Collecting poisons

[kigmatzomat]

My group recently slaughtered a trio of purple worms. They took the worms out in record time; One of them never even got a chance to sting. Purple worm venom is worth 700gp/dose according to the DMG. Even assuming 1-3 ounces of venom/dose how much poison is collected from a creature that is so freaking big?

Collection isn't a problem when the party includes a deepwood sniper (safe poison use, craft: poison, knowledge: poisons), a monk (immune to poison), a mage (knowledge skills: lots) and a cleric (herbalism, profession: butcher).
They've managed to put the poison glands into indefinite storage by using the item spell and turning the glands into little patches of fabric so I can't use the classic "it spoils before you get the supplies you need" arguement of GMs everywhere.

Any ideas? This is a "treasure" I hadn't considered. I won't mind giving them the cash or functionality of the poison but I don't want to set an excessive precedent.

 

[Alchemist]

Clever lot. They're obviously geared to poisons and taking advantage of it.

AFAIK, There aren't any rules for collecting and distilling poison so we're firmly into house rules territiory.

I believe that a creature only holds a small number of doses at a time, perhaps in the 1-3 range, manufacturing more as it is used. I would tell them that they need to process and stabilize the raw poison with specially prepared herbs, chemicals, equipment, etc. Alchemists' lab is a must. The AEG suggests material costs for crafting a poison to be in the 3/4 to 1/6th market value/dose, depending on availability. So I would let them either a) sell the stuff @~1/6th market value (~120gp/dose) for however many doses you think is appropriate for their haul or b) try to make their own, ponying up another 1/6th of market value in materials per dose. Either way, they get something out of it.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

In Unearthed Arcana, there are rules for metamagic spell components, some of which come from critters. For harvesting, they require:

DC 15 Proffession (Taxidermy), within 15 min. of death to hrvest the part. The check takes 10 min.

DC 20 Proffession (Taxidermy), which takes one hour, to preserve the body part.

The number of components is usually one per creature, such as dire bat fur for Arcane Eye. For Maze, they use a minotaur's horn, so you get two. For Acid Fog, they use a gorgon's hoof, so there you get four. If it does not fit with the above, the creature yields 1d4 parts.

I'd say the above could be used for collecting posion, if there is not anything in S&S. Whether you give them one dose or 1d4 is a matter of your generosity.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Keep in mind that the size of the creature doesn't necessarily mean there's a lot of venom. The poison glands/sack could be quite small.

 

[Jon Potter]

Book of Vile Darkness had rules for poisons.

According to that source, raw poison is harvested in an unusable form and must be refined using the Craft skill. The raw stuff is worth something like 1/10th (or less - I don't have the book in front of me) of the price for the refined poison and can't be used to coat weapons, etc.

It's the only WotC rule reference that I could find when this came up in my own game.

 

[Pyrex]

Here's what I'd do.

A Purple Worm is a EL 12 encounter. According to the SRD, an EL 12 encounter should (on average) yield 7500gp worth of treasure.

So, depending on how much treasure the PC's found in it's lair, I'd allow them to harvest (via Prof(Taxidermy) as below) up to half that treasure value as raw venom. (3750gp / Worm)

Now that they've got the raw venom, they need to use Craft(Poisonmaking) to turn the raw venom into finished product.

Each "dose" of finished venom is worth 700gp, of which 1/3 (233.3 gp) is raw materials, so each Worm provides up to 16 doses worth of raw materials.

Assuming a DC 20 check, and they Take 10 with a +10 modifier, they'll be brewing their raw venom into finished product until roughly the end of time. (400sp of progress per week of crafting means it takes 17 weeks to produce a finished dose of venom...)

 

[kigmatzomat]

Hmmmm, I forgot about the crafting times. We're looking at generating 700gp per dose with craft checks. Not a fast process. Iiiinteresting.

The characters involved don't have skills high enough to take 10 and meet DC20 and their odds of screwing up the whole process are too high. Even if they had a die-hard poison crafter with lots of synergy and stat bonuses, max rank would be 30ish and still take ~9 weeks per dose. Far, far longer than they'll ever want to put up with.

So I treat it as raw materials worth 230gp/dose.

I'm still going to be guessing on the number of doses, but that just means deciding the die to roll. Thanks guys.

 

[Alchemist]

Assuming a DC 20 check, and they Take 10 with a +10 modifier, they'll be brewing their raw venom into finished product until roughly the end of time. (400sp of progress per week of crafting means it takes 17 weeks to produce a finished dose of venom...)

According to the rules in the AEG, crafting poisons is resolved on a weekly gp production, not sp. Purple worm venom is a DC 24 craft, so taking 10 needs a +14 and would net you 576gp of product in one week of work. Almost a dose.

BoVD has the same info, and also notes that "Characters who hunt creatures for their venom will have a difficult time finding buyers for the corpses of poisonous creatures. If they can find a buyer, characters will typically get 1/6 of the cost of one dose of the refined version of the poison."

So according to BoVD, one entire poisonous creature (or rather, the poison glands/sacs/whatever) has a value of 1/6 of one dose to a poisonmaker. That pretty much implies that one creature=one dose. Do what you like, but I would at least allow 1-2 doses to be made from a creature.