Prepare Ingestive Poisons (sage ability)
Knowledge regarding the mixing/making of ingestive poisons for the purpose of harming others. Ingestive poisons are those that must be consumed rather than introduced into the bloodstream (through an injury), and should be considered separate from either toxins or venoms.
Everything is a poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison. Therefore, rather than attempt to produce a list of potential poisons, their individual attributes or effectiveness, for game purposes only two results from poison making are considered: lethality and detection. Any proper poison, consumed in sufficient amounts, will cause pain and death. The concern is that the more lethal a poison, the more easily its presence is noted.
While this may not hold true for extraordinary, unusual poisons found world-wide, this knowledge is not available to an amateur alchemist. The amateur, therefore, must make up their minds as to how lethal they want the potion to be, recognizing that greater lethality produces a better saving throw for the potential victim.
| Name | Damage/HD | Save |
|---|---|---|
| ailment | 1 | -2 |
| grieve | 2 | -1 |
| vex | 3 | – |
| rueful | 4 | +1 |
| distress | 5 | +2 |
| woe | 6 | +3 |
| misery | 7 | +4 |
| wretched | 8 | +5 |
| reaper | 9 | +6 |
| quietus | 10 | +7 |
The poison is therefore created from source material, reduced, mixed and combined with other small elements in order to produce the lethality desired. Most of this material will be obtained from plant material or fungi; to make one dose of ingestive poison, assume that 3 lbs. of material is required.
Names are added to the individual poison options in order to give easy reference to what poison the character wishes to manufacture.
Damage per hit die & level indicates the damage the victim suffers if the save vs. poison fails. Poison ignores the character's combat ability, as it directly attacks the body. Moreover, both the initial die relating to the character's mass and the character's level are added together to produce a potential lethality. A first level fighter, therefore, imbibing a dose of misery, would suffer 14 overall damage were the saving throw to fail.
Imbibed poisons of the type that can be created by this knowledge will not kill in a matter of seconds or even minutes, contrary to most beliefs. Expect the victim to experience a loss of one hit die or level every 10 rounds, calculating the amount of actual hit points lost per round accordingly.
It may seem that the ingested poisons here listed are a great deal less lethal than traditionally in D&D. The change is meant to reflect the effect of common poisons, where a given poison (usually something weak, such as ailment or grieve) is given in daily doses in order to steadily bring about demise of the victim. Faster poisons will be those that can be concocted once greater knowledge is obtained.
Additionally, common poisons are often mistaken for the onset of a disease or parasitic infestation, so that the necessary antidote fails to be administered. Roll a d12 to see if this occurs. If the result is higher than the number of hit points damage/HD & level, the poison has been mistaken for something else.
Without an antidote, the poison will cause an additional 1d4 damage per day (regardless of the original lethality) for a three-day period. Resting will not begin until after this period is passed. If an antidote is given, resting may begin immediately.
Note that the practice of producing antidotes exists in another study entirely.
See Also,
Alchemy
Poisoning
