D&D 5E Dual hand crossbows, poison and hex warlock

[Blue]

Folks, can every thread about hand crossbows not be derailed in the same way? It's been going on enough that we all know "it works some way at my table, but there's some question and gets run different ways at another table" regardless of which way you want to argue it. Let's keep on the unique (and therefore interesting) parts of this post as opposed to rehashing.

Thanks.

 

[Blue]

Your DM will have to adjudicate if an imp is a valid source for poison, and how long it will last. At the very least I would require proficiency with a Poisoners kit, and take some time to harvest and prepare the poison; likely using the crafting rules, or some modification.

This makes sense to me.

There's no 'milking' rule so we need to adjudicate. Just having it "on tap" seems powerful from a balance perspective, and from a 'real world" PoV assumes that the dose the injector will deliver can be applied to a bolt AND will stick to it. We've got rules for crafting (PHB p187). But even if we assume that "raw materials are free", it would take 20 days to make 1 dose of Basic Poison. That also seems unbalanced (too weak). And frankly, uninteresting. So I'd probably go somewhere in the middle.

 

[Katmandoo122]

LOL...what do we have here? A discussion about whether it takes one or two hands to load a hand crossbow? How novel!


To the OP, the Imp thing is very sketchy. Personally, I wouldn't allow it as a DM and I'd be against it as a PC. It reeks a bit of too much metagaming or whatever people call it. However, as a DM, I TOTALLY would have allowed you to spend downtime and gold on developing poisons (good RP for a drow) and I would even allow you (if you came up with the idea) to spend downtime creating some sort of quick-apply bottle that allowed you to apply poison X times per bottle with you being able to carry a reasonable number of bottles.

So now just use your Imp to help and try to get advantage.

 

[Lancelot]

There's no 'milking' rule so we need to adjudicate. Just having it "on tap" seems powerful from a balance perspective, and from a 'real world" PoV assumes that the dose the injector will deliver can be applied to a bolt AND will stick to it. We've got rules for crafting (PHB p187). But even if we assume that "raw materials are free", it would take 20 days to make 1 dose of Basic Poison. That also seems unbalanced (too weak). And frankly, uninteresting. So I'd probably go somewhere in the middle.

There is a milking rule. I don't have my copy of the DMG at work with me, but look under "poison" (in the index) for the page reference. From memory, it's a DC 20 Nature check to successfully gather poison from a target creature. If the check is failed by 4 or less, the attempt fails. If the check fails by 5 or more, the "milker" is exposed to the venom.

If I was DM'ing the warlock above, I'd maybe allow the "milking" check to be rolled with Advantage (assuming the imp was co-operative...), but I doubt I'd forgo it altogether. I'd also make sure the imp grows to resent being used in the purpose. After a few successful attempts, it begins laying plans to make the warlock suffer...

 

[Paraxis]

The harvesting rules in the DMG are not designed with a willing companion or familiar in mind.

A character can instead attempt to harvest poison from a poisonous creature, such as a snake, wyvern, or
carrion crawler. The creature must be incapacitated or dead, and the harvesting requires 1d6 minutes followed by a DC 20 Intelligence (Nature) check. (Proficiency with the poisoner's kit applies to this check if the character doesn't have proficiency in Nature.) On a successful check, the character harvests enough poison for a single dose. On a failed check, the character is unable to extract any poison. If the character fails the check by 5 or more, the character is subjected to the
creature's poison.

It also doesn't cover frequency, can you harvest poison from the same creature multiple times? if so how often?

How long does the poison last in a container?

How long does it last if applied to food, or on a weapon?

The DMG is not very helpful when it comes to poisons and leaves a lot of the work up to individual DM's.

 

[Dausuul]

Stingers, like snake fangs, are biological hypodermic needles designed to inject a dose of venom. The crossbow bolt is nothing of the sort. It's a very poor delivery vehicle; most of the poison would just run right off. You could add some kind of thickener to make it stick to the bolt, I suppose, but that would impede its ability to mix into the victim's bloodstream.

I'd probably allow you to "milk" the imp and make a Nature check to brew a dose of basic poison out of the PHB, which would last 24 hours.

 

[Flatulus]

Thanks. I have had a read on the milking rules. I think there is no reason an Imp can't be milked but a carrion crawler can. The 'incapacitated ' part is quite odd. If it is willing to share venom, why have to tie it up?

Certainly it would be limited in how often it could be milked. Once per day at most. Given the self-poisoning chance, and subsequent healing required, I don't think it would end up game breaking. I am considering just having all poisons use the 'basic poison' rules that they last in the jar, but denature on the weapon after 1 minute?

 

[Coredump]

So... I tried to track down some info about milking snake venom. Its not easy finding useful info. Apparently you can milk them fairly often, but you get a *tiny* bit each time. (69,000 milkings for 1 pint was one example)

For this, I would allow milking once a day, and it takes 3 days to get enough to make the toxin. You will need access to the poisoners kit for collecting, and then for processing the poison. It will take a certain number of hours to turn the raw poison into something you can use on a crossbow bolt. Once made it will last...... 2?3? weeks in a vial. Once applied it will last 1 minute, and is expended upon the first damage dealt.

Haven't decided how many bolts..... is that mentioned for the basic poison?

 

[Flatulus]

Yes, one dose of poison does 3 bolts, or one melee weapon.

 

[Warbringer]

LOL...what do we have here? A discussion about whether it takes one or two hands to load a hand crossbow?

I prefer to look at it as " how many hands does it take to milk an imp....i'm sure Ros could tell us....