Poison (3.5)

[Jallorn]

So I've got a player who's looking to use poisons, and I like my players to find their decisions to actually be worthwhile, so I'm working on a fix (probably with a much smaller list of generally more effective poisons).

So first thoughts: Short of immunity or an incredibly high fortitude save, you're not going to have no effect from poisons of sufficient quantity. So, my poisons will have two DCs. Beat one, and you suffer a lesser effect. Beat the second, and you take no damage. The second is going to be incredibly high though. I'm figuring between five and ten levels of scaled DC.

Real world poisons first save will be scaled against level five characters, since still being within the limits of the real world, they'll be fully susceptible to real world poisons. Second save, then, will vary depending on the poison, but will probably be scaled against level ten characters.

I'll also be looking to create some magical or otherwise super virulent poisons that are fully dangerous to even higher level characters, like the Hydra blood poison that took down Heracles/Hercules.

That said, only ingested or inhaled poisons will have the potential to drop someone with a single dose, at least until you get into the truly super poisons, and injury poisons will merely cause debilitating pain or the like.

Some first looks:

Clorich Extract: Extracted from the nectar and pollen of the Clorich plant's flowers, Clorich Extract is an effective poison that burns on contact with the blood.

Clorich Extract is an Injury poison with an initial Fortitude DC of 18, and a secondary DC of 22. If the target fails its save completely, they take 1d6 points of damage, 2d6 points of nonlethal damage, and is Sickened for two rounds. If they successfully save against the first DC, the target takes 1d6 damage and 1d6 nonlethal damage. If they succeed on both saves, they take no damage.

Two doses of Clorich Extract can be applied to a single weapon. If two doses are applied, there's a 50 percent chance of both doses being applied to the first target hit. If this happens, the DCs are increased by 2 and 4, respectively, and any damage, both lethal and nonlethal, is increased by 1d6.

[Byzantine]

I too enjoy making player decisions worthwhile. Normally, for poison, I say that a higher craft DC can raise the save DC, but a quick search around brought up this fix that someone made up. I'll be reading it at about the same time as you.

[Jallorn]

A viable way of dealing with it, but I'm thinking more along the lines of status effects at this point. For example, I'm considering an injury poison that causes great pain in the wound, staggering the target for a round and dealing a little more damage. I like the specific varieties of poison, rather than a generic damage sort of poison.

[Byzantine]

Indeed. If you do end up making your own system for it, I'd be happy to help you out with it. I would enjoy having a better system that's viable throughout the levels. Or at least not completely forgotten about by level 7 or so.

[Telok]

For some reason my players are completely unwilling to use poisons. Even the ones that they get as loot. So dc13 1d4 str poisons are weak, their current foes still top out at +5 Fort.

I have added some custom poisons to my game. While I considered changing the poison rules it eventually became just too much bookkeeping to be worth it.

Arsenic	                Ingested DC 13	1 Con	/1d8 Con	120 gp
ooze slime	        Injury DC 15	2d6 acid damage/1d6 acid damage	150 gp
homuculus spittle	Contact DC 13	slowed/sleep	300 gp
ghoul extract	        Inhaled DC 14	nausea/paralysis	750 gp
fire elemental essence	Contact DC 17	3d6 fire damage/3d6 fire damage	350 gp
salt mephit blood	Injury DC 16	pain (as nausea)/0	100 gp
vargouille poison	Injury DC 15	inability to heal/2d6 Con	1,500 gp
pixie wing powder	Inhaled DC 19	confusion/Dancing (1 in 10)	1,800 gp

The trick with these is that I let people cut the costs in half if they supply the raw ingredients and down to 1/4th if they bother to make the poisons themselves. So simply capturing an ooze or having a homuculus familiar makes mass poison crafting quite doable.

[Jallorn]

Alright, got my first poison up. I'm planning on doing Arsenic next. That one is going to be very dangerous.

Gonna figure out costs later. I've always been bad with costs, but I think I can look at it differently from the way I used to.