Tinker Alchemist, extraordinaire!
Or at least, that’s what I’m hoping I’ll be, assuming that I survive this week’s adventure where I am currently separated from my party, pinned against a dying elf by an arrow that shot us both (by our ranger) and at one HP in the middle of the night, a few hours run from a Wild Elf settlement in the trees.
Here’s my question. What sort of Alchemy poisons have you all concocted?
As far as I can tell, poisons are meant to be debuffs that affect an enemy/NPC, rather than potions that the party drinks.
Oil of Tagit ~= Sleep spell
Bloodweed = Damage/Time
Goldenroot = Charm (anything, includes beast & monsters!)
Serpent’s Tears = best of (dX roll)
On reddit, a poster suggested using tags for inspiration. Here’s my own take on that idea.
“messy” = Datura’s Sludge (applied) induces vomiting and expulsion of all other bodily fluids
“slow/awkward/clumsy” = Poppysap (touch) completely numbs the target of all tactile sensation, giving all objects they carry the slow, awkward or clumsy tag, your choice
“dangerous” = Devilshroom (touch) alters the targets perception so they cannot distinguish safety from danger and all objects they use have the dangerous tag i.e. grab the wrong end of their own sword, they choke while drinking from a wineskin, etc.
Other ideas, but seem bland :
similar to Poppysap above, but removing another sense (sight, smell, hearing) instead
similar to Devilshroom above, but adds hallucinatory stimuli, fear, paranoia
similar to Goldenroot: Belladonna’s Bloom (applied) +1 ongoing to all Parley rolls with target
Misc ideas I thought of, but rejected:
-Iocaine powder for instadeath (nice shoutout, but envenom lets you bypass the ingested restriction.)
-Serpent’s blood allows for damage rerolls, what about poisons that allow HacknSlash or Defy Danger rerolls? (i.e. rolling 3d6 and taking the best two)… may be too overpowered.
-tacking on debilities doesn’t translate as well towards NPC/enemies.
-any poison that feels good and then makes you addicted (maybe for another styled game that’s not loosely based on medieval fantasy)
-any poison that causes arrhythmia, coma or seizures (congrats, you removed them from the fight…yawn)
Debilities translate perfectly to NPCs. Treat them as tags and narrate the fiction. I think they’re a solid idea for a poison or two.
yeah, I guess, but weak, shaky, sick, stunned, confused, ?scarred/!deformed, etc just doesn’t get me as excited to poison someone. I’d prefer to make it something more flavorful, especially since you could essentially boil my poisons to a debility; Datura’s sludge = Sick, Poppysap = Weak/Shary, Devilshroom = confused.
Btw, I based my poisons on real world poisonous toxidromes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
… hm, although I just realized I based Datura’s Sludgetoxidrome on the wrong syndrome (cholinergic instead of anticholinergic.)
Can do poisons in game that can mimic just about any personal spell where you can get addicted to the poison or the cure. Rather easy to write up some hand sized wasp where if the stinger is covered in a tree sap then stinging dwarves it brings about a berserk rage (increasing damage & ignoring pain) but needing some sleep inducing moss to deal with the pain later when it wears off & sleep is the easiest way to recover from it. Easy to escalate this to fun points in the game or come up with poisons to boost abilities into the fantastic with seeing ghosts, speeding thoughts for studying or whatnot. Only difference in many games is the potions taste bad but help while poisons might taste good but harm though made of the same stuff in herbalism or alchemy, just depends on proportions.
Also reminds me of the pc game ‘The Witcher’ where you can only take a few helpful potions right before the fight but they are toxic so you can only drink a few. Quite the contrast to many MMORPGs where it’s amazing on the litter of empty potions containers used & where they carried them all after drinking a half dozen every few moments.
Never had a PC take that move, but an NPC sorceress in my first had a poison called, I think, Death’s Caress. It was a touch poison that would kill the victim two days after they had been poisoned. Antitoxin didn’t work on it, and the only antidote was the dregs of that specific batch of Death’s Caress. So, she could hold the poisoned person to ransom as only knew where the antidote was located.
Darren Priddy
Cool, I’ll see if my DM will allow a similar mechanic for self-ingested poisons. Given that he’s currently had my targets of Goldenroot always conveniently try to look at someone other than me immediately after administration… I think he’d be quite happy to have me willingly ingest poison on the off chance I’d get a positive effect from it.
Jarrah James
Oo, the good ol’ Do-my-bidding-or-Die-by-Poison gambit! Seems perfectly placed as a 7-9 “okay, but it takes time” roll with a parley roll. I love it!
Could be a plot point too where a temporary poison used in many RPG pc games of needing to die with a poison or item to talk with someone in the spirit realm or find clues. Or small poisons taken to build up resistance vs some threat using it. As mentioned proportions is only difference between a potion/drug & poison so play with it. Great distraction I think in games is using a hallucinogen arrow/dart vs some group of people, they start fighting each other then easily get past them.