Why POISON is Useless in D&D 5e
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- The D&D 5e poison rules, poison damage resistance and immunity, and the poison condition could all use a few homebrew tweaks. Here are my best ideas for D&D poison house rules! ⏬ More below! ⏬
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00:00 dnd 5e poison has problems!
01:00 Grace World Destroyer loves poison
01:50 solving poison damage resistance and immunity
04:21 poisoned condition house rule
05:08 dnd poison is too expensive!
06:23 homebrew crafting poison in dnd 5e
07:45 house rules for poison in combat
08:42 best weapon to use with poison!
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons 
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The funny part about poison immunity is that in the real world there is basically no creature immune to more than a couple dozen natural poisons, there are so many different venoms/poisons no creature is immune to them all
This is an excellent point!!
@@BobWorldBuilder to me, it makes some sense for reptilians to resist snake-derived poisons but not say sulfur
In fairness, in the real world there is basically no creature that is undead, an ooze, an elemental, or a construct.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos and of course poisons would exist in such a world that are effective against those creatures
A slime should be weak to baking powder if nothing else
Constructs ought to be weak to corrosives
Poison is broad
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos Well, there are plenty of constructs, but yes. Fiends also commonly have poison resistance or immunity.
Poison: It's neat when player's remember it exists. I remember one of the greatest back and forths I had was filling the cave of a quest-giver with poisonous shrooms just for bio-luminescent flair, and one of the characters sneakily stole a few to coat their armaments to fight the boss they had been tasked by the quest-giver to fight. (DMs love when you use the environment to your advantage like that.)
Yeah haha, it's great that they put it to good use!
"I spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane powder." -Wesley as the Man in Black (The Princess Bride)
As creative as it was, it technically should not have worked. This is exactly a case where the Boss and possibly other creatures in the cave would have had a perfectly viable reason to have POISON RESISTANCE or POISON IMMUNITY depending on how long they've live in that environment. Mushrooms/Fungi reproduce by releasing spores into the air and technically in massively large numbers (such as enough mushrooms to light a cave with their bioluminescence) there would be a high probability that just breathing the air would expose creatures to the toxin over time. The player trying to use the bioluminescent mushrooms to create a usable poison would have had to make a check possibly also using a Poisoner's Kit to make the poison, and after the first few hits on enemies with no/little apparent effects of poisoning, I'd have made the player make another Intelligence (Nature) check against DC 10 to remember constant exposure to the toxic spores could make creatures living in that environment tolerant to that specific poisonous effect.
@@PGIFilms cool. The quest giver was in the cave, not the boss.
Separating the "poisoned" status effect from the actual poison's effects is a great idea! On harvesting the poison from a creature, maybe the maximum amount of doses should be equal to its con mod with the minimum possible value being 1?
Thanks! And that's a good idea!
While it might make sense for huge tough creatures to have many doses of poison, I wouldn't necessarily want to gift the party 22 doses of purple worm poison from one worm. Seems like too high of a reward, although maybe it's not, I don't know.
@@Sibula By Con mod I'm assuming they meant modifier, so that would probably be 6 instead of 22.
@@Justpastawesome Oops, yeah that's more reasonable.
@@Sibula
Don't forget to divide by 2.
Could also aim for different saves too. Doesn't always have to be Con save. Mental poison could be Int save. Seems odd they need to be poisoned to gain the secondary effect. One doesn't necessarily have to do with the other.
Great point!!
You need to have a functioning brain in order for a truth serum to work on you. It's not going to work on computer. Or a Wight. That's why the other condition is locked behind the Poisoned condition in cases where it is caused by poison.
Necrotic damage feels like it should be acquired from spiders. The brown recluse in particular just melts the flesh outwards from the site of the bite.
Gross hahah
I see where you're coming from, but wouldn't that be acid damage?
@@sssargon8569 no, I just used the wrong language. Brown Recluse bites cause the cells to die and as the cells die they rupture. This functions like melting but it is from cell death.
Problem is, necrotic is more on the undead side of things. Only a few things actually apply necrotic and 90% of them happen to be undead. Think of it as “negative energy” rather than an actual mortal damage type, like radiant damage.
@@gandalftheantlion radiant damage is holy basically. But you could also say it's literally like a laser.
In early editions of the game, using poison was often automatically considered an evil act. The alignment system of older D&D was this weird mish-mash of a late 20th century Western view of ethics combined with a pop history understanding of medieval chivalry apparently, because painlessly killing a monster instantly with poison was considered more evil than hacking it to pieces with a sword over the course of a few minutes.
See also: the Geneva Conventions
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos Don't think that was very instant 💀
Oh how times have changed!
@@BobWorldBuilder Lake Geneva Conventions?!
Wasn't it also for gameplay reasons due to poison back then being save or die or just 'die if you get affected by it'?
Methinks there was a ton of poison immunity back then just so players wouldn't have an easy time taking out high-tier monsters with little risk
Making the check the harvest poison the same check to save against it is amazingly brilliant. It makes sense that harvesting from a snake is easier than ever seen from a semi-dragon.
I think the biggest issue people have with poisons besides the resistance immunity is doesn't feel like a poison. Let's take Skyrim as an example, poison damage happens over time. And indeed you spend a hundred gold to do 2D4 points of poison damage once and that's it.
Thanks! Yeah even poison in pokemon slowly damages the creature, and that's probably how it should work here too, but it would definitely be counter to how most attacks work, so many people may not like the idea :/
I would even be on board with there being an onset delay before the effect hits, as long as the effect felt worth it. Quivering Palm plays in this space a bit, and is typically seen as a compelling option.
I have houseruled that most poisons continue to deal damage until healed or saved. Aura of purity becomes super important.
Personally I enjoy the Pathfinder rules for poisons and diseases. They deal damage over time, increase and decrease in severity as the target fails and succeeds on saves and have a great range of effects they use. It's pretty easy to homebrew into dnd
I totally agree with your point but you *way* overestimated the basic poison. It's 1d4, and you don't do the damage ever because it's a dc 10 con save which means against creatures that have no con modifier, you on average do 1.25 poison damage. For 100 gp.
I've always run the immunity to poisoned condition as "You don't feel sick." Any secondary effects still apply, assuming they have, y'know, a biological body.
I've also never held to the "applied poison is dried and useless after a minute" bit. An hour, maybe, but how many poisons are suspended in a volatile liquid that evaporates in a scant 60 seconds? Not many, I bet.
Good call!
I mean, a massive amount of IRL poisonous substances (that dont require at least over a liters worth to poison someone; ignoring alcohol because humans and some reptiles are a outlier in average tolerance for mass) do evaporate or chemically react to be drastically less effective or outright inert in less than a minute. There is a solid reason why experiments to make snake antidotes cost a fucking months worth of lab work when solid freeze drying and vacuuming was reliable.
Some do keep their toxicity even after initial protein bonds break down, but any poison stored for a week even in a very low (but not effectively vacuum sealed) air% container at 3-5C becomes too deteriorated after returned to room temp and exposed to oxygen.
@@ANDELE3025 True, and don't even get me started on protein assays being ruined by the intern lab tech forgetting to set the temperature parameter properly (two days, wasted!); but I like a bit more fantasy in the "mundane" aspects of my games. I.E./ The serpent's venom isn't poisonous because of specific protein folds, it's because the venom contains a perfidious and destructive humor.
"Why, storing such a hateful concoction in a black bottle might only allow the foul fluid to fester and ferment, so far from purifying light!"
I believe the natives that use kurare store their dabbed darts for hours or even days
During a game where we ended up fighting a lot of undead i brought my poison to a local priest and had it blessed as if it was holy water. DM laughed and then allowed it.
"I call it Venom of Virtue!"
Clever. Good on your DM for rule of cooling it
Now that's a multipurpose item!
One detail that has always felt weird is why some creatures are resistant/immune to Poison. Personally, If they have a functioning circulatory system, they shouldn't be immune. Yes, this includes Dragons. In quite a few stories, the dragon is defeated, at least in part, because they got poisoned. Would this make more resistant, possibly.
Right, if resistance were more common I could see it making some sense, but the outright immunity is way too common!
In polish legend a dragon was poisoned by a dummy that looked like an animal filled with sulfur
@@indrickboreale7381 That is an awesome story!
The high number of resistances is mostly due to the high number of Undead, Construct, and Demon/Devil monsters. Messing with resistances is going to mess with the theme of the monsters.
Yeah but the ones that need to get changed are basically any creature that can produce a poison is immune, which while some are immune to their own poison it doesnt make them immune to all poisons.
Then there could be undead poisons or something, or elemental poisons
For harvesting poisons I just have it added to my usual carving rule, which is make a survival check and for every multiple of 5 you pass you get 1 thing, vault be poison or scales or something that's valuable for that monster.
I think poison immunity is a massive problem, especially since high tier monsters basically always have it. Logically it seems dumb that a creature would be immune to all poisons.
It would make more sense if they were immune to less powerful poisons but weaker to others, or had a resistance like magic resistance that makes them better but not impervious to poison.
Another thing is no monster can be poisoned by things humans can't be, such as chocolate for dogs. It would make sense that carnivorous monsters aren't good at digesting other food groups, and so plant based poisons work extra well on them.
Generally it seems like you need some other general rules before poison can be effective, including changing the general themes a lot of monsters have in terms of poison immunity.
It sort of makes sense that you can't damage the cells of a zombies body, but I don't see how paralysing poisons shouldn't work or how a bone related poison wouldn't work on a Skeleton.
The over simplification of poisons is honestly what makes them bad, for pcs it's just a case of get the one that has the most damage or best cc effect, and for monsters it's all or nothing. More minute cases makes more sense considering what poisons are, and Should be case specific.
Maybe guidelines on how to make a poison effective on a creature make more sense, similar to the monster taming table in xanathars or tashas I forget which one. Maybe some monsters are immune to injury poisons or contact poisons but not ingested ones. I feel like with a bit of guidance dms could make reasonable assumptions on what a creature they're using would be immune to, and if they didn't have the pc roll an intelligence related check like nature to figure out if they know a kind of poison that would work on the creature.
Right, different creature types having specific weaknesses to specific damage types (or poison types) is something that 5e could lean into more
There's an interesting angle - "Immune to poisons DC 13 or less" (as a concept). Strong poisons still affect them, but weak poisons have no effect - no matter how virulent. Or "evasion-style" resistance: This monster treats successful poison saves as 100% immune, and failed poison saves as having made the save. This means that most poisons will go nothing (as they tend to be all-or-nothing), but some poisons defined as "6d6 damage, save for half", this monster might still take that half damage on a failed save (and nothing on a successful save).
I think blowguns should give bonuses for poisoning. Maybe poison shot from a blowgun has +2 DC to the normal save. Also maybe you can apply poison to twice as much blowgun ammo, 6 instead of 3. So it's more efficient
That's a good idea, but then I think any piercing weapon (and arguably slashing since it's also breaking the skin) could have the same affect. I'd have to think about this some more...
@@BobWorldBuilder thanks! I would agree that logically any similar weapon should have the same effect. But I think the blowgun deserves to have something it specializes in
@@gamemasterbob9 No weapon in itself deserves anything; there's no sense in giving a non-magical piece of equipment a quality it doesn't have in reality. By all means make blowguns very useful in ambushes, with a low detectability even when fired, but making them better at delivering poison than, say, an arrow or a javelin makes no sense. Blowgun needles are small and can only be covered with a small amount of poison, far less than a dart or a spear point could deliver, and don't even have the potential to deliver it deeper into the body than any other weapon. The argument there would thus be for the save DC to be reduced!
I think coating twice as many needles is probably a good solution. It's quiet, ranged, and easily concealable - those are inherent in the blowgun's design. It doesn't specifically inject a hypodermic full of venom directly into a vein, though, so it shouldn't be any more lethal than any other piercing poison weapon. (Indeed, it probably should do "0 piercing damage + poison" instead of "1"!)
Maximum doses from one creature equal to proficiency bonus, maybe? Might be a nice way to scale up the value of rarer and stronger monsters without allowing people to cart around fifteen bottles of purple wurm venom
Definitely more simple than using CR! Good idea!
A conjuration wizard can conjure poison vials they have seen as an action since unlike creation bard they don't have a gold limit on the item. The conjured poison disappears when it deals damage, but if it's a one and done deal like Purple Worm Poison, that restriction doesn't matter. A conjurer with the poisoner feat can conjure purple worm poison as an action and coat an ally's weapon with it as a bonus action, effectively dealing the 12d6 (or half if they succeed on a DC 19 con save) damage on that round as a cantrip.
You could argue that for the sake of power level the conjuration wizard would need to have seen the poison up close in order to conjure it, which means the party needs to either buy it or harvest it, so you can't just see it on the black market early on and be done with it.
RAW the rampant immunity to poison damage is what makes this strategy not broken from the get go.
Another solution could be 'as soon as it would deal damage, it disappears and does not do damage.' I don't think they're holding back poison because of Conjuration Wizards, but if they are, it's not like it couldn't be fixed.
👏
@@smallolive or the conjured poison would have to be tied closely with the caster’s familiarity with the poison. The less complicated the poison the less they would need to study it, but if they weren’t familiar with a complicated poison, it could turn out wrong. It would range from being generally less effective (halved damage, easier save, shorter effect duration), to being an outright dud.
This would all relate to a roll for the conjurer, and players would get no indication whether it worked or not until it was used.
RAW is dumb, and not just in this particular scenario. There, I said it! I'd argue that they'd need to TASTE at least a drop of poison before they could conjure some, and then intelligence check to figure out the composition. Failing means a roll on the wild magic table to see what the effect is!
Just say that the wizard/witch him/herself needs to have been subject to the poisons effect. Meaning risking full damage if precautions fail.
Psychic poison would be cool. Have the arrow tip be a sharp crystal and have the psionisist in the group enchantment it so It does psychic damage immediately and every round and anyone who comes in psychic contact with them makes a save or contracts it.
Sounds cool to me!
But that's not a poison at all; it's a spell or cantrip cast on a sliver of crystal.
Another great video. I plan to use most of your suggestions. I am trying to get my players interested in harvesting more from creatures.
Thanks! Not all players will be into harvesting stuff, but I suggest maybe including NPCs or monsters clearly using materials harvested from other monsters to get your PCs thinking about it more
Another option for trying to mitigate the fact that so many creatures have immunity to poison damage, is to have the poison cause a creature to simply lose hit points. No damage, just a hit point loss. I feel like this concept is very under used in 5e when it should be the norm for things like a Vampires bite, bleed effects, and potent poisons.
Ayyy that is a cool idea! Definitely feels more accurate to me
Although there is more fire, cold etc resistance there are ways to ignore those resistances. Elemental adept, and Death Clerics ignore Necrotic resistance eventually.
There is the Poisoner feat, which ignores poison resistance but the Poisoned Condition is uneffected by this which allows you to make poison doses for 50gp per proficiency.
I'd say just have the feat ignore poisoned condition immunity for non Elementals, Undead and constructs and then make a poison or two specifically for those creature types (most of the Poison condition immune ones).
Great insight here Bob! The poisons in the DMG are also fun to modify to be more deadly, save or die if you will 😉 Thanks for sharing!
Insightful video aside, I can't help but feel like a coffee company named "Many Worlds" sponsoring the World Builder and World Destroyer is a match made in heaven. Amazing stuff
It is very fitting lol xD
here's a few more ideas that could make poison see the light of day (or night)
1. When traveling and you roll a nat20 survival check, maybe the DM could say you find a poisonous bush. A simple basic poison that is basically given out for free will encourage poison use.
2. before aplying poison to a weapon in combat, allow the player to make a nature/religion/arcana check (depending on the creature) to evaluate if said target is immune/resistant to said poison (spending 100g on a poison that turns out to be wasted on a creature that's immune to poison is simply to risky). It could go something like this:
DM: "you are up against a fiend, roll initiative"
player: "14, is this fiend immune to poison xyz?"
DM: "roll a religion DC 15" (if it was a construct it would be arcana, if it was a owlbear it would be nature)
This check would also be important because as DM i'd shave that number of immune creatures by alot, not by looking at each creature mind you, but by reviewing case by case when the player expressed intent on using x poison on y creature that had immunity)
3. Sure poisons are expensive because they are illegal, but once you become a "regular" you are more trustworthy, so price should drop. Also dificulty gathering a poison you have already gathered before should be reduced (specially if you failed the first time, after all, you know what not to do).
4. If you have 1 dose of poison you will save it for later, but if you have 10 doses you will use it more sparingly, so encourage purchase of multiple doses. Rather then halving the price, i'd make it (take 2 pay 1, take 5 pay 2, take 10 pay 3) and similar for harvesting it yourself, yes if u fail it could be quite bad, but if u suceed you might get 10 doses
5. As for that blowgun video, i'd add that the poison would not wear off after 1 minute, it's stored in the dart just as it could be stored in a vial (the dart is a vial in itself)
6. This one might be a hit or miss... have poison with an expiration date, specially if it was harvested. Killing a purple worm should give you many doses of poison, but it should also expire. If you have a week to use all 10 doses, u will use them every single encounter, and it will show you just how powerfull that poison is, getting you hooked on it. Next time you expect a hard fight, you might consider taking a little detour to fight another purple worm. the expiration date could also be poison loosing efectiveness over time. I say hit or miss because it requires the track of time, which some people don't and therefore adds to much complexity
This video was great! Super engaging, animations looked great, and definitely information I need as a DM. I've wanted to work poisons into my campaigns for ages but have struggled to do it well.
Thank you very much! Glad you liked this video
Thanks for the cool coffee :) I’m 3 sessions in to a campaign and my ranger has poisoners kit. Thanks!
This video is amazing! Equally so are the numerous comments with brilliant ideas from numerous perspectives 🥳
Great job, Bob
Bob and Grace are cool cats. Thanks for these videos! They are extremely helpful. I really dug the outdoors rules checks. Informative and hilarious.
I really like the poison DC being the same DC as the harvest difficulty.
Very timely, I'm working on a homebrew blowgun Ranger subclassnow. Essentially, the idea is to let her craft a certain amount of different sorts of poisons using spell slots on rests. I'm homebrewing the types of poisons that can be crafted this way at different levels with different level slots, because the stuff from the book would either be too powerful or too boring. But, yeah, different damage types, different saving throws, conditions that synergize with each other - I'm having a lot of fun thinking about how to balance it and not make it too complicated.
For that, consider looking at the way the booming blade and green-flameblade cantrips operate. Essentially all the effects of the poison could work as an additional effect to an attack roll for the blowgun. Then for other ways of administering poison, you can base them off of the types used in the blowgun but with different effects. An AOE cloud could be an aerosol grenade.
@@sha2143 That's a great suggestion. Having every single one of these things have both an attack roll and a saving throw - on top of using a resource AND taking time to craft - feels way too fiddly for 5e.
Oooh, I feel the various 3.5e poison tables coming back into play! 🙂
Our groups house rule on poision was the monster has as many as their Con score max. mind you some of that may have been used up in combat with you. Also because one of the players kept one for milking they regain their con modifier ( min 1) per day (long rest of animal).
Also given the fact that often times campaigns may not run poisonous creatures. Our current campaign the only thing with poison after I got proficiency in a poisoner's kit were wyverns (which granted over the course of a short rest I was able to get 4 doses and I made a SERIOUS profit selling half of that). But yeah, afterward we've not seen even a simple venomous snake so that tool proficiency I got is kinda burning a hole in my pocket.
What's funny/interesting is our DM introduced a policy that people needed licenses to carry poison; which after successfully stowing the wyvern poison and leveraging the positive support our group wasn't a big deal. This might be another means of allowing cheaper prices for poisons, cutting the prices in half or 9/10th, but making a license hard to acquire and the fines/consequences of buying and using them be closer to their normal price.
Really good video, I will be using these ideas.
Also, don't neglect altertivate "poisons". For instance, one of my players recently inhaled a fungal pathogen from a bear he killed. I drew attention to the spores on the bear during the fight to telegraph that something was going on here. He is now looking for a treatment, but the longer that takes, the worse it will get
You can also do something with tetanus from rusted weapons and traps. They do less damage upfront, but have long term effects. For most of history, if you got a serious cut in battle, even if you made the day, the infection would get you soon after
In my currently running Pathfinder game I have an Alchemist(Think an Artificer who makes potions to hulk out and throws bombs) who is slowly filling her bandolier with monster bits to weaponize into poisons and a weird psychic android who keeps reusing the same bolt which at this point has the residuals of a giant centipede, a ghoul, and a kobold on it.
Its a lot of fun to have party members actually stop and state that they are loading the icky bolt, or stopping to extract venom sacs
I would have assumed that poison was used on other human/ humanoid characters vs using it on monsters
It can be used all around!
I like Grace's hair style in this one It's really snazzzzy!!!
I'm running Pathfinder (1e) and I have made 3 modifications to poisons:
1) If there is a natural poison, you can increase potency (=DC to save) by combining 2-4 doses (depending on the poison) through a dangerous alchemy check into an alchemical poison.
2) There are poison forms that just don't dry as it's a tar-like substance or a sticky powder. You can use alchemy (once again with dangers) to transform one poison into another.
3) Poisons usually don't deal significant damage, but impose ability damage and/or conditions. There will always be a weaker effect (e.g. 1 round dazzled) that is always imposed and the strong effect can be avoided by success in the saving throw.
you guys are a great duo
For anyone looking for a fun poison idea, I made one recently for a group of mutant blood-mages in my campaign, I’ve been calling it anti-magic toxin but you can find a better name, it’s an injury poison that affects spellcasters where when they are hit by it they make a DC 15 saving throw of whatever their spellcasting ability is, on a fail they lose 1d6 worth of spell slots (so if you roll a 4 they can lose 2 level 2 slots, a level 1 and 3, etc.) or if they can’t lose any more spell slots they take 3d6 force damage, it’s sort of preditory towards spellcasters but seeing my players faces as I take away their spell slots is pretty great.(in my current campaign all the characters are spellcasters for story reasons so I’m not unfairly targeting certain members of the party either)
All great ideas!
Thanks! Glad you like them :)
Lowering the DC to the Con save is a pretty good idea. I’d keep the “fail by 5” drawback, though, and maybe have proficiency in poisoner’s kit remove said drawback. You could also change the check to one appropriate for the enemy in question. Harvesting a beast’s poison would be Nature, but poison from a demon would be Arcane and one from an undead would be Religion. Sure, it still all uses Int, but let a proficiency with a poisoner’s kit grant advantage to that check if they also have that.
In the campaign I'm in currently, I'm playing a homebrewed Witch Doctor class that my DM and I designed together, and he has a giant spider as a creature companion, and partly specializes in making and using poisons and medicines. Due to me having a steady, constant supply of both venom and webbing, I cut the costs of making poison/medicines by 3/4's, and I can command the spider to use their action to make bandages for me or allies.
It's nice to see Grace again, and that top is very flattering on her.
Good video overall
Thanks!
One of the things inflating that "immune to poison" count, is undead + elementals. Anything without a (functioning) biological body, tends to be auto-immune to poisons, since this is an implicit requirement. Something to counteract this, could be something like a "spiritual" or "elemental" poison which is specifically made (whether by alchemist or beast) to target these beings, making a poison that can, under conditions, circumvent immunity. (these could, depending on lore and context, also be non-poisons against normal biological systems, perhaps?)
That, my good sir, was a smooth segue
Jesus I swear this is the third time you've dropped a video about rules I had JUST been thinking about
I've bumped into these issues so many times since I first started playing around 3.5e, and somehow haven't watched this video until tonight! The solutions I tried this latest time were very similar (save vs the poison or the condition, not both), and I used an old idea of creating "sensitizers" that make the PCs or their adversaries more susceptible to various effects unless they eat extra rations, take medicine, or use specific groups of ingredients when cooking or brewing.
In the past, I've tried to make systems based on the poisons of older editions (like some AD&D 2e Dark Sun adventures) that had several types of poisons, each with different ways of affecting their targets (inhale, ingest, touch, venom), different saves and conditions, and different things that cure or aggravate the injury. It's worked well before (especially for settings like Dark Sun or even Blades in the Dark and groups that enjoy more alternative combat scenarios, systematic resource/ammo tracking, or they're all playing rogues or spies) but I usually end up using much more abstracted or improvised rules. I've even made poisons into narrative systems by making the players' questions and observations the saving throw, and making any rolls affect their characters' focus/perception or knowledge about how to negate the poison and get extra clues about how it happened.
As for harvesting poisons, rolling once and failing horribly or getting a big reward can be exciting, as can spending all your party's potions and spells to buff a character then succeed on a super high difficulty check. But that wears off quickly for most people, and a lot of people get annoyed with effects like that very quickly (even myself as the DM). So, even outside of poisons, I've been using degrees of success and failure for a really long time; a tiny effect or one minor clue is a constant if any character gets to that place or milestone, then they can roll and get a slightly better outcome for every 5 or more above the DC they roll, or they spend a chunk of time to get the next best outcome.
Sometimes I've created harvesting tables for each creature type or a few notable species that use one or two dice to determine what condition the monsters/components are in, how good your reward from that monster is, and how exposed the character was, and I still like that every now and then, and can give that as a handout for some groups to use on their own or gain as they rank up their skills and monster lore or faction renown. Or, I'll give the players choices about being slow or fast, and letting them push their luck on a failure to either succeed with a tiny bit more damage or loss of supplies (or one step up on the harvest table), or fail with some damage but a point toward increasing their proficiency/affinity with that type of creature for future harvests.
Had a poison gas that was a chemical agent that used non-magical means to put someone to sleep. The wording on a lot of the "can't be put to sleep" races specifically says "cannot be magically put to sleep."
You guys are so wholesome and adorable
Thank you!
Playing DnD 5e for the 1st time and choose assassin rogue - DM gave me the opportunity to choose 3 poison recipes - chose Yethgrel, Basic Poison & midnight tears.
Upon starting the campaign DM realized it would be costly and timely at the speed our group plays to follow poison crafting rules so like you suggested he lowered cost $50 g, and about 5 hrs to complete.
So far ive been pumping out the yethgrel and waiting been trying to find ingredients for midnight tears.
I made a dagger than can absorb poison. You choose which poison the blade already "knows" and expend charges (equal to the maximum number of damage dice for the most potent poison in the blade) to determine damage for the attacks made until the end of your next turn.
Gotta be honest... that ad reminded me of the "its my birthday!" meme lol
This video is extremely helpful. I'm a first time 5e dm and a player wants to get into harvesting and using poison mid-campaign.
As long as he is willing to invest his characters downtime, gp, and maybe a feat i will absolutely reward him. I love the part about switching damage types, definitely using that.
personally an idea that i really like for making poisons is the idea of adding certain other things to them to bypass specific creatures' immunities/downgrades them to resistances. immune because it's a construct? add a bit of acid in there. Undead? add some holy water when making it. it rewards preparing in advance for situations and lets whoever in the party has proficiency with a poisoner's kit (cause there's usually at least one) flex their stuff (obviously there's a check required to not mess up the poison when adding extra stuff but the dc isnt particularly high unless they're adding a lot)
Will show this to the DMs and see if they will allow it. As I have been wanting to use a poison themed character in a game.
"grace world destroyer" has the coolest glasses. why everyone have to have cooler glasses than i do😢
I want to be a necromancer who makes poison for his skeletons' weapons. I just wish the Poisoner feat let you deal half damage to creatures Immune to poison in addition to bypassing regular poison resistance.
The utility of poison depends on the campaign. In an urban, city focused campaign it's huge, for dungeon crawling, no more so than anything else
I personally would've gone the route of, "What KIND of poison are you immune to?" Basically, this would require a bunch of new forms of poison than what's available in the DMG as well as multiple tiers of poisons. It should also be made clear that a creature with extractable poison should be immune to it. A cockatrice should be immune to be immune to its petrifying poison by default, for example. Hell, poison resistance could only effect a number of poisons equal to the creature's Con mod, and the tiers to choose from varies for each creature.
"I actually like coffee, unlike Bob." 1:22 was pretty funny.
Us coffee fans have to stick together =)
My poisons can be had in three ways... Ingested/Eaten, Injected, or Topical (by touch). The cheapest poisons would be ingested. Injected would be more expensive. The prices listed in 5e reflect BLADE VENOMS & TOPICAL POISONS in my game. A Blade Venom is not subject to evaporation and can be applied to a blade as a sticky or oily sheen. Their expense is a product of their durability/longevity on a weapon.
That sounds like a good system!
@@BobWorldBuilder Touch poisons (normally a liquid) and Blade Venoms (a tar-like or vaseline-like substance) can be coated over pretty much anything. Most touch poison will evaporate or run off over D20 hours while Blade Venoms are persistent because of their stickier nature. Both just need contact. Touch poisons cost HALF of the cost of a Blade Venom.
Injected poisons need to be either injected (by a needle or pin) or rubbed into a deep wound. You CAN use an injected venom with Piercing and Slashing weapons IF you have a specific means of injecting the poison (hollow bladed dagger or arrow, or dart with a rupturing ampule at the base which injects the poison on impact with the target). Injectable poisons last D20 minutes while exposed to air on a weapon blade before they run off. Injected poisons cost 25% of a Blade Venom.
Ingested poisons are self-explanatory and I did exactly what you did and made them 10% of the cost of a Blade Venom.
The legality of poisons varies from location to location and poison to poison with some places allowing it (to destroy small rodent infestations) or at least some examples (paralyzing agents or sleep agents) to others entirely forbidding it. The costs are from X1 to X10 the normal cost in areas where poison is illegal.
Remember poison from Greek mythology that Medea used - it sets its target and anyone who touched them on fire
The poison condition is not the same as the other conditions. Good HR. Also - good coffee!
Largely, I'm okay with poison resistances and immunities as they are currently, but I think a lot of creatures need means for punching through those resistances or immunities. Like alchemical substances that can be added to a poison that'll allow the poison to better seep into the petrified nervous system of a Lich or Mummy.
A fun little tidbit is that almost all humanoids are effected by poisons
One little thing I want to know about the midnight tears how this is affect by things like teleportation, plane shift and others situations where the "time zone" is messed up?
I was playing a blade pact hex blade and my dm let me flavor me summoned rapier as something specifically designed to administer poison, when delivered this way the DC was increased by 2 and it did and extra dice of damage. It was great to be able to use such a menial flavoring thing for something more potent
Idc, picking the cat cup 😂🐈
Of course! It's practically a magical item!
It's really fun to make some custom poisons, because you can do pretty much anything with them. For example Inquisition in my setting use 2 types of poison: one contact that burns shapeshifters like acid but is harmless to other creatures, and a weapon poison that bloks target's ability to speak or use verbal components for spells. Both poisons were made to showcase what Inquisitors are about as a group.
Best poison I ever saw was in the Warhammer Fantasy 2nd edition source book, Renegade Crowns, which was all about making yourself a petty prince of a small kingdom through all sorts of malfeasance. I don't remember the name of the poison, but the important thing to know is that it had three components; if you consumed one component, or all 3 components, you were fine, but if you ate just 2 of the components painful death followed. It was a great assassination weapon.
Does anyone have some perspective on the following, please? Is it possible to be ducking, behind a short wall for example and totally out of sight, then in one turn to pop up and make a ranged attack before ducking back down again out of sight (ie. in total cover). Would enemies at range be able to return fire with standard range weapons or not and if so what kind of modifiers, etc. would be at play?
There's also the question of how the poisoner's kit fits into this. Is it absolutely necessary to apply poisons and if so, what do you do when players try to fund other methods (like say, just pouring it on a weapon)?
It should be mentioned that the poisoner feat allows you to bypass poison resistance and apply poisons with a bonus action
The way I do it is that Poisons work exactly as they did from the extracted creature and I base how much they get on how much higher they role than the DC(5 higher they get 1D4+1 doses, 10 higher then get 1D6+2 doses, etc.) I also use Survival checks for it since that makes more sense than an Intelligence check.
I never even knew there was more than the basic poison. Seeing the start of this video I was all I have to make a poison user for my next character! Then partway through, I'm all "okay maybe for a evil campaign where killing tons of everyday is ok" at the end I realized why I never heard of all the other poisons...
i think poison in some homebrew can be quite helpful in certain narrative. i am considering having level 1 adventurer fight werewolf in murder mystery. there are poison to apply silver properties to weapon. and poison that weaken the werewolf to make it attack with disadvantage.
The best weapon for delivering poisons is the Injection Spear (pathfinder). Could probably homebrew a projectile version (darts, arrows, bolts).
I think this is the first sponsorship that makes me want to buy coffee 😅
There'd been an errata for the DMG about the poison lasting only 1 minute on a weapon. Effectively, a poison lasts until delivered, now.
The best approach to pricing poison (and for "mundane" alchemical items) is to model them after spells of a certain level and make them cost about as much as a scroll of a spell of that level.
I also agree that poisons should not universally hinge on the poisoned condition for their additional effects and should deal other damage types. A shocker lizard (or similar creature, like a behir) could be used to synthesize a lightning poison.
The number of doses available to be harversted from a feature should involve the creature's size along with their proficiency modifier, maybe. :)
The fact remains at least for basic posion an action in combat for the chance of extra damage is not as good as simply taking another shot. Opportunity cost is way too high.
I agree. I think that if applying poison took up the "manipulate an object" action, it would make far more palatable
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos I 100% agree, This combine with lower the price IMO would help posion be viable as a real option.
How about a poisoned sheathe so drawing your weapon poisons it? You could have many sheaths with different poisons or many daggers in sheaths.
To avoid the proclivity for monsters to have poison condition immunity, I’ve changed the “poison condition” to “nauseous condition.”
A dm of mine did something similar to us players. It was awful as one of the following players was normally immune and I was resistant/advantage to the damage/condition respectively. It was one creature type and we were forced into encountering them. Poison can be fun but be careful to make sure that it's fun for everyone!
Keep in mind when harvesting poisons, giant monsters do a lot of damage bc they inject a huge amount of poison in one bite. Compared to an adventurer's poisoned sword that would deliver maybe a couple of mL on a cut.
One of my players is running a dagger or venom, and we decided to knock it down from a full action to a bonus action to activate it's poison, because the poison is generated by the blade, as far as we can tell.
We also dropped it's additional damage a die or two, can't entirely remember, and we removed the 1 hit stipulation, but instead poison can't be applied to a target that is already under the effect of the same poison
I did this because I want it to be a genuinely decent alternative to their bread and butter, in case for whatever reason it's not available
I think the numbers of doses extracted should be tied to the size of the creature. Maybe should work like this:
1 dose for tiny
1d4 for small
1d6 for medium
1d8 for large
1d10 for huge
1d12 for gargantuan
Great video as Always ! But I think that there are still a lot of Monsters that deserve a poisonned immunity, like how could you poison a zombi with a paralyzing substance if he has no functionning organs to paralyse in the first place ? It just doesn't make sense but I agree that going through the poisonned condition is not great.
By the way does that mean that every time you get poisonned for another effect it means you also get the disadvantages on rolls ?
One dose of the strongest poison in base pathfinder is 7,000gp. For reference, only slightly cheaper than a ring of protection +2 which is 8, more expensive than +1 adamantine chainmail. The same price as a bag of holding III (1000lbs worth of weight). So that's a bit much but at the very least it compensates by having the lowest cost poison be worth 30gp, even if it is still useless. I recommend looking at those poisons and just halving their prices.
That promo code for the coffee, "Bob10" sounds like a crappy off-brand Ben 10
More like a better Ben10!!!!!!
The people who wrote the extraction rules never milked a snake before. Handling the venomous critter aside, it takes 30 seconds tops, and you get enough to kill a LOT of people rather than 1 fatal dose (I used to milk rattlesnakes as a kid). My last character was a yuanti pureblood poison mage (6 levels in both green dragon sorcerer and spore druid), with the poisoner feat and the poison spell feat from 3.5 that allowed me to use poisons as spell components to add the effects of said poison to the spell. Then we made a expertise feat that upped the save DC of my poison effects by my proficiency bonus. I had a LOT of fun! The counterbalance was that collecting, growing and feeding the exotics that I sourced my poisons and venoms from was dangerous, expensive and often an adventure in itself. My party members were always thrilled and horrified about the hellhole environments I'd drag them to in search of nightmarishly hazardous new critters and substances.
Idk the place i Saw this but i remember finding someone who changed the type of poison into 3 types:necrotic,acidic,(i dont remember the third,maybe was slashing or burning).
And changing that some creatures have immunity Just to 1 type of poison instead of all poisons (unless they are a construct or a ghost).
I love effects like the Burnt Othur fumes, and wished it was used more.
Where the target gets a save, but has to succeed 3 time to end the effect. So they will always be at least a little effected.
Gives it much more of a "poison" feel
The thing is, despite the number of creatures immune to poison, most of your encounters are with creatures that are not immune to poison (i.e., people).
Poison immunity tends to crop up significantly once you exit Tier 1 play, yeas
@@luigifan4585 That's highly subjective though according to each DM's table. In my homebrew campaign setting a lot of the focus is on political intrigue, so about 50% of the interactions are humanocentric. I also have a curated ecosystem wherein only certain monsters exist; I don't throw everything in the Monster Manuals at the players simply because I can. Indeed, I don't even adhere to the Monster Manual stats most of the time, as the creatures in my campaign are heavily modified versions of canonical D&D monsters and they often bear different names (just to keep the players guessing). So in that regard, if poison immunity/resistance is an issue, just deprive them of that feature. MPGA (Make Poison Great Again)
In 3.5 and pathfinder the amount of poison you could harvest from a creature would be up to their con mod per day at which point the creature loses the poison feature, which means a dead creature has up to their con mod in poison harvestable. Thing is, harvested poisons like that go off after 24 hours so you have to use alchemy to convert into a long lasting poison. Could be the same here.
You rock bob. I like the idea of having a combo poison/disease. With damage and long and short term conditions. If you got a pally or cleric in the party you maybe ok... But this DM wants to kill your pcs.
Could determine how many dosages can be harvested by the creatures size
I think the general weakness of the poisoner feat also plays a part in it. Crafting poisons is by no means unique to the feat, applying with a bonus action is nice but not needed, and ignoring resistance is just not that useful. It would probably need to be a half feat, or maybe even gain a new feature. Something like identifying poisons in food/in the wild or maybe advantage on saving throws against the effects of poisons.
Yeah and the fact that it took until Tasha's to get a feat that made poison okay to use just shows how little effort has gone into making poison work!
How would you extract petrifying essence?
I read somewhere that it's a cockatrice's saliva that does it, so that's how it worked in our game
I'm thinking it would destroy the container would it not or does it only work on living material? Can't find a source for RAW so probably homebrew that glass is pure?
I would say creature-specific "bane" poisons always work, resistances apply only for general types
Poison story: In my first campaign the party was against an assassin liutenent of the BBEG (a Roguemaster Lich)
He put Midnight Tears on his lips and disguised self into a small halfling teen, kissing the "adventurer" hero at the city entrance while bubbling around. They go to res; i turn around pick many d6 and say "it's midnight, and you take a shitton amount of poison damage". They still remember it.