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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011413" data-attributes="member: 1129">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.</blockquote>

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