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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TanithT" data-source="post: 5770008" data-attributes="member: 87695">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?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.</blockquote>

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