Frequency of poison-use in a medieval fantasy world

[Turanil]

On another forum there was a thread that can be summarized like this:

-- Why poisons cost such insanely high prices?
-- To keep them rare, otherwise PCs (and NPCs) would overuse them, which would quickly ruin the campaign.

Now, this was in a C&C thread, where poisons in Castles & Crusades cost 10 times as much as in D&D. As such, this discussion probably doesn't concern d20. Nonetheless, it could be argued that a druid could easily find several doses of natural poisons in the wilderness for free, instead of spending 100 to 300 (or more) gp per dose at the local assassin or evil alchemist. In any case, it made me think about the frequency of poison-use in most fantasy games (D&D or others), and whether poison should be hard to obtain or not. So the questions (and my own thoughts about them) are:


1) Can poison be easy to obtain in the campaign setting, and if so what will be the consequences?

I thought that we could take a look at our real world history. It appears that during the Renaissance, poison was actually easy to obtain and people overused it! Here are some links, plus an excerpt from those webpages:

Poisoning in history (a short introductory article)
Poisoning in the Middle Ages (a more detailed article about the medieval period)
Poisons in the Renaisance (I highly suggest to at least read this one; you won't consider poisons in rpgs the same thereafter!)
Poisoning in the 16th, 17th and 18th Century (another must-read!)
Folklore Poisons (natural poisons that a druid will know about.)
Arsenic Poisoning (so arsenic poisoning was common throughout history...)

During these times, there was very little value attached to life, so people in distinguished positions lived in constant apprehension. Poison was becoming the foremost weapon and its relative inconspicuous nature meant dinner parties were feared...

By the 17th century, poisoning had become such an art that there were schools in both Venice and Rome. Commencing in the 16th century, a body of alchemists notoriously known as the Council of Ten was formed. They planned, voted and carried out the eradication of any chosen person for a sum of money.

Perhaps the most notorious poisoner of the 17th century was a woman named Toffana. It has been estimated that Toffana aided the murder of over 600 people, usually husbands.

round the time of 1572 there were about thirty thousand sorcerers in Paris and the practice of poisoning was supposedly epidemic.

So it clearly appear that overuse of poison in a fantasy setting wouldn't be implausible. It could add to the campaign's atmosphere, and the PCs would have to keep on guard. In fact, this would even make high level PCs less invincible... Now in such a setting there must be ways to limit the use and lethality of poisons:


2) What can be done to limit the prevalence of poison-use in a campaign?

I mean, if poison availability is not restricted through a high price, what can be done if many people can obtain poison in the setting?

-- Law may forbid the selling and manufacturing of poison. As such, if PCs want to buy poison, they will have first to figure out where and from whom. And maybe all those who could have sold poison are now dead or imprisoned, so whatever they do, the PCs won't find poison for sale. On the other hand, if the PCs find access to the black market, they could by the same token attract some unwanted attention of various criminals, of the authorites, or both. Note by the way, that searching for an unknown manufacturer of poison on behalf of the authorities could be an adventure plot in itself.

-- Then, if the PCs want to manufacture poison by themselves, they will need to have some equipment or even a laboratory, and they still can be unsuccessful in their attempt at creating a poison. In any case, obtaining the equipment to manufacture poisons, could also draw some unwanted attention (albeit less so than directly prchasing poison).

-- PCs may waste time into buying bogus poisons from Charlatans who disappear thereafter, or even betray them to the authoities. Do that a few times and the PCs will become wary of trying to buy poison, even if it is relatively cheap.

-- DM may rule that some poisons lose potency over time, and thus should be used quickly if they are to be effective.

-- In any case, if poisons become easily available in a setting, likewise antidotes will be easily found, so unless it's a rare extremely potent poison that kills immediately, people will have means to countereffect poisons, and maybe to even become inured to them.

 

[luke_twigger]

In such a campaign you'd have to factor in low-level magic such as Purify Food & Drink, Detect Poison, etc which may or may not be readily available depending on the setting.

In a recent campaign I played in, our PCs visited a village where they became sick after drinking water from a tainted well (this event was a hook into a module). For the entire rest of the campaign my (cleric) PC learned Purify Food & Drink multiple times each day and refused to consume anything he hadn't personally cleansed.

 

[Stalker0]

Increasing poison access in the game tends to hurt pcs a lot more than npcs. If an npc is poisoned, they die a little quicker. Oh well, moving on. Ability damage to pcs last longer and winds up hurting them more in the long run.

To put it in a dnd perspective, poison really isn't that expensive. Craft Poisonmaking only requires 1/6 the market price if the products are readily available, so a druid could most certainly make a decent poison for cheap. And since most people poisoned are not pcs, you don't really need the uber awesome poison.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think that the reason a poison would be expensive in a fantasy world would be the costs involved in shielding the creators & users from divination spells, and low level enchantments to make the poisons resistant to "purify" effects.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

You want to poison someone? Use yew. The tree that many longbows are made from? Yep, it make a deadly poison. Not much manufacturing involved. Most other poisons are pretty cheap too. The real cost comes when they are made illeagal and the seller charges high prices because of the risk. Add in the effects of magic and they become considerably less effective. (Well, for those who can 'afford' to replace food tasters with Neutralize Poison.) For low level characters (PCs and NPCs alike) poison should still be the prefered choice to get rid of a nuicence.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ricin- derived from castor beans...the same beans used to make the castor oil...one of the deadliest poisons known to man.

 

[Turanil]

So, poisons should be cheap and easy to acquire. Murder through poison would be common. How this would affect the campaign setting? What would be the consequences on a campaign? I guess since these are essentially ingested poisons, it wouldn't affect too much combat and thus wouldn't affect too much adventures.

 

[TheNovaLord]

"You want to poison someone? Use yew. The tree that many longbows are made from? Yep, it make a deadly poison. Not much manufacturing involved. Most other poisons are pretty cheap too."

I think poison is D&D is well handled (ie they are expensive and easy ish to resist). we play DragonQuest a lot and if u make a weapon out of yew for example they do insane amounts amounts of damage nad many basic herbs that are cheap are very toxic. lots of mushroom for example....even if the posion isnt instant kill they can incapicitate very well.
If the D&D game where played realistically no living monster would be an issue and you would use poison all the time, especially if u had a cleric long to heal/neutralise and the big bad monster didnt.

 

[Storm Raven]

My understanding concerning poison use in the pre-modern world is that getting the poison itself was never really the problem (there are lots of substances quite toxic to humans that are easily found in nature). Rather, the problem was successfully delivering the toxin to the intended victim.

Contact poisons are hard to make, and probably close to impossible for a preindustrial society (although magic can overcome this obstacle). Inhaled poisons are similarly difficult to craft. A poison delivered via the bloodstream would have problems as well - you have to wound the target (which eliminates the biggest selling factor for poisons: hiding the identity of the killer), and for a lot of them you have to deliver a bigger dose than could be smeared on a weapon (assuming the toxin would even "stick" if applied that way).

Which leaves poisoning via food or drink as the most "reliable" method. But this has drawbacks too. You have to make sure the intended target actually gets the poisoned food, which can be tricky (and if you mess up and poison someone near them, the target is likely to become cautious in the future, making it harder to get the poison to him). Many poisons change the smell and taste of the food they are applied to, making them detectable to those who know what to look for. And so on.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Poison shouldn't be common because it is a tricky thing. Brewing the potion has its own risks and, since it is often used by the lower class to take out the elite, the elite do their best to track down any signs of poison-craft. The other problem is that any local poison's symptoms will be known and evaluated immediately.

Getting a foreign poison that is less likely to be recognized as poisoning (compared to heart attack or disease) has many more risks.