How do poisons work ?

[Sharkon]

Suppose i play a character with the poison use special ability , and during battle you want to make an attack with poison on the weapon. Do you have to spend a standar action to apply the poison on the blade and then strike ?

And you spend the whole poison just in one attack or does ti last for longer ?

 

[NewJeffCT]

Suppose i play a character with the poison use special ability , and during battle you want to make an attack with poison on the weapon. Do you have to spend a standar action to apply the poison on the blade and then strike ?

And you spend the whole poison just in one attack or does ti last for longer ?

I don't have the book with me right now, but I think the poison lasts until it makes contact with something (i.e., you hit) unless stated otherwise.

And, I believe it is a standard action to apply, though I know there are feats that can get that down to a move action instead.

 

[Sharkon]

Yes you are probably right. But is using poisons in battle helpful? For example using a standar action to apply the poison on your weapon, spending so much gold to buy a strong one and not be sure if it will affect the target...

 

[NewJeffCT]

Yes you are probably right. But is using poisons in battle helpful? For example using a standar action to apply the poison on your weapon, spending so much gold to buy a strong one and not be sure if it will affect the target...

well, if you can damage somebody's CON in the midst of battle, it can be devastating - just 4 points of CON damage can drop somebody 2 hit points/level that can't be healed with cure spells.

Similarly, INT damage can be huge against a wizard or psion, or even a fighter with a 13/14 INT that relies on Combat Expertise... my group has a guy that is level 18 now and he uses improved expertise to get +18 to his AC. If his INT just dropped from 13 to 12, he would be temporarily unable to use Expertise...

That said, if you "waste" a round applying poison and then moving into melee range, you may miss half the battle.

 

[dragonis111]

Try the spiderfang dagger(from the complete guide to drow), it is a exotic weapon made by drow elves, it has a poison well hidden in the dagger that holds up to 10 doses of a poison, and every time you make a successful hit with the dagger you inject a dose through the 2 hollow blades(hence the name spiderfang), an extreme time saver for battles, just fill it with poison before hand and you are good to go. Here are the stats for the dagger:

Spiderfang Dagger: exotic light melee weapon, cost 150gp(non masterwork cost), damage 1d4, critical 18-20/x2, range increment(for throwing) 10 feet, weight 1 pound, damage type peircing

Hope this helps!

 

[Freakohollik]

Buy a stack of arrows and apply the poison before battle. Then you can just choose in battle to use the poisoned arrows or the non-poisoned arrows.

Using INT damage against a wizard may seem like a good idea, but generally STR and CON poison are the best to have. You can incapacitate somebody if one of their stats becomes 0. Wizards typically have low STR, so if you've got a good STR poison like dragon bile, that wizard is done. STR poison is also great against anyone in armor. Lower their STR so they collapse under the weight of their own armor.

To alleviate the gold cost, you can take ranks in craft(poison). It's in Complete Adventurer.

 

[CAFargo]

well, if you can damage somebody's CON in the midst of battle, it can be devastating - just 4 points of CON damage can drop somebody 2 hit points/level that can't be healed with cure spells.

I don't think this is how it works...I think that losing or gaining con only affects skills, saves (increasing your chance of hitting again), and a few other things.

My personal favorite poison is something that does DEX damage, since most opponents a player faces won't have armor, so each 2 points of DEX damage is another -1 to armor class, or a 5% chance of scoring a hit and affirming a critical hit.

With the 10 rounds rule for the secondary damage, most monsters will be dead by that time. The 3.0 fire-snakes (MMII or Fiend Folio, I forget) have awesome poison (some ability damage, plus they deal a small amount of fire damage each round...nearly killed the warlock!).

 

[GreyVulpine]

I don't think this is how it works...I think that losing or gaining con only affects skills, saves (increasing your chance of hitting again), and a few other things.

No, constitution dropping from ability damage/drain also affects hit points. Check page 290 of the DMG for an example.

If a character’s Constitution score drops, then he loses 1 hit
point per Hit Die for every point by which his Constitution modifier
drops. For example, at 7th level, Tordek is hit by poison that
causes his Constitution to drop from 16 to 13. His Constitution
modifier falls from +3 to +1, so he loses 14 hit points (2 per level).
...