• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

Druid's Venom Immunity

So, I didn't catch the ENTIRE thread, but it seems to me all the logical bantering back and forth ignores one possibility- that the mention of "including magical poisons" was not an intentional addition to the rules, but perhaps just a lazy/accidental use of enumeratio?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

It doesn't get much clearer than "all poisons". Why your DM wouldn't count the "magical poisons" and "artificial poisons" sets as subsets of the "all poisons" set is beyond me.

Depends on how much realism vs. magic you want to interject into your game. The obvious/easy choice is to go with whatever the standard rules say, but in case you want to make some homebrew tweaks based on science, here's some boring real world background. Warning: most of you will find this unspeakably nerdy and TL;DR.

Immunity to venom is something that can evolve in the organism as part of a natural "arms race" between predator and prey, which is why you see significant specific antibody activity in local mammal populations that are heavily predated by venomous snakes. The snake population ends up semi-randomly turning on or turning off genes that express various components of their venom, and in some species this can actually be a dynamic/ontogenic process in the individual animal as its size and age moves it to a different prey niche.

Immunity to a specific toxin or class of toxins doesn't carry over to any other class of toxins. Take a mammal from a population with strong immunity to the venom of local rattlesnakes and expose it to a snake from a different geographical area, and it's just lunch. This can even be true for snakes in the same species, as individual and locality expressions of venom components can be highly variable.

Immunity to venom can also be acquired through gradual introduction and the buildup of antibodies, which is why a number of scientists who work directly with the live snakes or with venom or both practice SI, self-immunization. A non fatal exposure leads to the production of antibodies, which can be maintained with regular small subcutaneous injections.

Exposure via the mucosal route is much more likely to trigger the wrong cascade of immune response and lead to sensitivity/allergy rather than increased immunity, which is why folks who work with lyophilized product and herpetologists working with spitting cobras who deliver their annoyance in airborne form are well advised to either wear respirators or do the sub-Q shots. You can avoid a bite, but you can't avoid mucosal exposure if you're in the same room with a spitter when it unloads. Or after it unloads for that matter, if you clean the surfaces. Bleach helps but doesn't eliminate the exposure issue. A number of venom lab workers do the sub-Q shots as allergy shots rather than in quantity sufficient to stimulate significant antibody production.

Raising antibodies to most natural venoms, at least on the reptile end, is pretty straightforward and has only one major pitfall. Neurotoxins and myotoxins are easy. Cytotoxins are the toughie because of tissue death on self injection even of dilute amounts. That's where you start wanting to think about doing protein fractions, which takes it out of the realm of a DIY project or a small venom lab project. Electrophoresis columns are a lot more expensive than lyophilizers. But, it can still be done, albeit not nearly as effectively. In the case of venoms with a strong cytotoxic component that effectively act as a pre-digestive, lysing and dissolving cells, immunization tends to be less effective even when it can be accomplished without injury.

Please note that even if you have good circulating levels of a venom-specific antibody in your system at the time of a bite, if that critter seriously unloads on you, the venom will almost certainly outpace the ability of your antibodies to stave it off. What SI means on a practical level is that you will be able to shrug off minor envenomations with little or no ill effect, and for anything beyond that you will need less antivenom and less time in the hospital, on a respirator or on a drip to prevent rhabdo and kidney shutdown. Not none, just less. Fair warning: the term "immunity" is pretty misleading, because it really isn't. At least not in the real world. "Resistance" would probably be a better description of what can realistically be achieved either through evolution or self-immunization.

Raising antibodies and being sure of triggering the correct IgG vs IgE cascade is definitely do-able for snake venoms. When you move to poisons that work in an entirely different way in the body, antibodies are no longer effective in combating them. There is no antivenom, or effective natural antibodies, for something like heavy metal poisoning. You can administer chelating agents that can bind to those molecules and speed their passage from the body, but I am not sure that there is any way of having a permanent natural circulating level of chelating agents already in the body, as there is with venom antibodies.

There is nothing that can be done to immunize vs corrosive poisons that act directly to cause damage to flesh. You can reverse their continued action after the fact, but the agents you're using may be as damaging to the patient in the absence of any corrosive to neutralize as the corrosive itself.

My knowledge is minimal on the subject of poisons that aren't delivered by bite or sting, but I do know that they have some radically different mechanisms of action and are not affected by antibodies which can be produced by the body. Immunity to injected biotoxins, even a wide range of them, would have no effect on the types of poisons that affect the body by different mechanisms and which are not mitigated by natural antibodies.

Blanket immunity to "poisons" is not a concept that makes any sense medically or scientifically. Which is not necessarily relevant when you're playing a fantasy game, if you simply use the deus ex machina of "it's MAAAGIC" to explain away the discrepancies. In real life, people can't cast Fireball either. So, it's certainly excusable. But if you feel like being a bit devilish with your players and setting limits on anything defined as non magical poison immunity, these would be some reasonable starting points.

TL;DR, just say it's magic and forget about it. Unless you're nerdly enough to care how poisons work in the real world and apply that to your campaign.
 

The name of the ability is "Venom Immunity." The description is "At 9th level, a druid gains immunity to all poisons." Which one are you going to go with?

I'll admit, it's possible they knew of the distinction back in the days when Venom Immunity only applied to natural poisons. In 3.5's case, they either know of it and are ignoring it or they don't know of it. They're a game-making company after all, not a group of biologists. This is reinforced by them listing various things as poisons when they're technically toxins or venom.

The intent of the ability seems pretty darn clear: immunity to all poisons. If anyone really wants to find out the solid truth though, perhaps a message to WotC itself is in order?

The way I phrased it when educating folks about biotoxins was that poison is bad if you bite into it, and venom is bad if it bites into you.

A bit of a crude approximation, but what is generally accepted in the biotox community is that venom is delivered via active mechanism (bite, sting or aerosolization) and poison is a passive mechanism that requires touch or inhestion, or inhalation minus the active aerosolization by the organism.

Medically, all drugs are poisons. Sometimes it's just a question of which organisms they poison - to a bacteria or a parasite, the antibiotic or antihelminthic is definitely a poison. Quantity tends to be the dividing line; there are almost no efficacious drugs that will not kill the patient when overdosed. Sometimes the safety margin between life saving drug and fatal overdose is very, very tiny. Sometimes the drug is always harmful or fatal in the absence of a specific condition it is intended to treat.

So the mechanism of how you would magically distinguish a harmful poison from a helpful drug when the dividing line is quantity rather than quality is really something of a complicated grey area. I think we're pretty much stuck with the "it's MAAAAGIC" deus ex machina, because medically there just isn't that distinction.

The bio stuff is geeky and complicated enough that I definitely don't blame any GMs for throwing up their hands and just using the easiest interpretation of the rule book, even if it makes zero medical or scientific sense. It's D&D, not a National Geographic documentary.
 
Last edited:


n any case, my own ruling would be that the immunity applies to all naturally occurring toxins. Now, if you used those toxins to brew your own poison, that might be another matter. That is, if a Druid were poisoned, particularly by another Druid, I'm thinking that the poisoning Druid would be able to figure out a toxic combo that would knock his victim to his knees at the very least.

I would agree with that. If you are postulating the partially or wholly non magical development of natural toxin resistance as part of druid training, this would be an annoyingly easy project. There is a freakishly wide spectrum of biotoxins expressed by various organisms, and sometimes a wide spread within a single species. Resistance to the most commonly occurring toxins in one region is unlikely to be quite as helpful in another region, particularly if it is environmentally dissimilar.

It can also be unhelpful if some evolutionary factor causes a local venomous organism to start expressing dormant genes for a venom component that wasn't previously optimal for the prey it used to feed on.

Watch a snake population switch from being mammal eaters to reptile, fish or amphibian eaters, and you will see some seriously potent neurotoxins start showing up over time. The opposite occurs in a population where the juveniles prey primarily on lizards and graduate to rodents as they increase in size. Neurotoxins drop down, cytotoxins emerge, which are fabulous for rapid rodent immobilzation on an intracoelomic injection but don't do nearly as much in reptiles, and coincidentally not as much in larger animals like humans either. You get significantly lowered (or raised) human toxicity as an accidental side effect of prey shift, and also when a prey population evolves too much venom specific resistance. It's essentially an evolutionary arms race.

Obviously the genetics to express the different venom components have to be there to begin with. But it can be a fairly dramatic effect, and it can take place in individual animals as well as being a general adaptive shift in a population over time. Ontogenic and evolutionary shifts in venom typing are invariably tied to preferred prey, not to defense. The human LD-50 of venom is an utter accident, not a purposeful evolutionary path. Not to say it couldn't happen otherwise, especially in a fantasy world, but the boring reality is that snakes envenomate to eat, and defense is a very minor factor for some very solid reasons I won't bore folks with here.

Ultimately the question hinges on how druids in your campaign develop venom immunity in the first place. Is it magically bestowed, or are they injecting and ingesting minute quantities of assorted toxins on a regular enough basis to develop and maintain circulating antibodies? Or perhaps some of both, where magic boosts the effect of their hard work from resistance (what you'd actually achieve by doing this in the real world) to true immunity?


"I realize you have built up an immunity to every naturally occurring toxin in the Kingdom of Nalin. However, there is a rather curious lizard that makes its home in the deserts of Thrumblin..."
Herpetologist approves +1. This scenario is medically and scientifically accurate.

Thing is, if you kick magic into the equation and ignore realism, the evolution of different toxin components in geographically remote populations no longer matters as much as the "magic" element, which has a much less explainable mechanism of effect.
 
Last edited:


Medically, all drugs are poisons. Sometimes it's just a question of which organisms they poison - to a bacteria or a parasite, the antibiotic or antihelminthic is definitely a poison. Quantity tends to be the dividing line; there are almost no efficacious drugs that will not kill the patient when overdosed. Sometimes the safety margin between life saving drug and fatal overdose is very, very tiny. Sometimes the drug is always harmful or fatal in the absence of a specific condition it is intended to treat.

So the mechanism of how you would magically distinguish a harmful poison from a helpful drug when the dividing line is quantity rather than quality is really something of a complicated grey area. I think we're pretty much stuck with the "it's MAAAAGIC" deus ex machina, because medically there just isn't that distinction.

This also occurred to me during this discussion, but since D&D doesn't use a lot of straight up medicines, I never broached the topic.

I did use this line of reasoning when I pointed out that a "magical" poison and a "magical" potion would be essentially the same thing i.e. a liquid you consume which then results in a magical effect or a substance which transmits a magical effect after contact.

Essentially I came the conclusion during the thread that in D&D it makes the most sense if we consider that poisons could have a magical origin, but the poison itself, is meant to be non-magical in nature. In other words, a magical poison don't exist, just magic that creates poisons. Attempting to claim a poison is magical is like creating magical ice that transmitted heat. It's not really "ice" if it transmits heat is it? It's something else entirely. But as you suggest, in a game, you can call it ice and try to treat it like ice no matter how inconsistent such an approach would be.
 
Last edited:

Please lock this thread

There's lots of topics that aren't of personal interest to me. I don't go into those threads asking that they be closed. I just don't bother reading them.

Venoms and biological toxins are a nifty, geeky, interesting topic that can make good background material or a useful plot hook for your campaign. Why complain if folks who are actually interested choose to discuss?
 

There's lots of topics that aren't of personal interest to me. I don't go into those threads asking that they be closed. I just don't bother reading them.

This is what I call the troll tax. There's always a few people who patrol every thread and when people stop listening to them or they no longer want to talk about it, they think the thread should be stopped. It's so juvenile I find it amusing.
 

This also occurred to me during this discussion, but since D&D doesn't use a lot of straight up medicines, I never broached the topic.

If memory serves, when medicines (or herbs with pharmacological effect) are discussed, the mechanics are handled similarly to magical effect. I don't think they make a clear rules distinction.


I did use this line of reasoning when I pointed out that a "magical" poison and a "magical" potion would be essentially the same thing i.e. a liquid you consume which then results in a magical effect or a substance which transmits a magical effect after contact.

I suppose that would depend on the individual substance. We could postulate a magically created poison in which magic substitutes for science during the process of creation, concentrating an existing substance to a potency well beyond that which could be achieved with the current tech level of the campaign. The end substance would be magically created, but might be functionally identical to a concentrated toxin that could be made in the real world with modern scientific technique and equipment. Or, who knows, it could even be more potent than that, because "magic" amplified its effects.

Or you could postulate a magical poison which was basically a magical item that cast a spell of sorts, or that had a magical effect on contact. In that case, sky's the limit for what you're imagining.


Essentially I came the conclusion during the thread that in D&D it makes the most sense if we consider that poisons could have a magical origin, but the poison itself, is meant to be non-magical in nature. In other words, a magical poison don't exist, just magic that creates poisons. Attempting to claim a poison is magical is like creating magical ice that transmitted heat. It's not really "ice" if it transmits heat is it? It's something else entirely. But as you suggest, in a game, you can call it ice and try to treat it like ice no matter how inconsistent such an approach would be.

I don't see any reason you couldn't make "hot ice" an interesting alchemical plot hook, actually. Or magical poison, for that matter. IMO, it's DM's choice.

This said, I would personally tend to err on the side of magical poisons making more real world sense, eg, they were created and distilled using magical methods as a straight substitute for the scientific technique and equipment that doesn't exist at your assumed tech level.

Not everyone is going to want to tackle the thorny question of what exactly IS your campaign's tech level, and how much the existence of magic has essentially substituted for scientific advancement by making it impractical to invest a lot of resources in. When it's cheaper to hire a mage, and you don't have a high enough level of national unification to have a major budget to spend on non magical R&D, you won't necessarily have tech - but you probably have a lot of low level "commercial mages" who can make a very reliable living casting cantrips and first level spells to solve common industrial problems and produce useful goods.

Consider a "wood preservation" cantrip that slightly changed wood grain and structure to make it a bit more durable and resistant to marine and terrestrial parasites. Not very highly powered in game terms, but oh so economically viable.

I could see medicine and poison creation working similarly, with alchemical techniques getting a boost from relatively simple magic. I can also see where total realism on this level would start impacting game mechanics, so it's not a line of thought that most DM's are likely to want to follow.
 

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top