Poisons? You're kidding right?

[Ginnel]

I think you guys are missing a major advantage here:

A small bottle of liquid is worth about 150 000 gp. Small bottles of liquid could (if the bottle is a sturdy metal not glass/crystal) thus be used as a form of portable currency, rather than those cumbersome coins and gems.

What your thinking of here is actually residuum

Residuum is a fine silvery dust, some describe as concentrated magic.
in some exotic locales, residuum is traded as currency, measured by weight and carried in small metal vials. It's a convenient way to transport large sums of wealth 10,000gp worth of residuum weighs as much as a single gold piece and takes up only slightly more space, so 1 pound of residuum is worth 500,000 and fits in a belt pouch.

hmm how about needing the residuum to make the most effective poisons this would help with the pricing worries right?

Also if you sold on the poison it would only rules as written sell for 1/5 value

 

[Staffan]

Its not a strawman. Its in response to people who want to know why poison isn't more realistic. The reason poison isn't more realistic is because realistic poison automatically kills you, no save.

Wait a minute.

Poison is made of lava now?

 

[MadMaligor]

I think most people are missing the key point of what's going on with the poison here. The rules are giving you a game effect. Not a story effect.

The average person isn't going to get their hands on this poison. Hell, the richest king in all the world, despite likely having more than enough money to afford it by the gallons, has no way of actually purchasing it. If he had the means to aquire such a powerful poison, he'd likely be emperor of the world, not merely a king. It would likely take less than a tenth of a drop to kill most people outright. But that's a story element. The game doesn't need rules for that. If your character gets his hands on some and wants to use it to slay a king who's not an epic-level warrior, chances are the DM's gonna say he simply dies if you manage to find a way to actually administer the poison.

The price and effect are based on epic-level play. Sure, it's expensive. You could buy up a gigantic chunk of land for that price and start building your own kingdom. But doesn't that price seem more than reasonable for a poison that's capable of even effecting greater demons and the likes of the Terrasque? Lesser poisons would be broken down instantly, but this one is so toxic it has a chance of doing at least some damage before it's washed away. I mean, we're talking about epic foes with epic bodies. We're talking dragons that could demolish continents, demons capable of ripping the world apart at the seems, divine entities! Is it really so shocking to believe that they'd be able to shrug off even the universe's most vile toxins with relative ease? I mean, we're dealing with creatures capable of fighting toe-to-toe with a Pit Fiend, and the last thing on their mind while doing so would be watching out for the devil's tail.

It seems to be if you'd want something powerful enough to truly cripple an epic-level foe, you'd be looking at a poison operating under relic-like rules. Something that would take months or even years of questing to find or create yourself.

The Drought of Death. A mixture of poisons from every toxic plant and every venomous creature in existence, bound and strengthened by reagants that knowledge of was long since lost. Said to be powerful enough to slay even the most ancient of dragons and strongest of demon lords.

Asmodeus's Tear. The single tear said to have been shed by Asmodeus as he slew his god. A substance so vile it burned a hole in the very fabric of the Astral Sea and was lost to the cosmos. The gods themselves fear even whispered rumors that it may have been found, for they know the tear's corrosive properties could melt their very beings into nothingness.

Pit Toxin? To a greater demon, it's no more than the bite of a mildly poisoness spider to the average human. Sure it's dangerous and painful. But it's not lethal.

This.

The weakened effect for 1 or 2 turns of the die, 3 if your real lucky, is going to have significant impact. If you want to go hardcore, then go hardcore. Jack the dmg to 20, 25, even 30, and drop a -5 to save on the recipient.

If you want to keep balance, but introduce greater potency, just include an aftereffect that reads (15 dmg and weakened state continue until a second successful save ending both effects). Simple and effective and if you look at how the page ends, its possible that an aftereffect got clipped in print by the chapter change on the next page.

D&D is about how you utilize the RAW to suit your campaigns, not how the campaign is suited to utilize the RAW.

Mal

 

[Grazzt]

Then why dont you just use a disease instead of a poison?

Because sometimes peeps would prefer to use poison? Assassins carrying around vials of diseases just doesn't sound right for some reason.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Grazzt,
well, vials of anthrax, botulinous and tetanus would be bloody horrific weapons

As for other folk saying basically "poison = automatic death!" eh, no. Odds are plenty fo 'em will kill you, but there's always Murphy's law, incredible good fortune and medical help!
Lot of vagueries.
Folk have been killed by tiny doses, or survived huge ones, odd stuff happens...you may vomit it up, have rare natural factor against it's effects, have allergic reaction to it (especially with natural venoms) etc.


For example, many folk may survive snake bite POISON, but the gangrene afterwards from tissue necrosis kills them or cripples, or scars horribly for life.

Lot of folk who get poisoned may suffer permanent health problems from liver damage etc.

 

[Stogoe]

The rules are giving you a game effect. Not a story effect.

The biggest problem I can see with 4e is that people are unable to understand the difference between game effect and story effect.

 

[phloog]

Absolutely some people have died from tiny doses, and others survived large doses...I guess my issue remains that in the RAW, it appears that there is no poison that is sufficiently deadly ON ITS OWN to generate dramatic moments. The poison described is scary, but like so much in 4E only in terms of combat impact. A wizard could drink the stuff and have very little chance of actually dying.

It's another area where the desire to remove 'save or die' effects has produced 'save, or don't save - no biggie' effects...again I get that it has a huge combat impact. But it would be nice for poison to have a dramatic role in the RAW, and it's really just a debuff now.

I'd ALMOST rather have more save or die effects than have such a wild collection of 'soft' dangers.

 

[phloog]

The biggest problem I can see with 4e is that people are unable to understand the difference between game effect and story effect.

So explain it to them, I guess. Explain it to me as you're seeing it. Because while I think I do understand the difference, I also believe firmly that they are strongly linked. Or maybe the DMG makes it clear in 4E (I don't have it)...are there rules for 'Out of Combat Poisons'?

When I look at the game effect of a poison and it has almost zero chance of killing someone unless there's a villain there to beat them to death while they are reeling from it, I have a hard time convincing my players that they've been hit with a 'deadly poison' in the story.

Ridiculous exaggeration, but here goes: If a longsword strike HEALED 1d8 damage in 4E, would we be arguing that we needed to understand the difference between the game effect (it restores hit points) and the story effect (it slices through your armor and deeply into your chest)?

 

[BeauNiddle]

So explain it to them, I guess. Explain it to me as you're seeing it. Because while I think I do understand the difference, I also believe firmly that they are strongly linked. Or maybe the DMG makes it clear in 4E (I don't have it)...are there rules for 'Out of Combat Poisons'?

When I look at the game effect of a poison and it has almost zero chance of killing someone unless there's a villain there to beat them to death while they are reeling from it, I have a hard time convincing my players that they've been hit with a 'deadly poison' in the story.

Ridiculous exaggeration, but here goes: If a longsword strike HEALED 1d8 damage in 4E, would we be arguing that we needed to understand the difference between the game effect (it restores hit points) and the story effect (it slices through your armor and deeply into your chest)?

When you have your players hit with poison do you want them to :

a) drop down dead

b) wonder the countryside wracked with pain, coughing up blood, asking questions of everybody they meet until they find an apothecary that tells them their one and only cure lies in a hidden valley and can only be harvested under the light of a full moon by a virgin with a left handed sickle.

One's a game effect and one's a story effect.

 

[Pielorinho]

I think most people are missing the key point of what's going on with the poison here. The rules are giving you a game effect. Not a story effect.
...
I mean, we're dealing with creatures capable of fighting toe-to-toe with a Pit Fiend, and the last thing on their mind while doing so would be watching out for the devil's tail.

That's a cool idea for a game. On the other hand, I figure that someone who's going to be fearing fighting a pit fiend ought to be thinking about that tail; after all, that tail carries the most powerful poison in the cosmos. It should be something scary, even to creatures that have a chance to defeat the fiend.

The poison mechanic in this game just seems very weird to me: poison does ongoing hit point damage, disappears after a couple of rounds, and doesn't seem to present much of a threat at all. Forget the archon fighting the pit fiend: that pit fiend will on average not be able to kill a 6th-level character with poison alone. The most powerful poison in the cosmos, and a sixth-level character is probably going to survive it! Other poisons are even worse: put a level-appropriate poison up against someone, and it'll do negligible damage.

I'd just like level-appropriate poison to present a decent, ongoing threat to characters. As I said, I'm leaning toward treating poisons like a faster-acting disease.

Daniel