponding to the animal/monster, yes, but you don't have to cut glands, strictly speaking.

In any case, it is not defined how effective a normal snake's poison is outside of its body, right? That is to say, there is no line drawn between the poisonous snake entry and the generic poison entry in the equipment list.


Nothing indicates it harms the creature you are gathering from... incapacitated is an option

Though there is also nothing indicating you can't just go again after 1d6 minutes, whether you succeed or fail. It would kinda wreck the downtime crafting option if you can just tie one big snake down and go to town.

[JakOfAllTirades]

They're not animals or Imps. They're fey spirits who are utterly loyal to you even if you send them in the jaws of a troll.

The Find Familiar spell says that your familiar "always obeys your commands" but it doesn't say anything about "utter loyalty." They might obey an abusive command, but that doesn't mean they'll like it.

[ImproperJustice]

Our GM allows those who are proficient in Poisoner’s Kits to make a check when dealing with a fallen enemy to harvest a dose (sometimes more if the enemy is exceptionally large).

Secondly, out Beastmaster (who is also proficient with a Poisoner’s Kit), can harvest a dose per long rest from his Giant Snake.
Also, my Alchemist can do the same from his Spider Bot, since it’s poison resoivoir works off the principles of a decanter of endless water.

So far it hasn’t broken anything or unbalanced the game. We also have a gentleman’s agreement to not overstock (GM limits us to 6 potions or vials we can actively carry at a time) or sell for profit the posion.

[kardar233]

Our GM allows those who are proficient in Poisoner’s Kits to make a check when dealing with a fallen enemy to harvest a dose (sometimes more if the enemy is exceptionally large).

Secondly, out Beastmaster (who is also proficient with a Poisoner’s Kit), can harvest a dose per long rest from his Giant Snake.
Also, my Alchemist can do the same from his Spider Bot, since it’s poison resoivoir works off the principles of a decanter of endless water.

So far it hasn’t broken anything or unbalanced the game. We also have a gentleman’s agreement to not overstock (GM limits us to 6 potions or vials we can actively carry at a time) or sell for profit the posion.

That hasn’t caused any issues? Giant Poisonous Snake venom is pretty powerful; even if they save every time that’s still 5 extra damage per hit, more or less free. My DM didn’t allow our party to do the same, using my Moon Druid’s snake and eventual scorpion forms.

[ImproperJustice]

That hasn’t caused any issues? Giant Poisonous Snake venom is pretty powerful; even if they save every time that’s still 5 extra damage per hit, more or less free. My DM didn’t allow our party to do the same, using my Moon Druid’s snake and eventual scorpion forms.

No.
As a frame of reference, we just fought a Giant Legendary Crab that inflicted 30+ points of damage per attack, attacks twice and has Legendary actions. I think it had 250-280 hit points. I think it had a magic ring of some kind too. Our Beastmaster doing 5 extra points of posion damage once per round with his single arrow shots didn’t really break the encounter at all :)

As a side note, I kept expecting it to break into a rendition of “Shiny” from Moana. But the GM didn’t oblige. On the plus side, we found Wave, and my Eldritch Knight is slowly turning into Aqua Man in full plate.

[Pex]

No.
As a frame of reference, we just fought a Giant Legendary Crab that inflicted 30+ points of damage per attack, attacks twice and has Legendary actions. I think it had 250-280 hit points. I think it had a magic ring of some kind too. Our Beastmaster doing 5 extra points of posion damage once per round with his single arrow shots didn’t really break the encounter at all :)

As a side note, I kept expecting it to break into a rendition of “Shiny” from Moana. But the GM didn’t oblige. On the plus side, we found Wave, and my Eldritch Knight is slowly turning into Aqua Man in full plate.

White Plume Mountain adventure from Yawning Portal? My group didn't have to fight it. It failed a saving throw against Phantasmal Force. It continually perceived its immediate surroundings as it always had, empty of anyone else while guarding the chest. Meanwhile, two party members looted the chest of everything and then we scrammed.

[BBQ Pork]

Do you have the appropriate stool and bucket for said creature? Not just any will do.

[ImproperJustice]

White Plume Mountain adventure from Yawning Portal? My group didn't have to fight it. It failed a saving throw against Phantasmal Force. It continually perceived its immediate surroundings as it always had, empty of anyone else while guarding the chest. Meanwhile, two party members looted the chest of everything and then we scrammed.

Yes!!!
We have been doing White Plume Mountain!

Your way sounds very clever and cool (if slightly boring j/k :)

Have you found Blackrazor yet?
We chucked it in a boiling mud pit. Creeps us out.

[Pex]

Yes!!!
We have been doing White Plume Mountain!

Your way sounds very clever and cool (if slightly boring j/k :)

Have you found Blackrazor yet?
We chucked it in a boiling mud pit. Creeps us out.

We already finished it, and we got to keep The Riddle Answer. We handed over all three weapons to our Sponsors. They financed our Fort we were building on land we acquired from a previous adventure.

[Zalabim]

As the title.

This would work with familiars, right?
The rules have been given, but since they require the creature to be dead or incapacitated, it is technically very difficult to perform on familiars, which poof at 0 HP. It's often suggested that a willing creature can waive the need to be incapacitated. If you're interested in poison in D&D, you also need to read the DMG's errata for an update to their poison rules.

That hasn’t caused any issues? Giant Poisonous Snake venom is pretty powerful; even if they save every time that’s still 5 extra damage per hit, more or less free. My DM didn’t allow our party to do the same, using my Moon Druid’s snake and eventual scorpion forms.

More than 5 because a beast master's companion's damage rolls are boosted by the ranger's proficiency bonus. Anyhow, it is oddly not a problem, both because many things are immune to poison of course, but I was also convinced to do a comparison between PHB BM and Re.Ranger Beast Conclave and even with allowing the PHB BM to poison every arrow with a giant snake companion, the beast conclave has a much stronger early game damage potential due to a better action economy. It was only at very high levels, where the beast conclave has maxed its damage progression to some degree, that the BM did more potential damage, and that's heavily offset by the beast conclave's companion having like double the HP and way better saving throws, plus a cool area attack that's not useful for single-target comparisons. Granted this may just mean the Beast Conclave is way overpowered, but it's always interesting to me that people favored the Hunter subclass when the Beast Master had such sleeper hits.

It is quite possible for a ranger to survive collecting plenty of poison doses in downtime as they get better proficiency and HP, for way more poison than a DM would probably logically (or reasonably) allow you to harvest from any one creature. If you have a companion with a poison attack, it's something worth working out with your DM. Or as I put it in my conclusion, it's worthwhile for a ranger to abuse their snake for as much venom as they can get out of it every day. Not a euphemism.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Your way sounds very clever and cool (if slightly boring j/k :)

Most people probably wouldn't try it on account of what Phantasmal Force actually does.


The rules have been given

... for carrion crawlers, giant snakes, wyverns and purple worms, but not ungiant snakes (familiar or otherwise), as far as I'm aware.

[Theodoxus]

My party milks my druid in giant spider form... they wanted me to bite/poison goblin corpses to feed goblin wolves, but the DM ruled it required a living target to poison, not just corpses...

[Zalabim]

Late reply since I thought this was all covered


The rules have been given... for carrion crawlers, giant snakes, wyverns and purple worms, but not ungiant snakes (familiar or otherwise), as far as I'm aware.
The rules are on page 258 of the DMG. Int(Nature) check on a creature that is dead or incapacitated for 1d6 rounds minutes, fail by enough and you get poisoned.
Specifically, it says "A character can instead attempt to harvest poison from a poisonous creature, such as a snake, wyvern, or carrion crawler. The creature must be incapacitated or dead, and the harvesting requires 1d6 minutes followed by a DC 20 Intelligence (Nature) check. (Proficiency with the poisoner's kit applies to this check if the character doesn't have proficiency in Nature.) On a successful check, the character harvests enough poison for a single dose. On a failed check, the character is unable to extract any poison. If the character fails the check by 5 or more, the character is subjected to the creature's poison."

That would seem to cover ungiant snakes just as well. It doesn't say if this is a once-per-creature, once-per-opportunity, or once-per-whatever kind of check. There's no talk about creatures running out of venom, though one or more minutes of work suggests you're collecting more than "one bite or sting" worth of venom to get a dose. It's practical to set some limit on the number of attempts or collected doses here, besides sheer time and risk of exposure.

[JackPhoenix]

My party milks my druid in giant spider form... they wanted me to bite/poison goblin corpses to feed goblin wolves, but the DM ruled it required a living target to poison, not just corpses...

It wouldn't work, but for a different reason: spider venom wouldn't poison the wolves if they ingest it, unless they had open wounds in their mouths. Spider venom is protein based, it would be destroyed by stomach juices, it must be injected straight to bloodstream to have effect. Same with snake venom.


On a failed check, the character is unable to extract any poison.

That sounds pretty straightforward. If you fail, you won't be able to get any poison from this creature. No retries.

[Beleriphon]

My party milks my druid in giant spider form... they wanted me to bite/poison goblin corpses to feed goblin wolves, but the DM ruled it required a living target to poison, not just corpses...

That seems fair since spider bites are venom not poison. Venom generally requires a living system to do anything to since its meant to kill or incapacitate a target which is pointless if the food is already dead.

[KorvinStarmast]

The rules are on page 258 of the DMG. Int(Nature) check on a creature that is dead or incapacitated for 1d6 rounds, fail by enough and you get poisoned. Sleep = incapacitated. Milk them while they are asleep. :smallsmile:

@Coffee Dragon

Serpent venom / Injury / 200 / gp
Serpent Venom (Injury). This poison must be harvested from a dead or incapacitated giant poisonous snake. A creature subjected to this poison must succeed on a DC 11 Constitution saving throw, taking 10 (3d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. Lesser beasts' poison falls in the realm of DM adjudication. 5e: rulings over rules.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Lesser beasts' poison falls in the realm of DM adjudication. 5e: rulings over rules.

Actually I looked up all the MM entries for the monsters listed in the DMG and their poisons all had the exact same effect live or harvested, so that could easily be extrapolated to a general rule. In which case a normal poisonous snake would be DC10/2d4, as compared to the generic poison DC10/1d4, if and when your DM lets you have a dose.

(I still personally have a bit of a problem handwaving the practicalities of cutting up/milking giant and ungiant snakes in the same way - I beat up two snakes in an encounter, one is a thousand times the size of the other, they each yield one dose of poison to coat my big sword? And that spider dropped two gold coins?)

(Also if we're talking game balance, Find Familiar is a prime pick already - it doesn't really need a side of item crafting tacked onto it.)

[Asmotherion]

Interesting Question:

In a broad sence, yes you can. It's D&D, so you should be permited any out of the box thinking.

That said, your DM may not want this to happen, and give you a reason why; the poison sack may be empty, or you may lack the time to give that effort.

On fammiliars, they may give a very small dose of poison due to their size, and need an extensive amount of time to give enough dose to cover a weapon; Or the poison they produce may evaporate quickly when not in a liquid, and need to dilate in some form of concoction in order to be maintained, which makes it less potent for example (less damaging).

Basically, it's DM's Domain, thus your DM will tell you how exactly it will work.

[Kaliayev]

Is poison even worth it for most PCs? It takes an action to apply the poison to your slashing or piercing weapon or three pieces of ammo, and the poison dries out in a minute. Of course, NPCs seem to ignore the above limits, as drow fighters seem to have an endless application of poison, without sacrificing any actions for coating. Meanwhile, it's one of the most commonly resisted/immunized damage types/conditions. If your character is a rogue or other stealth-based build, you probably have plenty of time to tack this extra damage on while hidden. For everyone else, there are probably better things to do with your actions.

p.s. Imo, harvesting plant-based or a creature's external poisons should be a nature check, while harvesting poison from a creature's internal organs should be a medicine check. The latter should result in a greater number of doses per harvesting.

[ImproperJustice]

Is poison even worth it for most PCs? It takes an action to apply the poison to your slashing or piercing weapon or three pieces of ammo, and the poison dries out in a minute. Of course, NPCs seem to ignore the above limits, as drow fighters seem to have an endless application of poison, without sacrificing any actions for coating. Meanwhile, it's one of the most commonly resisted/immunized damage types/conditions. If your character is a rogue or other stealth-based build, you probably have plenty of time to tack this extra damage on while hidden. For everyone else, there are probably better things to do with your actions.

p.s. Imo, harvesting plant-based or a creature's external poisons should be a nature check, while harvesting poison from a creature's internal organs should be a medicine check. The latter should result in a greater number of doses per harvesting.

Poisoning three arrows or bolts can be done prior to a major fight, and the damage increase can be pretty noteworthy.
My Alchemist used Theives Tools to extract a poison from a trap that had the effect, save or sleep for a 1000 years......

[Kaliayev]

Poisoning three arrows or bolts can be done prior to a major fight, and the damage increase can be pretty noteworthy.
My Alchemist used Theives Tools to extract a poison from a trap that had the effect, save or sleep for a 1000 years......

Does the victim age during those 1000 years? If you're immortal, it could be fun to Rip Van Winkle your nemesis.

That being said, the RAW created a significant imbalance between PCs and NPCs, as far as poisons go. Wanting to limit power creep among players with poison, the creators imposed the one action application and one minute time limits on PC poisons. AFAIK, that limit wasn't then imposed on NPCs.

[ImproperJustice]

Does the victim age during those 1000 years? If you're immortal, it could be fun to Rip Van Winkle your nemesis.

That being said, the RAW created a significant imbalance between PCs and NPCs, as far as poisons go. Wanting to limit power creep among players with poison, the creators imposed the one action application and one minute time limits on PC poisons. AFAIK, that limit wasn't then imposed on NPCs.

To answer your question:
No, you don’t age.

We actually met a pair of monks in the same temple who had induced one of these slumbers in the hopes of waking up to a golden age for their faith.
It tool some impressive mental shenanigans, the keen mind feet, and some history/religion checks to determine we had woken them at year 638.
What followed was a very difficult combat and then social encounter.
We then had to make a fairly high proficiency check to put them back to sleep for the appropriate amount of time.

At the end of it all, we had one weaponized use of the poison powder and enough leftover for a single non combat application.

[Zalabim]

That being said, the RAW created a significant imbalance between PCs and NPCs, as far as poisons go. Wanting to limit power creep among players with poison, the creators imposed the one action application and one minute time limits on PC poisons. AFAIK, that limit wasn't then imposed on NPCs.
At the risk of repeating myself, actually, I might as well make it literal instead:

If you're interested in poison in D&D, you also need to read the DMG's errata for an update to their poison rules.
If you have enough poison, you can poison all your weapons. This is certainly easier to accomplish and handle with ammunition than it is with other weapons though.

[Kaliayev]

At the risk of repeating myself, actually, I might as well make it literal instead:

If you have enough poison, you can poison all your weapons. This is certainly easier to accomplish and handle with ammunition than it is with other weapons though.

Ah, I must have missed that. Thanks for the info, as it certainly helps explain the drows' infinite reserve of poison on the crossbow, though not so much with the drow elite warrior's infinite poison in his shortsword. I'll have to pay it forward on the ammo tip whenever I'm sitting with a ranger or rogue.

[poolio]

I plan on running a game with a more "day-to-day" feel and i plan to allow much more uses of alchemy, but in order to circumvent the stockpil problems I'm giving potions and poisons a shelf life, as well as requiring a proper area and equipment to make these things, i feel like that would help keep the balance, even with the familiar milking,