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Author Topic: Nytemare's DMG Rewrites: Poisons  (Read 507 times)
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Nytemare3701
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« on: August 03, 2011, 11:19:41 PM »

While it's generally agreed that Poisons are an effective (albeit expensive) tool for early game, they quickly stop being useful entirely.

Quote from: Arsenic and Old Lace: The Poison Handbook
How important are poisons?
One of the basic things to understand is that poison use has a high initial return, but a low return for more investment.  For example, spending 8 skill ranks and a feat to use and make poisons provides a lot of power, but spending 23 skill ranks and five feats will generally only make your poisons moderately better. 

So it's important to understand the opportunity cost of poison-related feats and abilities - even if you use poisons in every fight, often power attack or quicken spell will be a better feat choice than Poison Master, for example.  Likewise, if I were making a poison-using wizard, I would take Red Wizard or Incantatrix over the Alchemical Savant, because the rewards are greater over time. 

For example, if you're a 9th level druid and have 4-5 skill ranks to spare, investing in poisons is simply good thinking.  Almost any non-good wizard who is 7th level should learn minor creation.  Anyone playing a warforged, undead, or dragonwrought kobold also can use poisons without giving up anything for the ability.

To sum up: I don't recommend specializing in poisons unless you want to be thematic.  Poisons - like levels in fighter - are best as a small dip to increase the power of many builds, but generally shouldn't be the main focus of a build.

How would we best go about making poison use viable in endgame situations, without utterly destroying the early game?

My answer: Concentrated doses.

Sufficient alchemical skill should allow a player to distill extremely powerful concentrates from existing poisons, raising the DC of the poison. The plan so far is to add additional uses to Craft.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS ENTIRELY UNTESTED

DC+5=+1 DC to poison save, and the new DC for crafting is the old DC+5
Failure ruins the dose entirely.
Example:

Quote from: Poison
Craft DC 20
Contact DC 10

If I make a DC25 craft check, I can distill this into a DC11 poison.

Quote from: New Poison
Craft DC25
Contact DC 11
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Garryl
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« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2011, 01:55:33 AM »

What are you doing about so many things simply being immune to poison at higher levels? Constructs, elementals, oozes, plants, and undead are all immune outright. Many outsiders (all demons, devils, and half-fiends, along with numerous other individual outsiders) are also immune. The 4th level Neutralize Poison spell gives complete immunity for 10 minutes/level. I don't know how much of poison's lack of worth is because of this.

Whatever reason poison isn't that impressive, I don't think save DCs for a dedicated poison user are it. Between the high DC versions available with Minor and Major Creation via a Craft check, and an Assassination weapon with a Greater Magic Weapon spell, poisons should have competitive save DCs with spells and other options even with no investment otherwise.
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veekie
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« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2011, 04:13:20 PM »

Still doesn't matter for the most part, immunity or not.

Problems:
1) Delay Poison, once available to have on all day, removes poisons from consideration. For Poisons to matter, powerful poisons would need to be classified with curses eventually.
2) Poison DCs scale wildly. This is more an issue with supply. As is, the table of poisons available does not properly describe a range of poisons suitable to a poison oriented character.
3) After immunity to poison, most poisons simply inflict ability damage. Immunity is common enough and the effect is either hyperlethal(targeted at a weak ability) or ineffectual(targeted at a moderate ability thats not its attack stat). Variety of effects is advised.
4) Intervals. Initial damage and secondary damage means that what with the poison kicking in after a minute, most poisons are a) pretty obvious, b) too slow to use in combat, c) second saves tends to wipe the secondary anyway.
5) Streamlining. Poisons, curses, and diseases are all Effect Over Time things, why have each run on its own subsystem?
6) Crafting poison takes forever due to how the craft rules work.

1 is simple enough, its just a consequence of the immunity rules. Either you throw in poison-like effects that aren't poison, or you revamp immunities.
2 & 3 are matters of variety. Expand the types of poison. Vary what they do. For the stronger variations of weaker poisons, you could simply count the weaker poison as the raw material for the stronger's manufacture.
4 & 5 can be solved with the Affliction mechanic from Pathfinder(100% compatible with classic 3.5), combined with an expansion of venom variation(a long onset poison might work for assassination for example, an hour onset poison that causes fatigue, followed by unconsciosness and Con loss).
6 the answer and the problem is both Minor Creation. With it, expensive poisons are trivially easy to purchase, without, forget crafting your own, it takes weeks to make enough poison that you'd blow through in a single day. Or you could fix the craft rules.
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Nytemare3701
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« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2011, 05:59:11 PM »

Still doesn't matter for the most part, immunity or not.

Problems:
1) Delay Poison, once available to have on all day, removes poisons from consideration. For Poisons to matter, powerful poisons would need to be classified with curses eventually.
2) Poison DCs scale wildly. This is more an issue with supply. As is, the table of poisons available does not properly describe a range of poisons suitable to a poison oriented character.
3) After immunity to poison, most poisons simply inflict ability damage. Immunity is common enough and the effect is either hyperlethal(targeted at a weak ability) or ineffectual(targeted at a moderate ability thats not its attack stat). Variety of effects is advised.
4) Intervals. Initial damage and secondary damage means that what with the poison kicking in after a minute, most poisons are a) pretty obvious, b) too slow to use in combat, c) second saves tends to wipe the secondary anyway.
5) Streamlining. Poisons, curses, and diseases are all Effect Over Time things, why have each run on its own subsystem?
6) Crafting poison takes forever due to how the craft rules work.

1 is simple enough, its just a consequence of the immunity rules. Either you throw in poison-like effects that aren't poison, or you revamp immunities.
2 & 3 are matters of variety. Expand the types of poison. Vary what they do. For the stronger variations of weaker poisons, you could simply count the weaker poison as the raw material for the stronger's manufacture.
4 & 5 can be solved with the Affliction mechanic from Pathfinder(100% compatible with classic 3.5), combined with an expansion of venom variation(a long onset poison might work for assassination for example, an hour onset poison that causes fatigue, followed by unconsciosness and Con loss).
6 the answer and the problem is both Minor Creation. With it, expensive poisons are trivially easy to purchase, without, forget crafting your own, it takes weeks to make enough poison that you'd blow through in a single day. Or you could fix the craft rules.

Yikes.

1. I'll redefine Immunity as a nonmagical +10 toward the save.
2 & 3: I'll have to write up some new poisons.
4 & 5: *reading*
6: Nerfing creation and fixing craft. Got it.
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ALT+7 to make a •
Clean up your posts and people tend to react better to them.

My rewrites:
Mechanics

There's RAI, and then there's RAW, and then there's "Hey, if I deliberately misread this look how powerful it is!" – Caelic
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