Frequency of poison-use in a medieval fantasy world

[Rogue765]

Eh. All you have to do is use Iocane Powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquids, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man. You just have to spend a few years developing an immunity to Iocane Powder and you golden.

Of course, since it originate in Australia, until that place is discovered, you're out of luck.

 

[Treebore]

And a fan of the "Princes Bride" makes themself known.

 

[Turanil]

Some interesting points here. So mundane natural poison may be easy to come by, however truly effective poisons (such as those smeared on a blade) would be difficult to create, often requiring magic or exotic material, and thus would be very costly. They would also be costly because poison-makers are hunted down by the authorities and are at a strong risk making them (plus illegal stuff is usually extremely expensive). So we can have basically two levels of poisoning: 1) maybe a proliferation of cheap food/drink poisoning among evil people, but which can be resisted/detected relatively easily, and wouldn't affect too much a high level character. 2) more effective poisons as described in the rules.

 

[Hussar]

While poisoning someone to make them sick isn't all that terribly difficult, actually killing someone with poison is. Lethal doses of poison, at least enough to kill a full grown man, are pretty big by and large. So, yes, the two tier model works pretty well here. Arsenic isn't exactly difficult to manufacture but, delivering enough to someone to actually kill them takes time.

Of course, any noble with the werewithal is certainly going to have poison detection magics scattered about his home. Detect poison is a zero level spell - a permanent item that glows when brought within 5 feet of poison would be a minor cost at best.

I really don't think deliberate poisoning in a DND setting would work all that well. It's too easy to detect and get around. Now, if you want to get grim and gritty and talk about poisoning from wounds, poor water and that sort of thing, that's another story.

Not my kind of game, but, it's possible.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Hmm. I like the idea of the "eating daggar of detect poison." I'll have to toss that in as a minor treasure at some point.

 

[Warehouse23]

As far as effects on the game go, making poisons common in a campaign is like making traps common in a campaign--it will make the players expect poisoning at every meal, leading to serious use of detect/neutralize poison, which may or may not slow down game play (along the lines of, "I take 20 searching the door. I take 20 searching the next door. Etc.")

I would throw poisons into a game as a major plot element for a single adventure (e.g., "Stop the mad poisoner who is terrifying the local nobles"--think along the lines of the terror created by the Unabomber or the DC Sniper), rather than making it an ongoing theme.

If suddenly the noble lord who is throwing a feast in honor of the players' deeds of daring-do suddenly turns purple and drops dead--that's a plot hook. If the PCs contacts consistently drop like flies because they can't afford a house cleric to purify their every meal, that's just annoying.