Possible fix for the Blowgun

[Gadzooks]

So, I assume everyone know that the Blowgun is one of, if not the worst weapon in 5e. For a recap, it does 1 damage, has loading, and 25/100 range.

So, while I was looking through the Player's Handbook, I once again pondered the blowgun and how to fix it, and I thought about how in the movies, when someone uses a blowgun, the person who is shot acts like they don't notice.

So my idea is to have the target make maybe a perception check versus a 20ish - the damage taken DC or you still have surprise/hidden. Anyway, thoughts on this?

[MikeRoxTheBoat]

Personally, my fix would be to make it so that blowgun darts were easier to poison, with either sleeping agents or straight damage options. A normal poison vial can coat 1 melee weapon or 3 arrows/bolts, so make it so that it can coat, like, 10 darts, or 20. Make some creative poisons that do various effects and have them be expensive enough that they'd rather try to get the effect through a dart rather than blow the whole thing on a single stab or a couple of crossbow bolt shots. Give it advantage on sleight of hand to hide the weapon and you suddenly have the assassin's weapon of choice.

[Gadzooks]

Yeah, I could see that as a possibility. I usually don't use poison because anything that takes a decent save is exorbitantly expensive. I could see using the poison to coat a ton of darts working though.

[MikeRoxTheBoat]

It could make it quite dangerous. Purple Worm poison is pretty expensive (2000 gp), but it does 12d6 damage with a 19 Con save for half. 42-ish damage from a blowgun dart is pretty extreme. Without any changes to the blowgun, though, people are much more likely to just tack that damage onto a Sharpshooter Longbow shot or something.

Or, the easiest way to get players to play with a different weapon, give them a magical blowgun with some odd effects attached.

[Zhorn]

They way I've come to understand it is some weapons were not designed with intentional player use in combat in mind. Blowguns for example make far more sense for a DM to equip a swarm of creature with (lets say a Grung hunting party) for when you want to tip the action economy in favor of the monsters without overwhelming the players with damage.
Similarly, MikeRoxTheBoat makes a good point about them being used as a poison delivery method, when you want to inflict a creature with a toxin effect without driving an arrow through their chest.
But regarding Gadzooks original post, if one of my players was attempting to strike with a blowgun from stealth, provided they were in an environment that supplied sufficient cover and distractions, I'd allow them to maintain stealth on the attack, but the target knowing they were hit would probably search for where the hit came from on their following round. Probably ruled as a case by case situation.

[Sigreid]

The fix for the blowgun is to put it in the hands of a rogue as a small, extremely quiet weapon they can sneak attack or assassinate with. For added fun pick up the sharpshooter feat so you can add an additional 10 damage and be effective out to what's normally bow ranges.

[Theodoric]

Personally, my fix would be to make it so that blowgun darts were easier to poison, with either sleeping agents or straight damage options. A normal poison vial can coat 1 melee weapon or 3 arrows/bolts, so make it so that it can coat, like, 10 darts, or 20. Make some creative poisons that do various effects and have them be expensive enough that they'd rather try to get the effect through a dart rather than blow the whole thing on a single stab or a couple of crossbow bolt shots. Give it advantage on sleight of hand to hide the weapon and you suddenly have the assassin's weapon of choice.
Yeah, the blowgun to me always seemed to be mainly a poison dart delivery system, the poison rules just require a bit more flexibility.

One interesting option is to allow people to remain hidden whilst using it (within reason). Using it as a direct combat weapon just doesn't fit well, IMHO.

[Azgeroth]

easy.

make them a rare occurrence, used mainly by tribal factions as a method of delivering poison.

i.e.

every blowgun dart is already poisoned (made from, or tipped with some natural poison that degrades slowly.)

be it simply delivering the poisoned condition, or something akin to the pseudodragons knockout poison. a primary weapon of kidnappers and slavers.

make it very difficult to source the poisoned darts, unless your in chult, where there are a lot of tribal factions and those rare plants/trees are common, but the method of harvesting and preparing those darts is a closely kept secret of the more brutal (cannabalistic) tribes.

this gives the blowgun a very situational, but powerful usage.

to re-itterate, leave the damage well alone, do not add any damage modifiers, only condition affects, with a high DC. keep them rare so there is a very limited ammo supply, and suddenly your rogue will really really want one, and they will be situation-ally very effective.. especially for clandestine operations.

[Laserlight]

Agincourt, Bouvines, Mohi, Pavia...oddly, none of them won by corps of blowgunners. Perhaps there's a reason.
While it's true that the weapon chart is a hot mess, not every weapon needs to be competitive in all circumstances. I'd save a blowgun for times when I can't bring a longbow, but can get away with a hollow cane, or a flute, or a scroll case...And unless I was shooting at small birds, I would use poison as a matter of course.

[Tanarii]

The fix for the blowgun is to put it in the hands of a rogue as a small, extremely quiet weapon they can sneak attack or assassinate with. For added fun pick up the sharpshooter feat so you can add an additional 10 damage and be effective out to what's normally bow ranges.
Traditionally (at least D&D Oriental Adventures traditionally) built in to a modified ninja-to sheath.

But yeah, my fix for blowguns was to tell players they're only about 18" long, so (relatively) easily concealable. Ditto for Darts, they're either heavy shuriken or large darts, but not full on miniature war javelins / plumbata. Much more concealable than a Dagger.

[Unoriginal]

There is no "fix" needed for blowguns. Yes, they don't do a lot of damage, and aren't practical in a lot of situations.

So what? Some weapons aren't that good, and like it's been pointed out by others, it's easy to conceal a tube and to use poison on the dart. Or Sneak Attack.

[Vogie]

You can do a lot of things with it - It all depends for your setting and how you want your players to deal with it.

Give it an always-on sleep effect when used on unsuspecting target, similar to the 1 piercing damage dart from a Sprite's shortbow.
It hits with sneak attack damage on surprised creatures, based on level, regardless of class (thus Rogues get double sneak attack with it)
It's so simple that you can poison blowdarts without any ability checks
It doesn't reveal your position when used as a ranged attack.
They use Intelligence or Wisdom rather than dexterity to choose to hit/damage bonuses

[Chronos]

As written, there's no reason for anyone, PC or NPC, to ever use one for any reason. There are other weapons that are cheaper, easier to make, easier to use, do more damage, and have longer range. And if it's never going to be used by anyone, why is it even in the book?

[JackPhoenix]

As written, there's no reason for anyone, PC or NPC, to ever use one for any reason. There are other weapons that are cheaper, easier to make, easier to use, do more damage, and have longer range. And if it's never going to be used by anyone, why is it even in the book?

There are plenty of reasons, even if you're unable to see them. Blowgun is more concealable than most other ranged weapons, which isn't something that could be easily represented mechanically. And the low damage is beneficial if you have poisoned darts and want to capture your target alive. Commoners have 4 hp, blowgun is only ranged weapon that can't kill them in one shot. It is the cheapest weapon that uses ammunition... darts are cheaper as far as ranged weapons go, but they are thrown weapons, you can only poison one with one dose of poison, while you can get 3 blowgun needles from the same dose. And it's one-handed ranged weapon... thrown weapons have worse range, sling does bludgeoning damage, so it can't be used to deliver poison, and hand crossbow is much more expensive.

[Morty]

A weapon as niche as a blowgun seems like it should work as a part of an enemy stablock or the GM's ruling, if a PC wants to use it. After all, isn't the purpose of relying on GM rulings to avoid having to spell everything out in detail?

[Theodoxus]

I think it's a case where the base game mechanics of 5E aren't really great for how a blowgun operates in the real world.

5Es poison rules and saving throws (and their interaction) leave a lot to be desired. In fact, other than a single player who wanted to use poisons as a concept, no one I've played with or DM'd for has used poison.

Simplest fix would be to redo the poison system, such that each successive hit from the same poison type increased the DC to save against it. Might get lucky with a poison sleep dart... but like a rampaging elephant, hitting something with 10 of them will knock them out (and potentially kill them, but that's a granularity most people want to avoid). (Though a quick and dirty rule would be "if you fail the DC by 10 or more, you're dying" - or outright dead, if you want grimdark). Even a base DC 10 sleep, getting cranked up to DC 20 with 11 hits, becomes potentially deadly.

A much larger fix (and one I personally advocate) is going back to 4th Ed style defenses instead of saving throws. Have that blowgun target Fortitude (Strength or Constitution) defense. On a hit, the poison takes effect. A miss, nada. An unpoisoned dart would target AC otherwise. Let the victim make a saving throw (exactly like a death save, rolled 10 or better negates, 9 or worse, nada) to end the poison's effect at the end of each round.

The best of both worlds, and lets poisons work closely to their real world counterparts would be putting the two systems together. Each hit by a poison reduces the victims Fortitude defense against that poison by 1. Every 5 hits reduces their saving throw by 1. It gets harder and harder to shake off the effects of the poison as it builds up in your body.

It makes poisons nasty. And useful. Something sorely lacking in 5E that isn't hyper exotic and a pain to get... rattlesnakes and black widows aren't that uncommon and still cause fatalities... one shouldn't need to milk a purple worm for the same effect :smallwink:

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

That's needlessly complex, and you can get the same effect simply through adding "If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way" to your knock-out poison, like giant spiders have.

Thing is, with how the abstract combat in D&D works, those successful saves may mean the target was never actually hit or poisoned in the first place, or at worst, it was just the scratch and the dose wasn't strong enough to do anything.


It makes poisons nasty. And useful. Something sorely lacking in 5E that isn't hyper exotic and a pain to get... rattlesnakes and black widows aren't that uncommon and still cause fatalities... one shouldn't need to milk a purple worm for the same effect :smallwink:

Standard CR 1/8 poisonous snake has powerful enough venom to kill a commoner semi-reliably even on a successful save. Spiders are bit weaker, as befitting CR 0 "harmless" creature, but their bite is also potentially fatal to 90% of world populace.

[DrowPiratRobrts]

I think there are uses as others have said, but it takes investment by the player and allowing situations to arise where it might be used. I'd allow a player to dip darts into the poison as they use them then reseal the bottle (maybe not in the middle of combat unless they're hidden). Doing it this was I'd say they could probably poison at least 20 darts compared to the entire blade of a sword. So let's do a really quick build:

-Rogue Assassin "X"
-Human Variant with Sharpshooter
-Blowgun
-Poison, such as the purple worm poison above. Really any will do though.
-Shortbow and daggers for normal combat

Now you have a much more efficient way to use your poison from range, not to mention the concealability that so many have mentioned. You are a perfect street assassin once you get your paws on some good poison.

[Gilrad]

I really like the idea of making blowguns all about poison. I think this would be all that is necessary to make it useable:

-Shooting from stealth doesn't reveal your location

-stabbing a blowgun dart into the cork to the poison vial allows you to gain one dose at 1/20 (or 1/10) of the vial. You can do this as a part of your loading action.

Additionally, just because it makes sense to me, I would cause the sneak attack damage to be rolled as poison damage instead of piercing damage. It seems a little silly that a large needle can drop a large beast just because your rogue is level 16.

[Knaight]

There's always the option of just not having it be a very good weapon - as it historically wasn't under most circumstances. That said if you're going with the poison theme one option would be to have it just take less. One dose of poison is enough to poison two needles, as you don't have to worry about the target just bleeding it all out.

[Chronos]

Quoth JackPhoenix:

There are plenty of reasons, even if you're unable to see them. Blowgun is more concealable than most other ranged weapons, which isn't something that could be easily represented mechanically.
I'm trying to think of any ranged weapon that's less concealable than a blowgun. How would you conceal a five-foot tube with a mouthpiece? The best I can come up with is to disguise it as a quarterstaff. Now, a dagger, that's a concealable ranged weapon.

And so what if it's the cheapest weapon that lets you poison ammunition? Poison itself is expensive enough that, if you're using it, the cost of the weapon is irrelevant.

Certainly, it could be made viable (in at least some situations) via houserules. Historically, blowguns were only ever used with poison, so a houserule that makes it easier or more efficient to use poison with a blowgun would make sense. But under the default rules, no, it's just stupid.

[JackPhoenix]

There's always the option of just not having it be a very good weapon - as it historically wasn't under most circumstances. That said if you're going with the poison theme one option would be to have it just take less. One dose of poison is enough to poison two needles, as you don't have to worry about the target just bleeding it all out.

That sounds like a pretty bad deal. Why would you need more poison on blowgun needles than on every other piece of ammunition?

[Knaight]

That sounds like a pretty bad deal. Why would you need more poison on blowgun needles than on every other piece of ammunition?

The idea is it takes half as much for blowgun needles than on every other piece of ammunition. More ammunition per dose, not more doses per ammunition, and it takes less because you're applying more of it to the bloodstream, and less of it to the ground nearby.

[JackPhoenix]

The idea is it takes half as much for blowgun needles than on every other piece of ammunition. More ammunition per dose, not more doses per ammunition, and it takes less because you're applying more of it to the bloodstream, and less of it to the ground nearby.

Point is that one dose of poison can already be used on 3 pieces of ammo. You're suggesting it can be used on 2 blowgun needles.

[Knaight]

Point is that one dose of poison can already be used on 3 pieces of ammo. You're suggesting it can be used on 2 blowgun needles.

Swap the two out with a 6 then.

[Damon_Tor]

So, I assume everyone know that the Blowgun is one of, if not the worst weapon in 5e. For a recap, it does 1 damage, has loading, and 25/100 range.

So, while I was looking through the Player's Handbook, I once again pondered the blowgun and how to fix it, and I thought about how in the movies, when someone uses a blowgun, the person who is shot acts like they don't notice.

So my idea is to have the target make maybe a perception check versus a 20ish - the damage taken DC or you still have surprise/hidden. Anyway, thoughts on this?

First, tell your DM that you're fluffing your medicine proficiency as acupuncture. He'll probably thing that's a great touch and good role-play. Then use a blowgun to stabilize your teammates from 100 feet away.

[DrowPiratRobrts]

First, tell your DM that you're fluffing your medicine proficiency as acupuncture. He'll probably thing that's a great touch and good role-play. Then use a blowgun to stabilize your teammates from 100 feet away.

This is actually the correct answer to the thread.