D&D 5E 5E: Pick Your Poison

[CleverNickName]

There are a variety of ways to handle poison in our favorite game. In this thread, I would like to discuss the many ways that toxins could be handled in the new edition.

My two coppers (coming from the perspective of a 3.5E player):

1. I would like to see poison handled as a type of "energy" damage. Yes, I know that toxins are not a form of energy. Neither is acid, but that doesn't seem to bother the designers very much. When poison strikes a creature or character, it would make my life a whole lot easier if it just scored extra damage, with a save to reduce/avoid it. Ability damage is tedious. Ongoing damage is a bookkeeping nightmare. Fancy effects like sleep and paralysis are best handled elsewhere (sleep and hold person spells, for example.) Just plain and simple damage, please.

2. I would like to see some real (and balanced) rules for poison as equipment. I know that poison is supposed to be a rare and dangerous substance that requires special equipment and training to use safely...so how is that different from magic? If we can brew potions to heal damage, why can't we brew potions to inflict it?

3. Poisoned weapons. You know, I used to roll my eyes when my players asked me for this, thinking that they were just looking for yet another way to over-buff their weapon damage. But then I got to thinking...if the druid can coat her scimitar with fire to deal extra damage, why can't the rogue coat his dagger with poison to do the same thing? If used properly, I think it would be a reasonable (and more plausible) alternative to handing out yet another flaming +1 weapon.

Ideas? Comments? Suggestions? Cries of outrage?

 

[Tovec]

Thoughts? Um... yeah sure. I don't have an issue with making poisons better (from a 3.5 perspective too) but I do have minor objections to the points you raised.

1. I would like to see poison handled as a type of "energy" damage. Yes, I know that toxins are not a form of energy. Neither is acid, but that doesn't seem to bother the designers very much. When poison strikes a creature or character, it would make my life a whole lot easier if it just scored extra damage, with a save to reduce/avoid it. Ability damage is tedious. Ongoing damage is a bookkeeping nightmare. Fancy effects like sleep and paralysis are best handled elsewhere (sleep and hold person spells, for example.) Just plain and simple damage, please.

First, I hope they DON'T make it "another type of energy damage". I wouldn't mind if they allowed energy resistance to have an effect but I dislike thinking about poison as any kind of energy. Especially when poisons don't just do one thing. Say what you want about acid, but it corrodes and burns. Poison can cause creatures to sleep, pass out, lose HP, lose CON (or another stat) or any number of things. That is something really hard to manage with a simple "X poison damage/round" counter.

Second, aren't all energies NOT truly energies? Acid, fire, and ice. Electricity MAY BE but not really how they use it. I suppose sonic and force are more "energy" than the normal/typical types but if anything they are treated in their own category anyway so I give up.

2. I would like to see some real (and balanced) rules for poison as equipment. I know that poison is supposed to be a rare and dangerous substance that requires special equipment and training to use safely...so how is that different from magic? If we can brew potions to heal damage, why can't we brew potions to inflict it?

You can. Make a potion of inflict X wounds?
I get what you mean though, poison should be more codified and less rare than it currently is. I can't count the amount of games I have run where poison never shows up, regardless of who has poison immunity or not. At best, most poisons I do see are caused by creatures like scorpions and whatnot.

3. Poisoned weapons. You know, I used to roll my eyes when my players asked me for this, thinking that they were just looking for yet another way to over-buff their weapon damage. But then I got to thinking...if the druid can coat her scimitar with fire to deal extra damage, why can't the rogue coat his dagger with poison to do the same thing? If used properly, I think it would be a reasonable (and more plausible) alternative to handing out yet another flaming +1 weapon.

Once again, afiak they CAN coat their weapons in poison to do damage. The problem is they never do. And once again, I wouldn't like to see +1 Poisonous weapons, as I find the concept quite silly. Poison isn't a static effect. With fire we know it is 1d6/round (unless otherwise stated) but poison has so many different effects depending on how it is made and where.

Overall, there is certainly so much more we can do with the poisonous medium and poisons have been under-used in the past but I think changing it to a type is just silly. It is equally silly when all energies do 1d6/round too but that is a different topic for a different time - which actually has been covered by a number of OGL sources to remedy the disparity between 1d6 fire and fire that can burn down a building or forest.

 

[CleverNickName]

Thoughts? Um... yeah sure. I don't have an issue with making poisons better (from a 3.5 perspective too) but I do have minor objections to the points you raised.

So how would you like to see poison (both in general and as equipment) in the new edition?

 

[Dausuul]

I dislike poison damage. It's not that there isn't a case for poison dealing damage, it's the simplest way to handle it, but it just makes poison feel... boring. I like for poison to feel cheaty, unfair, a nasty surprise that bypasses all the usual ways PCs protect themselves. I also like for poison to have ramifications beyond a single fight.

What I would like to see is poison that imposes a nasty status effect and has an onset time measured in minutes or hours. So within an encounter, it has little or no effect. But if you can hit a foe with a poisoned weapon, run away, and come back in an hour, the odds will be slugged hard in your favor. If you're stung by a wyvern, you may kill the wyvern all right, but ten minutes later you're on the ground frothing and jerking while your fellow PCs try to get you to safety before the wyvern's mate shows up.

Poison thus becomes less of an encounter-level threat and more of an adventure-level one, the consequences of one encounter carrying through to the next. And it adds verisimilitude into the bargain (real-world poisons almost always take at least 30 seconds to kick in, usually minutes or hours).

 

[Minigiant]

Oh. A topic I can really have my trained viper stick their fangs into.

There are a variety of ways to handle poison in our favorite game. In this thread, I would like to discuss the many ways that toxins could be handled in the new edition.

My two coppers (coming from the perspective of a 3.5E player):

1. I would like to see poison handled as a type of "energy" damage. Yes, I know that toxins are not a form of energy. Neither is acid, but that doesn't seem to bother the designers very much. When poison strikes a creature or character, it would make my life a whole lot easier if it just scored extra damage, with a save to reduce/avoid it. Ability damage is tedious. Ongoing damage is a bookkeeping nightmare. Fancy effects like sleep and paralysis are best handled elsewhere (sleep and hold person spells, for example.) Just plain and simple damage, please.

I am okay with poison damage but I am not okay with poison just being a damage type. Not all poisons and venom kill or are designed to do so. I want some good o' sleep and paralysis poisons.

2. I would like to see some real (and balanced) rules for poison as equipment. I know that poison is supposed to be a rare and dangerous substance that requires special equipment and training to use safely...so how is that different from magic? If we can brew potions to heal damage, why can't we brew potions to inflict it?

3. Poisoned weapons. You know, I used to roll my eyes when my players asked me for this, thinking that they were just looking for yet another way to over-buff their weapon damage. But then I got to thinking...if the druid can coat her scimitar with fire to deal extra damage, why can't the rogue coat his dagger with poison to do the same thing? If used properly, I think it would be a reasonable (and more plausible) alternative to handing out yet another flaming +1 weapon.

Ideas? Comments? Suggestions? Cries of outrage?

Not only brew poisons. PCs should be able to collect and "milk" poisons. Kill a giant centipede, identify it's venom sac, and pour it into an empty waterskin.

If Rob Scwalb is giving out workshops in background, I'd like a poison farm where my PC can drop off his venomous pets and milk them later for future adventurers.


Other stuff:

I'd like to keep the Poison save. Good o' Save to avoid being Poisoned

Poison use, immunity, and removal? Make poison immunity more rare. Like SUPER RARE. None of this "Hit 7th level. LOL Poisons" stuff. Everyone should be afraid of poison ('cept dwarves. Dwarves chug poison). Jörmungandr the Midgard Serpent kills Thor with the stuff. Poison should always be an "OH (Censored)" moment if your character is hit with one. And the thus only the trained with EVER use contact, inhaled, or injury poison.

Yup bring back Contact, Ingested, Inhaled, and Injury poisons.


Poison Farms. Think about it, fellow DMs and players.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Poison is such a problem because it is so badly mishandled in most fiction that there is not a lot of good precedent for realistic or even dramatically interesting use.

If they must have it, I would suggest the following:
*Realistic time scale. There are very, very few poisons/venoms that have any meaningful effect inside the typical D&D combat timeframe. These things should take time to kick in.
*Difficult to resist. 3e poisons are ridiculously easy to resist. It's okay to have a fort save for half damage or the equivalent, but if you get poisoned, something should happen to you most of the time (leaving more design space for fighter class abilities like mettle),
*Proufoundly disabling or lethal. Most 3.X poisons dealt one die of ability damage, which could end up being as low as one point of damage, and had no other disabling effects. Let's make them scary, and impose long-term status effects and severe damage.
*Extremely rare and expensive: to prevent abuse of the truly deadly poisons.
*Cool fictional ones mixed with real ones. Because both are fun.

 

[KidSnide]

Poison thus becomes less of an encounter-level threat and more of an adventure-level one, the consequences of one encounter carrying through to the next. And it adds verisimilitude into the bargain (real-world poisons almost always take at least 30 seconds to kick in, usually minutes or hours).

Apparently, I have to spread some xp around, but this is a really interesting way to re-conceptualize poison. It puts poison into the same category as lycanthropy and mummy rot, as ways of risking the character's life without necessarily having a major effect on that particular combat.

I also note that ability score damage is probably better resolved as an out-of-combat effect, when re-calculating scores isn't quite so annoying.

-KS

 

[FireLance]

I'd like poison to be handled like the 4e disease track with a twist: have a varying amount of time needed between each saving throw/Constitution check to determine whether effect gets better, worse, or remains the same.

So you can have quick-acting poisons which require checks every round and are useful in combat situations, and slow-acting poisons which require days to take full effect.

So a very basic quick-acting poison could have just one stage: character takes 5 hp damage at the start of his turn. If the DC to recover is 15, the character takes 5 hp damage at the start of his turn until he makes the necessary check (once per round) to recover from the poison.

A more complicated poison could have two stages: 1) character takes 5 hp damage at the start of his turn; and 2) character is dazed and takes 5 hp damage at the start of his turn. This poison would have a maintain DC (say 10) as well as a recover DC (say 15). A character at stage 1 must roll 10 or better to remain at this stage and 15 or better to recover. If he rolls 9 or less, he progresses to stage 2. At stage 2, he needs to roll 15 or better to get back to stage 1.

Slow-acting poisons are there simply because I would like the option and I feel that they have been under-used so far in D&D.

 

[slobster]

I like your idea, though I don't share your aversion to ongoing damage. Not all poison needs to deal ongoing damage, not even most. But I wouldn't mind seeing ongoing poison damage as often as you see, say, ongoing fire or cold damage.

Also having poison as a "flavor" of damage a la cold, fire, acid etc. does not mean that you can't have poisons that put someone to sleep or paralyze them. It just means that you have a standardized way of dealing with potentially lethal poisons that doesn't have the bookkeeping problems that ability damage does, or the swinginess (spellcheck tells me that isn't a word) of death effects.

So a poison could be:
Deathroot (+6 vs Con)
3d6 poison damage

Or it could be:
Fugu (+10 vs Con)
target is paralyzed for 2d4 rounds

Or it could be:
Black Lotus (+10 vs Con)
Ongoing 3d6 poison damage (save ends)

With poisons like this, you could hand them out with treasure like potions and other consumables. They wouldn't generally be available in shops, but certain underground contacts could get them for you, and certain character themes would increase your access to such dubious merchants. You could also include some info in the MM on how to harvest certain poisons from certain monsters, to sell or to use. I think a chance of self-poisoning for untrained would-be poisoners might be fun, but I'd need to playtest it to be sure.

Thus they could be available from first level, like scrolls and other consumables are handled in 3.X. They are rare enough that you don't pop them in every encounter, but you get to use them at least every session. You might run into the problem of high level characters stocking up on poisons, though, and with the flatter math I don't know if you could have level-based obsolescence as monsters and characters outgrow the poison DCs. . .

Just a thought.

 

[CleverNickName]

Oh. A topic I can really have my trained viper stick their fangs into.

Nice.

I am okay with poison damage but I am not okay with poison just being a damage type. Not all poisons and venom kill or are designed to do so. I want some good o' sleep and paralysis poisons.

Okay, okay...you have a point. I do want sleep and paralysis also, and lots of other effects as well (poison that turns you slowly into a spider? Yes please.) But can't all of these toxins be handled with the same mechanic?

Compare this:

DM: The arrow penetrates your armor...*rolls dice*...for five points of damage. Please make a save throw.
PLAYER: Oh crap. Um...*roll*...crap, six.
DM: You take...*rolls dice*....eight more points of damage.
PLAYER: Ouch.

To this:

DM: The arrow penetrates your armor...*rolls dice*...for five points of damage. Please make a save throw.
PLAYER: Oh crap. Um...*roll*...crap, six.
DM: You fall unconscious for...*rolls dice*....eight rounds.
PLAYER: Ouch.

No ability damage, nothing ongoing, no arbitrary immunity, just one simple save against a fixed effect, and we move on.

Poison use, immunity, and removal? Make poison immunity more rare. Like SUPER RARE. None of this "Hit 7th level. LOL Poisons" stuff. Everyone should be afraid of poison ('cept dwarves. Dwarves chug poison). Jörmungandr the Midgard Serpent kills Thor with the stuff. Poison should always be an "OH (Censored)" moment if your character is hit with one. And the thus only the trained with EVER use contact, inhaled, or injury poison.

Absolutely. Getting poisoned should be at least as terrifying as, say, getting electrocuted or set on fire. Just sayin'.