Crafted poisons

[myrddraal]

Poisons are not very strong as they stand atm and I was talking through some ideas with people but thought I’d make a placeholder suggestion for now.  (Also a buff to the prestige class assassin.  A LOT of people hold the view it is lack luster and you can be a much better assassin as rogue fighter)

The craft should be locked behind the assassin class (enchanting is class locked, should be able to impliment) and require 30 skill in herbalism.  A few placeholder names for poisons to get the jist

Paralysis: self explanatory.  Chance to apply paralysis to target.

Bleed: chance to keep their blood from clogging, inflicting bleed damage.

Slow: chance your target becomes sluggish and slowed.

Debilitating poison: chance to inflict negative to ability scores across the board.  Amount to be determined but I was thinking -3.

Burning poison: if not resisted, direct damage.


Figuring out actually useful DCs is another problem.  I don’t have a ton of time to write this out on my lunch or I’d explore those a little lol

[BraveSirRobin]

Poisons are not very strong as they stand atm and I was talking through some ideas with people but thought I’d make a placeholder suggestion for now.  (Also a buff to the prestige class assassin.  A LOT of people hold the view it is lack luster and you can be a much better assassin as rogue fighter)

The craft should be locked behind the assassin class (enchanting is class locked, should be able to impliment) and require 30 skill in herbalism.  A few placeholder names for poisons to get the jist

Paralysis: self explanatory.  Chance to apply paralysis to target.

Bleed: chance to keep their blood from clogging, inflicting bleed damage.

Slow: chance your target becomes sluggish and slowed.

Debilitating poison: chance to inflict negative to ability scores across the board.  Amount to be determined but I was thinking -3.

Burning poison: if not resisted, direct damage.


Figuring out actually useful DCs is another problem.  I don’t have a ton of time to write this out on my lunch or I’d explore those a little lol

Frankly, I'd like for there to be real poisons of real consequence. Most poisons are only a 75% chance of failure for someone with 0 Fortitude, and Fortitude is the most common and easily boosted save on the server.

[zDark Shadowz]

People will have a range of saves from 6 to 36 so there isn't really a great way to do it, with the current highest creature poison I'm aware of being DC 37.

If the craft is created I think it should use luck based refinement and composite system.

At a base level:
First effect deals ability damage dice.
Second effect deals twice the prior dice.
Second effect applies after 5 rounds of first effect.

Refinement system;
Each change to a poison increases the chance of failing the poison by 5%, regardless and independant of crafting skill. (Either deletes the item or prevents further modifications). It'd throw integers onto the poison that allow it to recalculate the following aspects;

* Change secondary effect to a debilitating status
* Reduce time before second effect applies
* Increase DC of both effects
* Change the saving throw required
* Additional bonuses if consumed (higher bonus increase margins per refinement)
* Bonus vs racial type

You'd be able to tailor your poisons to specific individuals, which would be really neat for rangers, monster hunters & assassins.

If someone is really lucky, or amasses a lot of materials, they could make some extremely powerful poisons up to a limit of luck and x20 different changes. If it was using tags to check for the adjustments you wouldn't need a million different variant items.

~

Now this (or something similar) would be quite annoying to implement so if someone knows how to do it and people like it, it'd be better to apply for dev and make the poison system than expect the current devs to drop what they're doing. A poison system in an efficient way is a large undertaking.

[Alcoholic Squirrel (Birdman)]

Crafted poisons would be a good start to introducing the mechanic to the game, in its current format I think there is only one poison on the server that's actually good and it's not even that good.

I don't recommend making it entirely an offshoot of herbalism or placing it behind the assassin class since a character would not need to kill someone in the capacity that an assassin has in order to utilize poisons.

What I would recommend if a 'poison craft' was implemented would be to put it behind a Herbalism and Alchemy wall. Not all poisons are made in the natural world some could be chemical concoctions, and there are also a thing as 'toxic metals' as well that could be refined into a proper poison IE. Arsenic.

would recommend including the PrC 'Court Poisoner' and adding some poison improving feats like these from Drow of the Underdark and Complete Scoundrel



My notes on the above feats is to maybe improve the Poison Expert and Poison Master DC bumps by 1 (so +2 instead of +1), it would be neat to see a feat that had a crafting pre-requisite.

[myrddraal]

The reasoning I had behind suggesting an herbalism requirement is more or less learning from the mistakes you made and discovering new, harmful, properties.  Another route that could be pursued for it is making poison crafting a skill akin to a black powder avenger with their unique crafts.  Assassin specifically because it is thematic to the class and with their narrowed skill set (also reflected in way less skill points than rogue levels would get) and shows dedication to a powerful tool for the RP of it rather than having it be hyper accessible.

As for the DCs - a mix of fortitude and will saves could make them more viable.  I was thinking somewhere in the 20-25 range for most of them.  Or something like 15+ assassins levels.  Or something like 10+2x assassin levels to really reward someone putting half their levels into the class.  In my own suggested poisons I’d recommend

Paralysis - will save, reflecting on the poison interrupting your  decoys system responding to what you want it to do

Bleed - fortitude.

Slow - will.  Sort of the same concept as the paralysis

Debilitating - fortitude

Burning - fortitude, half damage on a successful save.  You probably could flavor several different damage types too (fire, negative, acid, etc)

A blinding poison or sleep inducing poison also would probably be appropriate.

To prevent people from asking their assassin friend to stock pile them poison, they could expire like gris gris.

[Alalaurealarialelia]

Query: Currently some poisons in game last ten minutes once applied to your weapon and may trigger an infinite amount of times in that period and some only last until your first attack and then vanish. Which of these two behaviours do we assume for this proposal?

[Avarice]

Query: Currently some poisons in game last ten minutes once applied to your weapon and may trigger an infinite amount of times in that period and some only last until your first attack and then vanish. Which of these two behaviours do we assume for this proposal?

I feel like it should last until your first attack, then vanish, or have a single application to food or drink.  This would be most authentic to the real world because venomous creatures in nature will bite, then flee while the toxins slowly kill you.  The same with people who use poisons to kill.  Applying it to a dagger and stabbing someone multiple times is going to really take away from the relevance of the poison because you're dying from stab wounds.

Poisons in the game work strangely, where they are definitely impactful but they won't outright kill you, or cause strange side effects like causing you to pass out over and over.  They're just stat debuffs.

The most fair way to implement poison crafting is to either gate it behind Herbalism like how Gilding is a subset of smithing, or for you to randomly create a poison when you fail to brew a potion.