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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2011665" data-attributes="member: 18387">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.</blockquote>

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