Poisons & other goodies. 3.5

[Shadwen]

Thinking of incorporating poison weapons into my character concept. I need books and ideas of poisons that would enable a melee fighter to stop casters, hard hitting bosses..and that occasional beast of a fighter. I need stuff that would stop them from speaking, stop them from thinking, slow them, sleep them, eat them, kill them, enslave them, internal combustion.


Also i need a list of items and costs of healing stuff so i can survive longer, or things that would increase my maximum hp/ac for a while if not permanent.

[Milskidasith]

Poison's can't do any of that. Poison immunity is thrown around left and right and even when you don't have it the fortitude saves are easy to make and the damage is minimal.

[Shadwen]

So...the use of poisons is useless? What about disease? And what effect does poison have then?

[JeenLeen]

You would need to change the save DCs for them to be effective at a time they are affordable. Unfortunately, a lot of creatures gain immunity to poison. Immunity to disease and, to a lesser extend, magical disease is also common. There are very versatile poisons and diseases, though.

Some good books to look at in addition to the DMG are:
Complete Scroundel
Book of Vile Darkness

The latter has drugs, which both give benefits and detriments (including possible addiction). At least one of the two includes Blasphemix, which prevents divine spellcasting.
These should give you some good ideas for modifying poison in your campaign.

You could also add a feat to let someone bypass Poison Immunity with a DC penalty, like how some Alternative Class Features let a rogue sneak attack those immune to crits.

[Jergmo]

Step 1: Cast Fell Animate Plague on a group of commoners.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.

That is the only way to use disease.

[Milskidasith]

Disease and poisons do very minimal damage. You could coat your weapons with poison to add a bit of extra kick to your fighting, but at best you could do 3d6 str or 3d6 con damage before you just killed the creature by hitting it.

[Shadwen]

So Use drugs instead of poisons? since they have detriments? and if poisons are useless then why was the book plot and poison created?

[Bayar]

The Poison Handbook might be another source of inspiration. Although it has a lot of instances in which it encourage you to "milk" things for poisons, which after a while sounds weird.

[Milskidasith]

Because some people thought that they weren't, obviously. That doesn't change that they cost a ton (4500 for the 3d6 con one, per attack) and don't help kill your enemies much faster than just bashing them.

[JeenLeen]

So Use drugs instead of poisons? since they have detriments? and if poisons are useless then why was the book plot and poison created?

As is, all the above seem better as plot devices than actual in-combat tactics. Try to sneak it into someone's food who you plan to fight later that evening, or (if you DM) have their enemies interfere with their spellcasting or get them addicted to something unbeknowst to the players. In battle, it is a little extra damage or debuff, but usually inconsequential.

The exception being if it damages a stat that they have little of (usually Cha, or whatever a race or creature's dump stat is), dropping it to 0 and thus allowing you to coup de grace.

PS: I edited and added a little to my post above.

[Shadwen]

alright so not for players use....thank you all for your input

[lsfreak]

They're in there because WotC basically had no idea what they were doing when they wrote it. Compare the price of a no-DC 1d6+1-Str-penalty wand of ray of enfeeblement to the price of a single use of a high-DC Str poison. One costs 750gp for 50 uses. One costs that much for a single use (albeit damage, which is slightly more useful, but still offers a save).

If you really want poisons to be useful, you essentially have to rewrite them yourself, or find someone else who rewrote them.

[Akal Saris]

Unlike the wand, however, the poison can be applied to all five arrows that you shoot (5d6 strength damage) or the sword that you swing, doesn't require any spellcasting or UMD checks, and works in an antimagic zone. And 1 minute later, the opponent makes that save again. (But the poison also will cost more without minor creation tricks, has a laundry list of immune creatures, etc)

And you probably shouldn't use strength damage poisons unless your party has a grappler/tripper - con damage or status effects such as paralysis are more effective. If you deal 4 con damage to an opponent with 16 con and 100 "normal hit points" from 10HD, then that's effectively 20 points of damage added on.

Poisons are definitely usable by PCs, but it takes a little bit of thinking and creativity, and they are best as something dabbled in or used for big fights rather than as a heavy specialization. If you have access to poison materials and immunity or poison use, they can very effectively supplement a character. See the handbook for ideas :P

(And wow, 2 poison threads in 2 minutes!)

[Milskidasith]

Poison only works for one swing on a sword.

[Shadwen]

Now what about the other side of things? what else could i use being a fighter to make my opponent weaker using my sword and assistance? by myself?

[Milskidasith]

You could kill him.

[Shadwen]

that was great advice...what if he is cr +5 vs my level? how do i go about weakening him to make it easier? that was the question...now please no idiotic remarks.

[sonofzeal]

that was great advice...what if he is cr +5 vs my level? how do i go about weakening him to make it easier? that was the question...now please no idiotic remarks.

There's a lot of things in Tome of Battle that work like this. You can knock him off balance, do some stat damage, stun, chuck him around the room, etc. Tome of Battle should be your go-to source for doing cool things with swords.

Alternatively, just go Trip-Monkey. Get a reach weapon, Improved Trip, and the highest Trip modifier you can. Size increases are crucial here.

[Shadwen]

Thank you for that, tripping the enemy could work if i could manage a change to a reach weapon, and manage feats for trips.

[Akal Saris]

Poison only works for one swing on a sword.

Yeah, I know. The 5d6 was a reference to 5 arrows. If you want to use poison more than once i a round with a poisoned weapon, then with the Master Poisoner feat, you can poison the sword again as a swift action, or at low levels or with quickdraw you can just draw another poisoned sword, or you can get the +1 enhancement that makes poison last for 2 hits.

[Shadwen]

so in the end it would be better to stack crit or/and dmg?

[Akal Saris]

It's best to have a few options, Shadwen. If you have an attack against will saves (Intimidate or something similar), something against fort saves (poisons or whatever), something against touch AC (tripping), and something against AC (normal attacks), then your character is more likely to contribute something useful to every combat.

[ericgrau]

Nah, stick with poisons. They are in fact incredibly useful. A couple DMs ago our group learned a profound fear of drow knockout poison. The low DCs are offset by having multiple attacks (thus multiple save rolls) and the fact that the poison is free in terms of action economy: you still do full damage even if the target saves. At lower levels they are especially useful, since people's saves aren't so high. At high levels you can afford the nastier ones.

(retrieves average monster stats from notes) The average monster fortitude save is about 1 + CR. DCs for most reasonably priced poisons range from 11-18 and prices for the cheaper ones is 100-700 gp (plus 5-6 costing 1k-4.5k). You should be able to afford small amounts fairly early and large amounts around levels 8-9. Past level 15 monsters will be making most of their saves. So the sweet spot is maybe levels 7-14. Before that you want a backup plan since you can only afford to poison some targets, and past that you probably want to switch strats entirely.

[sonofzeal]

Drow Poison is awesome and cheap, but may be difficult to acquire. It's not like you can hunt down Drow and milk them for their poisons....

[ericgrau]

Nah, you buy them on the black market for their cheap listed price. Probably from drow. Really all poisons are illegal and thus tend to be difficult to acquire. Simply RP it out: prep bribes, try to remain anonymous, etc.

[Shadwen]

I like that idea of knock out poison...

[lsfreak]

I like that idea of knock out poison...

If you are going to use poison, be sure you don't really buy it. Buy a small amount, then minor/major creation all you'll need for the next day. The best way to make poison actually work is an archer (as always, zen archery cleric or swift hunter are probably the best options), and prepoison a few quiversfull of arrows. Low levels the best poisons are going to be the Dex-damaging ones (drop AC by a noticable amount) or Knockout; at high levels go Knockout poison or Con-damage. At high levels it's quantity over quality for the most part since the save DC's won't go above about 16 without getting costly to keep up every day. Just use Rapid Shot + haste to drop between 4 and 10 arrows on a target in a round, the standard archery stuff except you add on the possibility of instant-knockout or Con damage on each one.