D&D 5E Crafting Poison Houserule

[FuelDrop]

So, I'm making a rogue. Specifically an assassin. That means I want to use poison.

Now in D&D poison, even weak poison, is very expensive. This isn't necessarily a problem. What is a problem is that making your own poison takes FOREVER!

The weak poison from the PHB takes 20 days to make one dose. Better poisons take months!

So here's the houserule that I'm going to suggest to my GM: Most of the cost of poison is the expensive and possibly illegal ingredients. When crafting poison, the crafter makes 50 gp of progress per day instead of 5.

Suddenly spending downtime crafting poison becomes viable.

A possible amendment for this could also be Batches: When crafting poisons or potions, you can make up to your proficiency bonus doses concurrently. You must still pay the normal price for each dose, but by creating several at once you reduce your time overhead.

What are people's thoughts on these houserules? If someone asked for your game, would you allow one, the other or both?

 

[Merchant of Shadows]

The reason why poison is so expensive and hard to make is that it gives a direct and noticeable advantage in combat while the classes are being balanced without poison in mind.
An assassin usually does not make 25 assassinations over the course of one game session. He usually makes 1 by killing the mark he has been after during all that time and the current crafting rules allow you to make 1 dose of poison for that occasion. If you want to poison every single guard, thug and random encounter on the way to your mark - then you can just reflavor everyone who dies from your sneak attack damage into death from a poisoned dagger.
Spending downtime crafting poison is just as viable as spending downtime crafting swords or writting scrolls.
My thoughts on these houserules and my hypotetical answer to someone asking for them in my game will be: it sounds like a reasonable idea if you want to play a character focused on making and using poisons... what combat related class feature are you willing to give in return? Part of your sneak attack? Uncanny dodge? Evasion?

 

[FuelDrop]

The reason why poison is so expensive and hard to make is that it gives a direct and noticeable advantage in combat while the classes are being balanced without poison in mind.
An assassin usually does not make 25 assassinations over the course of one game session. He usually makes 1 by killing the mark he has been after during all that time and the current crafting rules allow you to make 1 dose of poison for that occasion. If you want to poison every single guard, thug and random encounter on the way to your mark - then you can just reflavor everyone who dies from your sneak attack damage into death from a poisoned dagger.
Spending downtime crafting poison is just as viable as spending downtime crafting swords or writting scrolls.
My thoughts on these houserules and my hypotetical answer to someone asking for them in my game will be: it sounds like a reasonable idea if you want to play a character focused on making and using poisons... what combat related class feature are you willing to give in return? Part of your sneak attack? Uncanny dodge? Evasion?

I'll give up Impostor. It's far too circumstantial to begin with, and it's fairly impractical beyond that. Better poison crafting will at least come up sometimes.

Worst case scenario you're looking at someone having twice as much poison as if they bought it on the market. And that's potentially at the expense of crafting magic items, or extra healing potions, ect.
If you're really that worried about poison being that unbalancing a flask of antitoxin costs 1/2 as much as the cheapest poison, and is something many important people would have a reason to keep around.

 

[Lancelot]

If I was asked in my home game about the ability to produce poison more quickly... I'd probably allow the concept of brewing batches. Between each session (assuming the rogue has a chance to perform downtime between each session, and isn't halfway through a particularly large "dungeon"), I'd allow the PC to brew a number of doses at the same time, equal to their proficiency bonus. They would still have to pay the regular price, of course (e.g. 50% of the end value of the poison).

That seems reasonable to me. To be clear: I wouldn't want an assassin carrying more than a handful of doses into the adventure. The assassin is already a fairly potent damage dealer. They should be dipping into their precious-and-limited stock of poisons for special encounters or boss fights, not "greasing up" in every combat encounter.

...and, as DM, if I ever felt that the assassin's poison use was getting out of hand, I can always limit it by either restricting the amount of treasure found in the adventure (preventing them from crafting anything but the most basic poisons), increasing the number of poison-immune enemies (e.g. elementals, constructs, most undead), or reducing the amount of downtime available.

...

I personally wouldn't allow the 10x speed house-rule. I don't mind the batch-brewing, but I can see other players getting annoyed if the assassin can brew everything at 10x speed, but they can't do the same for their own crafting, research, building, etc. And if you're allowing everything at 10x speed, then it simply wouldn't work for my own group. Your group's perspective may vary.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I fully agree with Merchant of Shadows. In fact, my first thought was reflavoring Sneak Attack too.