Poisoncraft: The Dark Art

[Messageboard Golem]

Blue Deception … Quod … Wisp of Pallstone. These are but three of the lethal poisons that grace the pages of this book. Never again will your characters yawn at the mention of a poisoned arrow or the sight of a venomous serpent. For instead of merely being weakened by the kiss of poison, they may find themselves deafened, unable to cast spells, or thrown into the very depths of fear!

The first in our Complete line of d20 sourcebooks, this 96-page tome contains so much more than a simple recitation of poisons. A free-form poison creation system means the product of your character's skill will be limited only by the breadth of your imagination. The Complete treatment includes:


Detailed rules for brewing magical poisons, harvesting raw materials from vanquished foes, and creating antidotes.
More than 40 new feats, including metapoison feats, epic feats, and the dreaded Toxic Substitution.
Over 30 poison-related spells, including the ultimate in retributive magic: Vengeance on Tainted Hands.
An armory-full of new equipment and magic items, like the sinister Hollow-Blade and the legendary Staff of Serpents.
Six new prestige classes, including the Ki Corrupted and Toxomancer.
A menagerie’s worth of baneful creatures, featuring the venomous gaze of the Syrallax and the grim essence of the Toxic Deathlord.
Adventure seeds incorporating all of the new rules for levels 1-20, including fully statted NPCs.
Detailed notes for using the Poisoncraft rules in any Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed campaign.

 

[Crothian]

Poisoncraft

The art of poison is has a long history in both RPGs as well as real life. The very thought of it is sinister and unwelcome to some while other enjoy the art and the subtlety that goes into it. Poison is often seen as an after thought in the few books that it can be found in. It is tacked on as filler and not really dealt with. Poisoncraft goes the distance and covers poisons and gives them the attention they deserves. As far as I am concerned between this and Bastion’s Pale Designs: A Poisoner’s Handbook the subject is now covered completely.

Posioncraft is the first book put out by the guys at Blue Devil Games. It is released as a PDF although this is one of the few that is probably strong enough to do well as a print product. The files come in the traditional zip file that is a little over seven megs in size. Inside one will find three PDFs. The first is a half meg PDF of the front and back covers in full color. Then there is a slightly bigger file that contains the printer friendly version of the book. There are no pictures, no borders, and the only color is some lines in the tables of the prestige classes. It is formatted well to be printed and one will have an easy time of doing it at home. The third file is the on screen version of the book. It is in partial color with art and borders. The on screen version is fully book marked and well organized. It contains a table of contents and a full index. Many books even by the big companies fail to add these items in their book. It is a small detail that will make finding things in this book very easy.

The color version of the book is ninety six pages in length. That must be the exact size it takes to cover poisons as Pale Designs is also of that length. The art in Posioncraft is very good. The cover is a complicated picture of a person brewing poison. There are many poisonous creatures around him like snakes, spiders, and frogs. There are vials hanging from the ceiling and reference books and parchments on the table. It is a very good cover. While there is not that much art in the book and it is black and white, what is there is also very well done. The style and images are a great compliment to the text and subject of the book. And even though there is not as much art as some books the layout is very well done and allows the pages to flow easily when being read. This is a very professional looking book. I point that out specifically because this is the first product by Blue Devil Games. They did a fabulous job of making the book look great.

The introduction and first chapter gives a great overview of poisons. It defines all the terms one needs, goes into detail on learning recipes to create poisons as well as how to make them using the craft poison skill. There are many options for poisons and it should be easy to follow the rules here to create new and interesting type of poisons and give them a fair craft DC. Creating antidotes and harvesting raw materials is also covered. My one complaint is that they treat all attribute damage equally. They have a sidebar on this and in it they talk of how charisma damaging potions are equal to strength draining ones to the right person. While this is true, it is the constitution effecting ones that are unequal. I say this simply because when a characters constitution is reduced to zero the character dies. All of the other attributes when reduced to zero do not cause death. In the sidebar it does say that the poisons in the DMG are more expensive if thy cause constitution damage and there is an optional rule for costing them. But I would have liked to hear why the author feels that constitution damaging potions are equal to the others.

Next there is the chapter on feats. There are some of the usually get a +2 bonus on these two related skills as well as well as plenty of feats to help one become a better poisoner. Then there are the more interesting metapoison feats. These feats allow one to change the characteristics of poisons. There is Disguise Poison which makes it much more difficult for a person to realize they have been poisoned. There are empowered, extended, maximized, and other metapoison feats that are very similar to the metamagic feats of the PHB. I really like the application of these feats.

The third chapter deals with using magic and poisons together. First there are rules for magical poisons much like potions but they can go up to sixth level. There are also quite a few poison oriented spells presented here. There are some very useful low level spells like Dampen Poison Damage which converts the poison damage to subdual damage. There is also a nice little cantrip called poison dart that deals little damage but can drain strength. Overall it is a good selection of new spells and even a few new domains like a poison domain.

The fourth chapter gives us mundane and magical items that can aid a poisoner in his craft. There are master work harvester tools to help get the poison as well as poisonbane masks to help protect a person from inhaling air born toxins. There area few items specifically designed to help the poisoner from poisoning himself actually. Then there are some new magical weapon qualities like toxifying. It makes any poison applied to the weapon more deadly. It is a good mix of the magical and the mundane and should offer some good additions to any person that pursues the poison craft.

The fifth chapter gives the prestige classes and this I think is the weakest chapter of the book. It is not a bad set of classes by any means. It is just that the classes are less then inspiring to me. When I read a prestige class I want o be thinking of a character idea that this would fit and feel a need to use it. These never really did that. A nice little detail they included for their prestige classes is a campaign use section. This is a little paragraph that does show how one can use the class in their campaign. It is a very good extra detail. A lot of the classes get plenty of abilities and do look a little good on paper. However as I have not had the chance to really see how they play out I can not do anything but caution one to be a bit careful and look over them closely. They may be just a little on the strong side for some people.

The sixth chapter brings us the monsters and the seventh are adventure ideas. I bring these two together since they serve a close purpose and that is to give obstacles to the players. The adventure ideas are varied by level and while not complete adventures in themselves should serve as a good starting point for many DMs. The creatures are good mix of venomous creatures.

The appendix brings one of the highlights of the book. It has conversation notes for Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed setting. It is rare that one sees ways to use books of different publishers together and I really would like to see more of this from companies. There are also appendixes on names for poisons, different families of poisons, and a few pages of new poisons. There are also printable reference sheets for new poisons one creates.

As I mentioned earlier in this review Pale Designs by Bastion Press is the only other comparable book to Poisoncraft. So, how do the two books stack up against each other? Pale Designs has more new types of poisons and toxins. I liked the prestige classes better in it as well. The feats Poisoncraft has the edge with the metapoison feats providing it. Poisoncraft has better art and just looks better overall. It has a few extra details that Pale Designs does not. Both are about equal with regards to new items. Poisoncraft has more spells in it. Both are good books and get the job done. Poisoncraft is obviously a PDF while Pale Designs is a print book, and Poisoncraft is written for 3.5 while Pale Designs is 3.0. Poisoncraft is the stronger of the two books when I compare them side by side but both can be used together with a great synergy. The rules they use are a little different and one might have to rework the poisons of the other to get costs and DC to be using the same formulas.

Poisoncraft is a very good book and a strong first showing for Blue Devil Games. The book is strong in all areas; writing, layout, art, rules, and creativity. The only think that it is really missing is a section on psionics. Their website has that this is coming soon and will be released as a web enhancement.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Poisoncraft is a new book by Blue Devil Games. It is their first book and covers a topic handled by Pale Designs, a sourcebook on poisons by Bastion Press. For a new company fresh out the gate, it compares quite well and goes further than Pale Designs in many aspects, bringing new utility to poisons, and actually inspiring me to go back and see what I can borrow from Pale Designs to augment this book.

Poisoncraft is split into seven chapters and includes an extensive appendix. In covering poisons, it provides not only new poisons, but also new ideas and mechanics to back up those ideas. For instance, while there are numerous feats, many focused on the art of poison, there is a new type of feat, the metapoison feat.

Some of these feats seem similar to those Pale Designs. For example, Empower Poison increases the variable effects by half, almost the same as the Empower Poison feat from Pale Designs. Most are different. Extend poison in Pale Designs delays the onset time of the poison, useful, but not as powerful as allowing a poison to get a tertiary damage two minutes after exposure.

When looking at magical poisons, this book defines three ways a poison becomes magical. The first is that the poison is crafted from magic. The second is that the poison is imbued. The third is that it’s modified. Each has benefits and rules for how things like dispel magic or anti-magic areas affect each is detailed.

When looking at spells, both books do a good job of augmenting existing classes. I feel that Pale Designs did a better job of including the prestige classes, assassin and blackguard, then Poisoncraft does. The latter book suggests that assassins, or other prestige classes, can take some of the appropriate spells from this book, but that they should lose one in exchange. One place that Poisoncraft ups the Bastion title though, is that it includes two poison domains, one for evil and one for nature. The Bastion book included Murder and Poison.

In terms of spells overall, the edge goes to Poisoncraft again. It has more spells for various classes. For example, the ranger gets numerous natural poison based spells like poison weapon, where the ranger coats his weapon with poison, mimicking the magic weapon spell, or the ability to mimic the old favorite scene in Conan the Barbarian by taking a snake and using it as an arrow. There’s also a little bit wider variety to the spell level, although once again, there are some similarities in the books.

Poisoncraft for example, has Black Rain, a spell that creates clouds that pour contact poison, while Pale Designs has Toxic Storm, where sticky drops of poison rain fall on a large area. Black Rain is by far the more dangerous of the two in some ways as it has abilities that continue to grow the longer the spell is maintained while Toxic Storm deals Constitution damage every round.

One thing that comes through in this section though, is the art and layout. This book uses Nylson’s Notes, a master poison crafter to use someone with a little personality to help digest the material. It reads much tighter in many areas and is much better illustrated.

Now one place where Pale Designs has it all over this book is in weapons and mundane items. Pale Designs boast numerous weapons like the needle launcher and other useful items like quick draw sheaths. It’s not that Poisoncraft doesn’t have the traditional items like hollow blades or masterwork tools, but it doesn’t go into the same lengths. This allows both books to be used and creates a nice synergy. Nothing like someone with a poisonbane mask opening fire with a needle launcher and then moving in with some poison grenades while using his dueling cloak to distract his enemies.

Neither book focuses heavily on magic items, but the edge goes to Poisoncraft. It doesn’t include costs to create in both gold and experience points (now repeat after me in your Cartman voice “that’s a bad Poisoncraft!”), but does have some neat items like the Toxic Tome and the Rod of Toxic Transference. More items would help round out this section nicely though, perhaps some old weapon that Nylson used?

In terms of PrCs, Pale Designs boasts more but I found many of those only useful for a poison based sourcebook marginally. Sniper for example, is good and could benefit from poison, but isn’t a poisoned based class. The Ki Corrupted, a monk who exposes himself to poison and continue to focus his abilities not only on increasing his monk skills, but also gaining attributes of creatures who use poison, like gaining a natural armor class via Armor of the Wyvern, or channeling poison into his fists, is obviously more poisoned based.

Some of these PrCs aren’t even evil. The tribal huntsman for example, uses poisons in his native environment but others, like the toxomancer, user poison to augment their spellcasting. No section of PrCs would be complete though without a poison based assassin, and the darkblade, a woefully generic named assassin, covers that field. A little stronger than rogues with d8 hit dice, but fewer skill points and sneak attack only every three levels with some greater poison and stealth abilities.

Both books also had new monsters. Looking over the material, this one seems 3.5 but could be a little better in some areas. For example, the initiative bonus is listed, but not where the numbers come from. Armor class is broken up and includes touch and flat-footed. Base attack includes grapple information and details for attack and full attack are provided. Number of feats seems correct, one for every three hit dice, with one at first level. So the avaranc, a lizard-like creature with a lupine head and skin of dull chitinous plates, has six feats at fifteen hit dice, while the dire viper with ten hit dice, has four.

Not everything here is a monster though. We have the Bleak Gnomes, which do include racial traits including stat modifiers and racial abilities, as well as favored class, and a monster write up with a 1st level warrior example. These individuals are an interesting change from the mechanical gnomes or the happy gnomes we often see as they are named after their outlook. More information on their god, Ellseneth, would’ve been good but it does include his domains.

The darkblooded creature is the byproduct of a master of necromancy and toxic arts, a template that can be added to any creature wit ha skeletal system and provides numerous poison based attributes to the creature, including poison breath weapon. A bugbear is used as a sample creature.

Overall, this is another case where the simple layout and excellent art, help win me over. Pale Designs didn’t boast a lot of monsters and several of them had no illustrations at all. Here, I look at the powerful Syrallax, a rival to the mind flayer (is that open content?), and want to use it right away.

The real question some may have is what to do with all of this? Well, that’s where chapter seven, adventures in the dark, comes in. It provides several adventure seeds with a wide range of levels and often includes the appropriate statistics for enemies to get you going.

More impressive though, is the appendix. Conversion notes for Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed are provided and include information for the core classes, the magic system, spells, prestige classes, monsters, and even new poisons for Arcana Unearthed. This is a great addition from a new company as it provides utility not only to the core d20 fan base, but also to Monte’s fans that are dealing with a limited amount of material specifically created for them. It’s a good example of what can be done in a few pages to help readers customize their own d20 materials.

The material on the different poison families breaks down different fields of poison for every reader. This includes poisons made for aquatic, bestial, hedge roots and other families. The catalog of poisons includes all of the material from the DMG fleshed out with the new rules here and includes a wide variety of poison strengths. Poison creation sheets help the reader figure out all of the bonuses and checks needed to craft their poisons. A nice sheet, but one that should be made available for download as opposed to being in the book. If you can download the file, you should be able to download the sheets right? It would give the book more room for say, sample NPC poison dealers and their lairs. Players are going to need mentors after all right?

Last, the book includes an index. Now there are numerous print products, including Pale Designs, that don’t include an index. Not to leave a jab unanswered though, Pale Designs did include material on traps, which is not present in this book.

Editing errors don’t seem severe. About the only thing I noticed is a reference on page 11, to Greater Skill Focus which provides a +4 bonus to the skill, but then I didn’t see the feat listed in the book. Some of the wording in the same area suffers a little unclarity. “If she makes a similarly successful check next weeks, she will have successfully brewed a single dose of poison.”

The book has a little bit of rawness to it. There could be more material on how to use it. For example, how you can justify its (poison) use in a ‘good’ themed campaign. There could be mentors, sample shops, and more magic items. Those are small things though.

The book, for a first product, is well illustrated. It uses a simple layout that isn’t fancy and doesn’t eat a lot of ink. If the author could work with Bastion and create a Deluxe Poisoncraft and augment this work with that of Pale Designs, readers would have the ultimate codex of poison. Be that as it may, this is a fine product and its wide scope of material should allow any player with a perchance for poison to flesh out his character nicely even as it allows the GM to stomp on that fool with new monsters.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Good catch on the inadvertant "mind flayer" comment in the syrallax entry. I became aware of it last week; it has been corrected and a new version, OGL-compliant version uploaded to RPGNow. (Same for the pod-version; if you had one of the original copies, hold onto it. It's a collector's item now.)

BTW, there's one other vast difference between Poisoncraft: The Dark Art and Pale Designs (an excellent book). The former is $6.66 for the pdf and $12.95 for the p.o.d.; the latter is $24.95.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I picked up this product early because I was looking to enhance the poison rules for 3.5, and I have also been really impressed. BlueDevilGames has stressed their goal of completeness for the product line, and this book took care of everything I wanted for poisons. Once the psionic section is released via the website, I'll be squared away with poisons. I just need my players to pick up a copy so we can all use the new rules with ease...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, the price difference you mention is a point, but let's not forget that Pale Designs is also on glossy paper and in full color. It's also a 3.0 book.

What about the Greater Skill Focus from page 11? Is that also an error or ?

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This 91-page pdf product, the first from Blue Devil Games (www.bluedevilgames.com), is a nice treatise. The title says it all. The book has 88 pages of text including a 5-page appendix for rules on adapting it to Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. It includes a short index, and several useful Appendices, particularly the Codex Venororum. The art is black and white line art, all of it excellent, with a professional-style layout mercifully free of typos, bad grammar, and widows and orphans (single sentences at the top of a column or on the next page), which are some of my pet peeves. I also have the Print on Demand version now and it's quite slick. This is pretty much indistinguishable from a regular print product and it makes a nice package. The cover art by Jennifer Rodgers fits the theme with lots of neat little details in it that I discovered the second time I looked at it.

I happened across the book after a player of mine wanted to poison himself. (Long story.) What he was specifically interested in was a hit-point damaging poison. This is not included in conventional D&D, but it is in Poisoncraft, which contains a number of additional rules to expand poison use in a D&D game. The rules expand upon the core rules, clearly laying out the methodology for the DM to employ this subset of rules.

Chapter One covers making poison. The author allows for poisons that reduce spell resistance, basic attack bonus, spellcasting ability, and much more. These ideas give me a lot more to work with than the standard ability-draining poisons (also covered in depth) that my players already hate with passion. The rules for harvesting organs and body parts, decay of poisons, accidental exposure, and creating antidotes are all useful, saving me the work of writing my own.

Detailed rules provide means to tweak poisons to be useful at higher levels. This is a particularly Good Thing. Poison use diminishes as PCs gain in levels. The author correctly addresses this flaw. I like the way that a large variety of different poison effects are described, so that you can expand upon those interesting poisons that do more than just 1d6 Str/1d6 Str. Another nice touch is including rules for varying the onset time of the poison, a much-needed element of a game where you have assassins, skullduggery and lots of cloak-and-dagger intrigue going on.

I tried out the creation rules to see how they work by making the hit-point damaging poison. (The aforementioned request from a player.) The rules were straightforward and clear, and I was able to walk through the process quickly.

One aspect that I may try out in play, but which I was unsure of is the variability of the Craft DCs to developing poisons to negate class abilities, including spellcasting. The idea of a poison to poison a paladin's Smite Evil or a rogue’s Evasion is nifty. I would have rather seen this expressed with an explanation of how the modifiers were developed. I can't tell why a poison that suppresses Evasion is only +2 to the Craft DC, but one that suppresses Turn Undead is +3. But I don’t want to dwell too much on this point because the rules expand poison in so many useful directions. Rules for a spell-casting suppression poison are worth it alone!

One neat concept is Signature Poisons. An assassin can study a specific target to develop a poison against them alone. I think the length of time required (1d20 years) is great for plot purposes, but overly limiting for a PC assassin. Today's campaigns seem to only cover a few years in game time. The Signature Poison is virtually a no-save death effect, so it shouldn't be handed out lightly, but I would like to have seen a feat in the book to allow a PC or NPC to make one specific signature poison within a shorter timeframe. (There is a Brew Signature Poison feat that can be taken by a 27th level character, but it lets you learn a large number at once. Very suitable for an epic level game, not so useful for the average game.)

Chapter Two covers Feats and Chapter 4 Equipment. These all contained useful and appropriate additional rules. Some are particularly neat – Disguise Poison; a group of feats that let you learn how to poison elementals, plants and more; the poison mister, to spread it over an area; the poisoned smokestick (ouch!) and the Toxic Tome, an unpleasant new magic item. Chapter Four really should have had an example of a magical poison-storing ring – the poisoner’s classic trick, but I'm letting that go due to the usefulness of the rest.

The Feats chapter would benefit by a warning on the Metapoison section (the one that lets you damage non-humanoids with the right feat) that you need to have Epic level PCs in play for this. I don't actually think that some of the feats presented need to be epic, and in fact many campaigns don’t reach that level. In fact, the book has a hidden presumption that your game will see PCs and NPCs exceeding 20th level. That should have been called out explicitly in my opinion.

Chapter Three: Toxic Magic, covers spells and Magical Poisons. This latter concept is another of the books excellent ideas. You can turn spells into poisons. Imagine a Con dealing poison that then hits you with a spell requiring a Fort save! A subtle, nasty and appropriate combination for a fantasy world. I was pleased to see a price chart included as well as the general principle on how to make these. (Though I don't see any reason to limit it to 6th level spells. If someone wants to make a poison containing a 9th level spell, it's no worse than a contingency and the cost is so prohibitive that it won't show up too often.)

The new spells include a number of utility spells to temporarily alter poison characteristics, and some very flavorful spells like Black Rain (a 9th level poisonous storm cloud), Serpent Arrow (make a missile weapon into a snake), Symbol of Poison, or Curse of the Gristule, which gives you poisonous lumps on your skin that may poison someone who attacks you. This last spell could be higher level since it deals an area of effect poison each time a pustule breaks, but it's a great concept. My personal favorite is Vengeance on Tainted Hands, which conjured up a whole plot line idea for me. You’ll have to read the book for that one though. I have some concerns about the power levels of the spells – they seem strong for their level - but I haven't had a chance to put them into play so I don’t think that’s a valid criticism yet. Oh, let me mention Toxic Tracker. Zow, what a clever idea. Start tracking someone and poison them, possibly paralyzing them. This spell should probably allow for SR, but other than that, it's very clever. In fact, I was impressed with all the ideas in this whole chapter even when I might tweak them a bit differently.

Chapter Five covers Prestige Classes. The first is the Darkblade, a non-magical assassin. I like having an alternate assassin, since it isn't always appropriate to have a spellcaster. This class seems a tad underpowered for something that you can’t enter until 9th level and which loses the DMG assassination ability, but they make up for some of that with the free metapoison feats. It's a good class for a master poisoner NPC, that’s certain! The ki corrupted monk prestige class has a lot of good ideas, but this could actually have been a 5-level PrC. They do have some nicely flavorful abilities, and would make a nice surprise for PCs invading an evil monastery.

The master poisoncrafter overshadows the Darkblade a bit with their metapoison-making abilities. This could have been dealt with by a series of feat chains instead of another PrC. (However, I do offer the caveat that my issue here is with market saturation of PrCs. The class is fine and balanced, and many campaigns will get good use out of it.) The toxomancer is the best of the lot. They lace their spells with poison and cast toxic monster summoning spells. This one will find its way into a game of mine sooner or later. (See the AU section in this review for a comment on their abilities though.)

The last two classes are the Tribal Huntsman and Venomous Changeling. These have interesting possibilities for wilderness-heavy campaigns. I think the VCs abilities are cool, and in fact I think that the author could have gone further with this one. But, their venomous wildshape ability is decent enough. (The venom immunity ability probably should be shifted to 3rd level to ensure that the class doesn't get cherry-picked for its powers, but that’s a quibble.) Overall, the classes are reasonable, interesting and useable without being unduly over or underpowered. The abilities are well described, intriguing, and in keeping with the theme, so I give good marks on the design level.

Chapter Six is monsters. There are 11 new monsters and 2 templates, for 13 new types altogether. These nasties fit well within the poison theme, and should terrify many a party. The Avaranc is just plain scary (and high-CR)! I really liked the darkblood template, which creates poison-blooded undead, the Flaxinthe and the Gristule. Each one had a well-described “niche” in the monster ecology and suitable powers to their background.

I do get the impression that the author likes his games a bit higher-powered than my tastes – the CR 5 Venaton construct has AC 25 and DR 5/adamantine; the CR 5 Dire Viper can Maximize poison three times per day, dealing 8 Con on initial and secondary damage, with a DC 17 Fort Save. This probably will kill any non-fighter type the second they fail their save, and you know you’re going to use that 3/day ability starting on the first successful hit. The latter is a good addition for a bestiary though because there are few snakes that frighten a party past first level. For the power-gamer groups, these monsters are perfect. Campaigns like mine need a tad of downpowering here and there.

Chapter 7 covers adventure seeds. It has some good ideas and nicely enough pre-statted NPCs.

The Appendices really shouldn't be called Appendices because they are so darn useful. (This isn't a criticism of the industry-standard word choice, by the way, just the convention itself.) The Codex Venororum (7 pages) is worth half the price of the book alone because it's all useful and detailed. The Poison Families (2 pages) are well thought out, and the Poison Naming Conventions table (2 pages) is incredibly handy.

The AU appendix covers the conversion of Poisoncraft for Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed. There are a few things that I might do differently, but that's personal taste and style, not balance issues. The complete spell list is included with the heightened/diminished spells, so this was added value for me. I certainly intend to use a number of items from this book for my AU campaign.

Which brings me to the toxic template, the AU version of the toxomancer's ability to make a spell poisonous. Great idea. It scares me a little. Since this is something that I'm going to use, I'm coming down harder on it, but with the caveat that I haven't tried in play. The template lets you halve the damage from a spell to add Con poison to it. You get 1 point of Con damaging poison per 3 caster levels. The big glaring error is that it scales too well. A mage can throw a low-level spell with the same poison damage as a higher-level spell. Couple this with a D&D magic missile in a standard 3.5 game, and a 9th level sorcerer can throw out a pile of 1d2+1 force effects (no save) that deal 3 points of Con damage to anything that fails a save.

AU lacks magic missile, so that's a good thing, but it does have the war template so I can see some unpleasant combinations. There's some balance in the low-level spell's DC (making a save more likely), but this doesn’t scale well overall because stat damage is proportionately more effective than hit points. AU has few of the D&D restorative spells, so this looks on the face of it to be even tougher in a pure AU game. It needs testing to see if the scaling is balanced, or needs a different solution. That said, I love the example in the book of a magister throwing out a weenie-seeming sorcerous blast (5d6 elemental damage) that the PCs then have to save against for a Con poison. They are that much weaker against the next blast!

The one wish list item that I would have liked in this product would be some poison-centered organizations and/or locales. Even just a few snippets added to the Adventuring chapter would have rounded this out to a perfect score for me. Then again, the book seems to have just enough and not too much of everything, so perhaps it doesn’t need it.

In conclusion, despite some nits that I've picked, this product is a steal at the $6.66 download price. The writing is good, clean and consistent. The editing appears to have been done by the author, which is technically a no-no, but I didn't spot any glaring errors, so well done. The art adds a lot. The imaginative ideas and the consistent usefulness of the crunchy bits relating to the central poison theme are all big selling points. Nothing in here will need a major tweak. I read the entire book in complete detail and wound up writing a much longer review than I thought I would because I like it. Given that this is the author's first professional book, I'm overall very impressed with the entire package. Despite my strong desire to give it a lower ranking because I'm an opinionated DM and would-be designer myself, the overall utility and quality make it a solid 8 on the Monte scale – a real standard for things to come. (In my mind, it's an 8.5, which is why I tipped it to 5 on ENWorld, which doesn't use as fine a granulation for ratings.)

P.S. I had a problem with my download, and Blue Devil (aka Justin) himself took care of the problem. The service was responsive and impressive.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Aargh. I apologize. I did a paste into Notepad and thought that would get rid of the coding, but it didn't. I wish there was an edit button. I'm very sorry for the number inserts at the punctuation. I won't do that again.

 

[Verequus]

But there is an edit button somewhere - I've corrected my own review with it.

 

[Verequus]

I forgot to say, that is a nice and informative review. I already bought Poisioncraft, but I couldn't read through it yet. I would have edited the comment, but I am redirected to the main page instead...