Venom Feats

[Stycotl]

Venom feats are meant to be a way for creatures to specialize in the use of their poisons.

Abhorrent Venom (Venom)(Evil)(Vile)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 19 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +10, Potent Venom and Enervating Venom feats
Effects: Your venom infects the victim with the most corrupt, dark recesses of your soul, doing 2 vile damage on initial, and 2 vile damage on secondary damage.

Blinding Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom sears the eyes of your victim (whether it was applied directly to the eyes or not) for one round per point of Constitution modifier. If you already possess a blinding component to your poison, the duration is doubled, unless the duration is permanent, in which case, the save DC is increased +2.

Caustic Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom eats away at the flesh and blood of its victims, dealing an amount of acid damage on the round of the initial and secondary poison effects, equal to your Constitution modifier.

Debilitating Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom and Taxing Venom feats
Effects: Your venom does more than just wear a foe down. It completely drains it of the energy to fight or flee, exhausting the victim until it receives magical healing, a Heal check with DC equal to the poison DC, or rest for at least one hour per point of your Constitution modifer, and dealing a number of nonlethal damage equal to double your Constitution modifier on the initial damage, and on the secondary damage.

Disorienting Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom destroys the spatial sense of its victim, checking its movement, and causing it to become flat-footed for one round per point of Constitution modifier. If you already possess a disorienting component to your poison, the duration is doubled. Creatures with Blindsight, Tremorsense, or no aural senses are immune to this effect.

Draining Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 19 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +10, Potent Venom and Enervating Venom feats
Effects: Your venom steals the very life force of your victims, dealing two negative levels. The DC to remove the negative levels is the same as the DC to resist the venom.

Enervating Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom carries a strong essence of necromancy, dealing an amount of negative energy damage on the round of the initial and secondary poison effects, equal to your Constitution modifier.

Incapacitating Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom is much stronger than normal, doing +1 to each kind of damage listed under its initial and secondary effects.
Special: This feat may be taken multiple times; its effects stack. Each time the feat is acquired, there is a +1 Base Fortitude prerequisite.

Infectious Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom carries with it bloodcurdling disease and filth. If the victim fails its secondary saving throw, it contracts any one of three diseases (chosen upon taking the feat) and takes the prescribed damage after the incubation period. Further saves to resist damage are made at the DC of the poison, not at the DC listed for the specific disease in the SRD. The diseases that can be chosen are blinding sickness, filth fever, or red ache.

Lingering Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 7 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +4, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom has a bonding quality that allows it to linger in the blood of its victims for a longer period of time. It deals its secondary damage one extra time per point of Constitution modifier, one minute apart each time.

Malicious Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 19 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +10, Potent Venom and Tenacious Venom feats
Effects: Your venom is so potent it systematically annihilates any further resistance to its effects. As an additional initial and secondary effect, the victim takes a cumulative -1 penalty to all Fortitude saves to resist poison until it receives magical healing, a Heal check with DC equal to the poison DC, or rest for at least one hour per point of your Constitution modifier. This penalty is cumulative with multiple poisonings, and with the multiple secondary effects offered with the Lingering Venom feat.

Mordant Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 19 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +10, Potent Venom and Tenacious Venom feats
Effects: Your venom weakens even those who have are normally unaffected by such attacks. Even creatures with immunity to poison, who are living beings, are affected by your venom, taking half damage, to a minimum of one for each type listed. A successful Fortitude save negates all damage however.

Paralytic Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom sends the victim into a paralyzed stupor for one round per point of Constitution modifier. If you already possess a paralytic component to your poison, the duration is doubled, unless the duration is permanent, in which case, the save DC is increased +2.

Potent Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 5 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +2
Effects: Your venom, whether alchemically extracted and brewed, or produced by your own body, is hazardously concentrated, giving it an extra +2 DC to resist its effects.
Special: This feat may be taken multiple times; its effects stack. Each time the feat is acquired, there is a +1 Base Fortitude prerequisite.
Note: Base Fortitude requirement, and effects based off of your Constitution modifier in Venom feats apply to naturally venomous creatures only. If you are a nonvenomous creature, with the Use Poison class feature and alchemical or magical poisons, use Base Will save, and Intelligence modifier respectively.

Taxing Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 7 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +4, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom overloads the endurance of its victims, fatiguing the victim until it receives magical healing, a Heal check with DC equal to the poison DC, or rest for at least one hour per point of your Constitution modifier.

Tenacious Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom and Lingering Venom feats
Effects: Your venom insidiously courses through a victim’s body, ruining even those of the halest heart. Your venom becomes a Fortitude save partial effect, dealing half damage, to a minimum of one for each type listed, even on a successful Fortitude save.
Normal: Poison is a Fortitude negate effect and does not deal any damage on a successful save.
Note: Feats such as Mettle can now influence the effect that this venom has on a victim.

Unnerving Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 15 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +8, Potent Venom feat
Effects: Your venom sends the victim into a fit of pain and fear-filled distraction as it burns through its blood, causing it to be shaken for one round per point of Constitution modifier. If you already possess a fear component to your poison, the duration is doubled.

[phoenixineohp]

Now this is an interesting idea... I know I had already modified the venom that a character's snake familiar uses, but I don't know why I hadn't thought of this. Very interesting. :smallsmile:

[Stycotl]

thanks. it has bugged me that venom is such an underplayed part of my campaigns. i don't know if anyone else has this problem. especially when poison is such a cool tool. so, one day i thought, hey, why not metavenom? the idea held, though the name 'metavenom' or metapoison' struck me as simply crass.

[Stycotl]

ok, playtested a little.

added two more, abhorrent venom, and infectious venom, both with quasi-real plans to expansion, and changed some of the wording on debilitating venom (had forgotten to specify that nonlethal damage is done with every failed secondary save).

vile damage was kept small for two reasons a) hard to cure, and b) cuz some of the other feats here make it possible to do secondary damage multiple times.

whaddya think?

[Caracol]

Amazing. My assassin will be now completed.

[KazilDarkeye]

About a thousand homebrewed "super" Yuan-Ti in my campaign will thank you for this. My players probably won't (they're fighting the Yaun-Ti)

[smart thog]

your an evil, evil, person. Any and all holy beings will come down and smite you into oblivion.

I love you. In a strictly heterosexual buddies kind of way, not that theres anything wrong with the alternative.

One thing though, abhorrent vemon needs the Vile tag, or at least an evil alignment.

Can we expect a prestige (or base) class to go with this?

[Stycotl]

your an evil, evil, person. Any and all holy beings will come down and smite you into oblivion.

I love you. In a strictly heterosexual buddies kind of way, not that theres anything wrong with the alternative.

One thing though, abhorrent vemon needs the Vile tag, or at least an evil alignment.

Can we expect a prestige (or base) class to go with this?

good point on the vile thing. prc? um, we'll have to see. inspiration is driving me in multiple different directions currently (and unfortunately, little of it towards work or school).

what would you guys suggest (evil) or (vile) subtype-wise? i used the two negative-energy venom feats, one as prereq, and one as level-equivalent sibling, for this one. but neither of the other two are evil. so it doesn't sem to fit to make it evil. can you have vile without evil? i actually don't own the book, just remember that vile damage was pretty cool.

also, is there a celestial equivalent to vile damage? i don't recall there being one. if not, i'm going to make it now for these feats. suggestions on a name would be cool if it does not already exist.

[jagadaishio]

I believe that the celestial parallel to vile damage is sacred damage.

[Stycotl]

makes sense. i just don't remember seeing it in the book...

[smart thog]

what would you guys suggest (evil) or (vile) subtype-wise? i used the two negative-energy venom feats, one as prereq, and one as level-equivalent sibling, for this one. but neither of the other two are evil. so it doesn't sem to fit to make it evil. can you have vile without evil? i actually don't own the book, just remember that vile damage was pretty cool.

also, is there a celestial equivalent to vile damage? i don't recall there being one. if not, i'm going to make it now for these feats. suggestions on a name would be cool if it does not already exist.

Vile is a corruption of the soul. It is more than just pain, it is inviting evil into your soul, which cannot be removed short of holy power. And their is no good equivalent to vile damage, good just heals.

[Stycotl]

so you're saying that 'evil' would pretty much have to be a subtype in order to do vile damage? i'm ok with that, it just doesn't seem to fit crunch-wise with the rest of it. however, as i ponder it, i really don't see that it makes sense to not have it be evil...

[LunarWolfPrime]

One question, when you say "per point of Constitution modifier." are you referring to the victims or your own?

Yes I know this seems like a dumb question but I like to make sure the feat was worded right before I use it.

[Stycotl]

per yours. don't worry. i ask questions that i think are dumb all of the time...

[LunarWolfPrime]

per yours. don't worry. i ask questions that i think are dumb all of the time...

That is even for the ones you craft yourself?
If so ok.
An thanks for clearing that up.

[Set]

Insidious Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 6 ranks, or naturally venomous, Base Fortitude Save +2
Effects: Your venom has no immediate effect, but requires the usual saving throw (and has the usual effect) 1 minute after exposure. 10 minutes after exposure, a secondary effect occurs. 1 hour after exposure, the venom triggers a third time. 8 hours after exposure, the venom triggers a fourth time. 24 hours after exposure, the venom triggers a fifth and final time, having run it's course. Two successful saves (which need not be consecutive) will end the effect and allow the victim to avoid any further harm.

Enduring Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 9 ranks, or naturally venomous, Base Fortitude Save +4, Insidious Venom
Effects: Your Insidious Venom continues to trigger every 24 hours after the initial exposure until cured or the victim dies. Successful saving throws only prevent the harm of that particular iteration of damage, and the poison does not naturally fade from the victim's system.

Resistant Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (alchemy) 12 ranks, or naturally venomous and natural spell resistance 10+.
Effects: Your venom has Spell Resistance to resist attempts at curing via Neutralize Poison or Heal (or hindering via Delay Poison), and can make an opposed check to affect a target that is protected by Heroe's Feast, or a similar magical poison-preventive magic. The caster level check / spell resistance is equal to the check result -3 of the Alchemy roll made to craft the venom, or the natural Spell Resistance of the venomous creature.

[DracoDei]

I will have to look at these, especially that last one, for inspiration for when I do my Skulking Bladders. They are undead bladders with kidneys for feet that... don't laugh, they can lay low an entire castle if they get to the cistern.

[Stycotl]

i missed a few of your posts. sorry.


That is even for the ones you craft yourself?
If so ok.
An thanks for clearing that up.


Potent Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 5 ranks, or natural venomous and Great Fortitude feat, Base Fortitude Save +2
Effects: Your venom, whether alchemically extracted and brewed, or produced by your own body, is hazardously concentrated, giving it an extra +2 DC to resist its effects.
Special: This feat may be taken multiple times; its effects stack. Each time the feat is acquired, there is a +1 Base Fortitude prerequisite.
Note: Base Fortitude requirement, and effects based off of your Constitution modifier in Venom feats apply to naturally venomous creatures only. If you are a nonvenomous creature, with the Use Poison class feature and alchemical or magical poisons, use Base Will save, and Intelligence modifier respectively.

use int for naturally nonvenomous creatures.


Insidious Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 6 ranks, or naturally venomous, Base Fortitude Save +2
Effects: Your venom has no immediate effect, but requires the usual saving throw (and has the usual effect) 1 minute after exposure. 10 minutes after exposure, a secondary effect occurs. 1 hour after exposure, the venom triggers a third time. 8 hours after exposure, the venom triggers a fourth time. 24 hours after exposure, the venom triggers a fifth and final time, having run it's course. Two successful saves (which need not be consecutive) will end the effect and allow the victim to avoid any further harm.

Enduring Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (Alchemy) 9 ranks, or naturally venomous, Base Fortitude Save +4, Insidious Venom
Effects: Your Insidious Venom continues to trigger every 24 hours after the initial exposure until cured or the victim dies. Successful saving throws only prevent the harm of that particular iteration of damage, and the poison does not naturally fade from the victim's system.

Resistant Venom (Venom)
Prerequisites: Poison Use class feature and Craft (alchemy) 12 ranks, or naturally venomous and natural spell resistance 10+.
Effects: Your venom has Spell Resistance to resist attempts at curing via Neutralize Poison or Heal (or hindering via Delay Poison), and can make an opposed check to affect a target that is protected by Heroe's Feast, or a similar magical poison-preventive magic. The caster level check / spell resistance is equal to the check result -3 of the Alchemy roll made to craft the venom, or the natural Spell Resistance of the venomous creature.

cool feats. i especially like the second two. the last one seems a bit clunky though; i'd just say that any time someone tries to neutralize or otherwise magically cure your poison, they have to make a caster level check against your hit dice+con or int mod or something.

i will incorporate some of these. thanks.


I will have to look at these, especially that last one, for inspiration for when I do my Skulking Bladders. They are undead bladders with kidneys for feet that... don't laugh, they can lay low an entire castle if they get to the cistern.

that would be interesting to see. you seem to like body-part monsters.

either way, i have attached a couple of feats to these guys and have suddenly found poison to be something to fear in d&d again.