2nd edition Thief Assassin kit and poisons

[jaz0nj4ckal]

I have a player that wants to use the Thief Assassin Kit found in the Complete Thief’s Handbook. In addition, they want to use poison; however, the poisons list in the GM Handbook seem a little over kill at times, or take too long to influence combat rounds. Due to the latter, and still enabling the character to use poison – I have made different levels of poisons based off the information provided in the GM Handbook. The poisons available to my players are just lower quality (have not been refined to the levels details in the GM Handbook). This allows for my players to have access to types of poisons, and still keep balance to the game and to other players.

I am interested in how others have handled poisons in their campaigns – especially when players want to play the Assassin Thief Kit.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Oldschoolery generally treated poisons as deadly things, and indicated a character using them was paying a high price in terms of NPC attitudes. Unconsciousness, paralysis, death...things that end fights before they even begin.

This needn't be strictly true, and there's plenty of room in older e's for things like the poison damage or varied effects of more recent e's. The list of poison is open for re-writing.

So to get the best solution, I figure the best thing to do is figure out the specific problem. What's your issue with the poisons as they exist today? Too deadly? Too binary? Too expensive?

 

[jaz0nj4ckal]

So to get the best solution, I figure the best thing to do is figure out the specific problem. What's your issue with the poisons as they exist today? Too deadly? Too binary? Too expensive?

Too deadly and too slow for onset. I was thinking about the poisons that PC can use would deal damage along the lines as weapons.

For example: Poison AA might provide a 1d6 pt of extra damage, and poison AB might be 1d6+1. Following this model, there might be a type of poison that would deal 2d6 points of damage. Maybe even add a dice value 1d4 or 1dx for onset of the poison.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Too deadly and too slow for onset. I was thinking about the poisons that PC can use would deal damage along the lines as weapons.

For example: Poison AA might provide a 1d6 pt of extra damage, and poison AB might be 1d6+1. Following this model, there might be a type of poison that would deal 2d6 points of damage. Maybe even add a dice value 1d4 or 1dx for onset of the poison.

Sure, that'd probably work fine just as-is: deal some extra damage. Critters immune to poison won't take that extra damage. It'd probably up the damage output, but at low-levels it's rocket-tag anyway, and at high levels, it's not gonna be that noticable.

 

[Baron Greystone]

These days I'm a fan of poison doing a damage roll. For a bottled poison, as well as for a monster sting or bite. Save or die is too much.

 

[jaz0nj4ckal]

These days I'm a fan of poison doing a damage roll. For a bottled poison, as well as for a monster sting or bite. Save or die is too much.

You said it - Save vs DIE is too high of a price to pay; however, I could see this work if this was a specially crafted monster found at the end of an epic arc adventure, but for your normal module monsters... yes...'save vs die' is too high of a price.

 

[Ulrick]

Save or die can be vicious, but its also a good learning tool to be more careful in the future as a player.

A gracious DM would give a decent onset time.