Harvesting poison/venom?

[Jon Potter]

Are there rules for this somewhere?

My players want to harvest Monstrous Spider venom and I'm at a loss. My first inclination is to just use a Heal check to find and extract the venom sacks, but I'm really just guessing.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Piratecat]

I think there's a Poisoner's Handbook out, maybe on pdf, but I haven't seen it.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Our GM always went with a Wilderness Lore check for stuff like that.

I'd suggest a DC, but to be honest, I'm pretty sure he was just making it up as he went along, letting us harvest one dose for a good roll, and one or two more doses for really obscenely excellent rolls.

--
we also used wilderness lore for harvesting monster body parts for spell components
ryan

 

[Piratecat]

Good idea, HC. I'd probably use the same mechanice but require an craft (alchemy) roll instead, since that makes the nigh-useless skill more interesting.

 

[Pyrex]

Make a Profession(whatever) check to determine how many GP's worth of raw venom you extract in a week.

Then, make a Craft(Poisonmaking) check to turn the raw materials into finished product.

Ex:
One 'dose' of Medium Monstrous Spider venom costs 150gp.

If you take 10 on Profession(Spider Handling) and have a total bonus of +10 to your check you extract 10gp worth of venom per week.

Five weeks later you take your 50gp worth of venom and start making Craft(Poisonmaking) checks. Again assuming taking 10 and a bonus of +10 nets you 40gp of progress per week.

Four weeks (160gp) later you now have one "prepared dose" of Medium Monstrous Spider Venom.

Upside: "free" poison for your weapons.

Downside: Each "free" dose takes nine weeks to create.

 

[Jon Potter]

Thanks for the advice.

Wilderness Lore seems like a good skill to use. To my mind Alchemy would make sense if it needed to be brewed or somesuch - such as a plant-based toxin might.

But I agree that Alchemy is woefully underused.

And I'm talking about cutting out the dead spiders' venom sacs, not milking the spiders over time. For something like that, I agree that it would likely be a Profession (X) check.

 

[Pyrex]

For cutting out the dead spiders venom sacs:

A Medium Monstrous Spider is CR1.

According to the treasure tables, a CR1 encounter should generate ~300gp worth of treasure.

Assuming you find no treasure in it's lair, a skill check could therefore allow you to extract up to 300gp worth of raw venom from the spider.

Craft(Poisonmaking) [see above] would allow you to turn that raw venom into 6 "prepared doses" of Medium Monstrous Spider poison.

 

[Hannibal Barca]

Make a Profession(whatever) check to determine how many GP's worth of raw venom you extract in a week.

Then, make a Craft(Poisonmaking) check to turn the raw materials into finished product.

Ex:
One 'dose' of Medium Monstrous Spider venom costs 150gp.

If you take 10 on Profession(Spider Handling) and have a total bonus of +10 to your check you extract 10gp worth of venom per week.

Five weeks later you take your 50gp worth of venom and start making Craft(Poisonmaking) checks. Again assuming taking 10 and a bonus of +10 nets you 40gp of progress per week.


Four weeks (160gp) later you now have one "prepared dose" of Medium Monstrous Spider Venom.

Upside: "free" poison for your weapons.

Downside: Each "free" dose takes nine weeks to create.

Four weeks for one dose? Seems a bit too much effort. The best rules I have seen have been in the Quintessential Rogue. It seems crafting poison and trapmaking are far more difficult than one would think going by the rules.

 

[Orm]

I´d go with Craft (Alchemy) and a fairly high DC. For making Antitoxin it´s DC 25, so it should be the same for making poisons. Having 5 ranks in Wilderness Lore could give a +2 bonus, if it´s a natural poison like spider venom.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Actually, I'd say making poison should be easier than antitoxin. The former is (usually) already poisonous, whereas the latter is a derivative.