D&D 5E (2024) What is With Poison?, and Other PHB Conundrums.

[Reynard]

Yes -- Bastion rules in the DMG.

A Sacristy (level 9) can make Holy Water.

Thanks!

 

[jasper]

You want to be EVIL. You pay to be Evil. Now that will be cash for the poison. I know you evil types skim credit cards.

 

[iollmann]

I was reading through the 2024 PHB, just trying to familiarize myself with stuff, when i came across Poison in the equipment chapter. is it me, or is poison way overpriced for its effect when compared to, say, alchemist fire? it does 1d4 damage one time. There is no Poisoned condition or other additional effect. Granted, there is no save, and it can be applied with a bonus action, but it still seems overpriced. The two 150gp poisons in the DMG are much more effective.

A) What do you think about the pricing and mechanics of poison in the PHB. B) What other weird things have you discovered in the PHB?

It’s one of the few ways to pile on extra damage in D&D without paying a level, feat, spell slot, qi point, maneuver or other limited resource. It’s a straight add on and all you need is gold, which at higher levels you may have more than you know what to do with. Towards this end it can easily end up OP through over use, especially if you can figure out how to make it AoE.

So they nerfed the crap out of it. It is essentially an unfeature which is there with some minimal effect for roleplaying purposes.

I feel there is some room for homebrew here.