Holy Water as a poison

[ImproperJustice]

Somewhat inspired by Castlevania on Netflix.

Say my aspiring vampire hunter wanted to soak his leather whip in Holy Water and had the Poison Kit proficiency, or dip his crossbow bolts in Holy Water, could you follow the rules for poison application and add a little extra oomph to your Undead slaying efforts?

[ProsecutorGodot]

The description of the item seems to imply that it takes a significant portion, if not all of the water to cause the damage to fiends or undead.

I'd probably allow it, perhaps for a lower amount of damage or a more potent recipe for the holy water to make it easier to apply onto weapons. One issue I see with keeping it as is would be that applying it to a weapon makes it significantly easier to actually strike the target with it.

For standard holy water applied to a weapon, 1d4 Radiant damage seems alright. You'll have to reapply it but a regular flask of holy water would have a handful of uses if used in this way.

[JackPhoenix]

I allow it to do 1 point of radiant damage, as a way to reliably finish zombies and stop vampires from regenerating.

[Garfunion]

I would allow it, holy water is pretty restricted already.

Side note:
I think Belmont is a dex base paladin and Sypha is a 4 elements monk with Keen Mind, Ritual Caster, and Magic Initiate feats.

[ImproperJustice]

I kinda pictured Belmont as a dual Ranger (Monster Slayer ) / Kensei Monk.
Revised of course.

Sypha is just so versatile, she’s hard to pin down.
But she is as physically adept as she is magical.
My wife went for an homage to her, and rolled her as a Lore Bard.

[LibraryOgre]

There was a article in Dragon back in the day that suggested doing something similar... though that was with a Dagger of Venom.. Dragon 215, "Putting Evil to Good Use"

[Chronos]

Even aside from the physiological effects, poisons designed for applying to a weapon are, well, designed for applying to a weapon. They need to be sticky, or to leave a residue once dried. Holy water is, well, water. Dip a sword in water, wave it around a bit, and you have a dry sword. If you're going to try this, I'd require you to do a bit of something alchemical to turn the holy water into a holy gel or the like.

[Eldariel]

Even aside from the physiological effects, poisons designed for applying to a weapon are, well, designed for applying to a weapon. They need to be sticky, or to leave a residue once dried. Holy water is, well, water. Dip a sword in water, wave it around a bit, and you have a dry sword. If you're going to try this, I'd require you to do a bit of something alchemical to turn the holy water into a holy gel or the like.

Now I'm just imagining somebody sporting an absolutely ridiculous, shiny-white hairdo in a "holy gel"-advertisement...

[JackPhoenix]

Even aside from the physiological effects, poisons designed for applying to a weapon are, well, designed for applying to a weapon. They need to be sticky, or to leave a residue once dried. Holy water is, well, water. Dip a sword in water, wave it around a bit, and you have a dry sword. If you're going to try this, I'd require you to do a bit of something alchemical to turn the holy water into a holy gel or the like.

Well, there's no reason why you couldn't bless, say, a flask of oil, to purge the heretics with holy promethium make really sure whatever gets hit is going to burn.

Edit: In one of the Discworld books, candles made with wicks soaked in holy water were used to produce smoke that weakened a vampire villain.

[Galaxander]

Well, there's no reason why you couldn't bless, say, a flask of oil,

Yeah, I was going to say. Consecrated oil is a very common thing in a lot of religious traditions.

[Chronos]

Sure, if holy oil is a thing in your world, and works like holy water, you could do that. It'd be a reasonable houserule. But it's not something that exists by default in the world.

[DrKerosene]

DnD 3.5e introduced things called Ravages and Afflictions.

They were basically just poisons and diseases by another name so that they affected otherwise normally immune creatures like undead and fiends. So that should be canon precedent to work with.

I wouldn’t mind making it a thing where you can find recipes as treasure, like blueprints for magic items, that allow you to basically use normal poisons (maybe at half efficiency) against undead or fiends. That is if a Player or Group really liked the idea and wanted to expand on it.



I allow it to do 1 point of radiant damage, as a way to reliably finish zombies and stop vampires from regenerating.
This would probably be my preferred simple solutions to this as a general request.

[LibraryOgre]

Now I'm just imagining somebody sporting an absolutely ridiculous, shiny-white hairdo in a "holy gel"-advertisement...

Y'all aren't thinking this through.

Use the Holy Water to make Jell-O. JELLO SHOTS FOR JUSTICE, EVIL DOERS!

[nickl_2000]

Y'all aren't thinking this through.

Use the Holy Water to make Jell-O. JELLO SHOTS FOR JUSTICE, EVIL DOERS!

I absolutely had a plan to do something like this to a Succubus once. But when we got back to the area she was in, she had run away :smallfurious:

[Zhorn]

Another vote behind holy oil for weapon applications.
For special cases where it could soak into the weapon (such as your whip example) I can see holy water working just fine, but for other weapons the water wouldn't exactly grip to the striking surface all the effectively for combat.

Agree with the general concept you've got going.

For the damage modification, against undead/fiends +1 radiant damage for, 1 minute duration from application until the dry off, and for that duration weapon hits count as magical (against undead/fiends only).

For a 1 minute duration, you could rack up a decent number of hits, so I'd avoid having a +dice modifier, leave the thrown holy water dealing 2d6 damage holding some appeal.

[ImproperJustice]

I think I would be cool with the radiant damage for Zombie slaying.

What about letting the weapon count as magical for a hit or a few.

Ie: the soaked whip.

[Nifft]

Hmm, let's put all these ideas together.

Holy water / oil + Jello + Blessed Molotovs => Sacred Napalm

"Think of this as a preview for the hellfire of your eternal damnation, evildoer."