D&D poison

[Fellfrosch]

can anyone point me to some good info about foraging for poison materials in D&D? It doesn't seem like there's any specific info about how to find certain plants and whatnot, and what the DCs are, and what environments they grow in, and how common they are, or anything. I'm not even sure there's any good info on what materials you need in order to make poison.

Can anyone help me out here?

[Spriggan]

Complete adventurer and DMG 2 has all that if I'm not mistaken.

Also the Ebberon Core book has some info on rarities for materials native to the setting.

[Tage]

I searched all 3 of those books fairly thoroughly, and none of them contain a speck of information on how to *find* poison materials.

[Spriggan]

If it's anywhere it's in the DMG2.  Thing with "finding" poison material is that it unbalances the cost of poisons, it would be like rolling a survival check just to find huge amounts of cash on a DC 20.

[Tage]

Well that wouldn't be a problem if they hadn't made poison so ridiculously expensive.

[Spriggan]

I agree, I've always wanted to use a poison character but couldn't due to price.

[Fellfrosch]

You get the same problem with traps--they're cool, but way too expensive to actually use.

[Entsuropi]

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/publications/poison/poison.html

Thats a random list of poisons. I could find nothing much on google. And your right, poisons can be cool, but if they were really cheap everyone would use them. If everyone uses something, then it's obviously broken and needs balancing...  It's for this reason I think that some options are just too good in D&D. Spiked Gauntlets for example. I know people who give them to every character, because they have no downsides and many upsides, and don't even cost that much. I'd prefer poison to be expensive and rare, rather than common and cheap.

Otherwise, it looks like general plants are not that useful as combat related poisons. Probably looking at Alchemy and bizarre combinations of minerals etc to make the powerful ones. Either that or just capture a venomous snake and cut out it's poison sacs (cost: technically nothing, but hospital bills could be quite severe).

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Well if you check out the Wizards d20 modern site there is a download (the d20 modern web enhancement) that has rules for making poisons. Don't know if that helps...

[Eagle Prince]

To make poison in D&D you use the Craft skill.  You can either put ranks into Craft (poisonmaking), or you can use Craft (alchemy) but you take a -4 penalty (you also have to be a spellcaster to take Craft: Alchemy, and there is a feat in I think Book of Vile Darkness that removes the -4 penalty).

If you have the materials on hand, then you basically cut the cost in half.  So lets say you want black lotus poison.  Then you use Craft skill to make it, which usually costs raw materials worth 1/3 the price of what you are making.  If you happen to find some black lotus, then it is readily avalible and it only costs 1/6 the market price to craft it (or half what it normally would).

If you need me to, say so and I will double check all of it and get all the page numbers and exact quotes or whatever.

Oh yeah, in DMG2 there are some 1/2 CR 'booby traps' like if you want a character who can set up traps for encounters.  I could look those up too if you are interested in making a trapper.

[Fellfrosch]

The question is, what materials do you need to make that poison, and how difficult is it to find them in the wild? Or does the system not know how to handle that, and insist that you buy the ingredients for gold?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Id say just use a plant lore skill check to find wild poisionous plants (mushrooms and the like)

[42]

The question is, what materials do you need to make that poison, and how difficult is it to find them in the wild? Or does the system not know how to handle that, and insist that you buy the ingredients for gold?

Wouldn't you just make that stuff up?

Seems like an odd thing to be included in a game manual. Wouldn't be very marketable if it were included.

So yes, the system can handle it by saying that they don't care and it's up to you to figure out how you want to handle it.

[Eagle Prince]

One important thing I forgot to mention is that crafting poison, you progress in gold per week of work rather than silver.  That lets you craft it in a reasonable time.  There is also a few different magical workshops you could use to boost up your productivity, and some feats that lower the cost and time.

The only important part to collect for posionmaking is the active ingredient, which should usually be obvious by the name, ie monstrous centipede poison clearly would be harvested from monstrous centipedes, or black lotus from that kind of flower, etc.  If you have a source of the active ingredient, then the cost for raw materials is 1/6th the market price instead of 1/3.  If it is hard to find/buy in your area, then the cost of materials is 3/4 market price or possibly not even avalible at all.  

Now where/how to find black lotus or monstrous spiders is a matter of the campaign/dm, so that will change.  Collecting venom from a corpse or whatever should just be part of the posionmaking skill I would think, if you fail a craft skill by 5 or more then you mess up your raw materials.  Also remember that you have a 5% chance of accidently poisoning yourself without Poison Use.

2 of the main spots for rules on crafting poisons are page 25 of Song and Silence and page 44-45 of Vile Darkness.  There is also some feats  and items, etc that will be useful if you keep your eyes open.

One time DMing Harbinger had a character who was into making poisons, so I included lots of poison traps that if he disarmed right, he could save the poison for later use.  He also had some clay jars that you could throw and affect everyone with a fine powdered poison in a 10-foot spred, I think the rules for that type of poison is just in the DMG.  And I also had a couple homebrewed poison recipes for him to find while adventuring to make some new custom poisons.