Assassins' Use of Poison

Poison is about my least favourite part of the game: not because I see it as game-breaking for a player to use it as a short cut to kill an enemy, but because rules for it are hard to handle.

To begin with, poison is cheap and plentiful.  Five minutes in any wood will quickly put you in reach of a wide variety of poisonous berries and mushrooms, any of which can be crushed and brewed into a drink that will kill an enemy effectively.  We don't even need to know which mushrooms or berries —  pick anything you're unfamiliar with by sight and it's almost certain to be poisonous ... and what medieval character will not have gone on berry-picking expeditions as a youngster, as part of a general community escapade?  This means you don't need ANY skill, so that's not a restriction either.

This blows Gygax's perception in the original DMG (p.20) that poisons would cost 5, 30, 200 or 1500 g.p. apiece ... or that they should be rated according to their ability to kill you.  I know of some white berries growing in the alley behind my apartment that will kill you flat, that won't cost a dime.

Gygax ignores all this.  He states plainly, in a passage intended to speak directly to the assassin's use of poison,

"It is not the place of this work to actually serve as a monual for poisons and poisoning. Not only is such a subject distosteful, but it would not properly mesh with the standard poison system used herein."

Rarely should we expect to find such a miserable side-step.  Let me see if I can compress the "poison system" he denotes.

To use a poison, the assassin must wait until 9th level to "study poisons" for four courses of 5-8 weeks  each (this has to be pieced from the context, it isn't stated explicitly), which can't be interrupted.  This enables the assassin to study a group of "poison skills" that are uselessly generalized in description.  Each week costs the assassin 2000-8000 g.p.  Not kidding.  The 9th level must find an NPC "mentor" of at least 12th level to teach how to study this skill.  That is also a charge, though the number isn't specified.  Why not?  Who knows.  Because it took too much space to add another ludicrous number per week.  As Gygax states, "he or she can also set the fee as he or she sees fit."

The assassin has to gather a "wide variety" of animal, vegetable and mineral poisons for this training ... though this vague description is useless to the player and DM.  After all the study is done, the assassin will have "complete knowledge" — well, 90% — of all poisons known.  At this point, the assassin can start to use poisons to assassinate, selecting one of NINE poison effects included in the games rules.  Yes, that's right: you've just paid an average of 14,444 g.p. per poison choice, only three of which cause death when a save isn't made.

Oh, but wait!  Before you can use the poison, you've got to compound it.  What was I thinking!  It's suggested the compounding should take a week of game time, not to mention an additional 200-1200 g.p. (it's not stated whether this is per dose or not; one might assume it's per batch, but there's no number of doses per batch described anywhere in the passage) for "materials, bribes, etc."  It isn't clear how this number compares with a later number which states "cost/dose" ... the book's user is supposed to "figure it out" I guess, as best their RPG-unfamiliar 1979 fifteen-year old brain can.

Having shelled out this spectacular amount of money, the assassin now has a set of poisons, 6 in 9 of which have a 40% or better chance of being detected by smell.  For many tens of thousands of g.p. spent, the assassin has exactly one poison that can't be detected by smell, that takes 10-40 minutes to kill an enemy.  Compare this with a 9th level mage's ability to cast fireball automatically everyday without ever having to spend a dime, or the same character's ability to dispatch an enemy with assassination or backstabbing.  Hm.  Whaddaya say, Jack?  Wanna study some poisons?

The thrust of this causes a great many non-imaginative DMs and players to think, "Wow, making rules for things is stupid; why do we even have rules for things?"  Because, after all, if the Great Gygax failed, it must mean the task is impossible!

On some level, I understand the desire to throw one's hands in the air.  Dip a toe into the subject matter associated with poison and you'll find yourself in the deep end of the ocean in no time.  Gygax's earlier sidestep was meant to conceal that there are 30,000+ "common" forms of poison, related to plants, fungi, insects, reptiles, amphibians, fish and more.  Trying to make sense of it is difficult, since most of the content found wants to tell you a great deal more about what the poison comes from than what it does biologically, mostly because the world wants to keep that information out of your hands!  The best solution I've found is to presuppose an effect you want a poison to have, and then invent a source for that poison and say "screw the real world" when justifying that source.  After all, what difference does it make?  I'm under no obligation to make black mamba poison function in my game world exactly as it does in the real world, now am I?

I want to, though, and that is one source of my frustration.

Point in fact, everything we know about poison (or any other subject) wasn't obtained by a bunch of lazy non-imaginative scientists throwing their hands in the air and crying, "Wow, it's really hard to learn and know things!  Knowing things is stupid!  Why do we even need to know things?"

The purpose for making rules in a rational D&D game isn't based on what's easy, what's fun or what appears, on the surface, to be doable.  It's based on giving the players a grounding in what's possible, so they can make practical decisions regarding their characters.  We make rules for poison so players can know precisely what a black mamba's poison DOES, so that when the subject comes up, the DM isn't just pulling shit from the dark place to make the game work.  It is impossible for a group of players to make a judgement call on what to do when a character is poisoned based on whatever brown matter spatters across the table out of the DM's unconsidered and now desperate-to-invent something grabassery!  Forced to play in a context like this hamstrings the quality of the campaign ... but hell.

It's not like I haven't said THAT before.

This is a difficult sentiment, but let me make this pitch for why players ought not to use poison in the game, except when absolutely necessary.  It isn't because poison is costly.  Or hard to find.  Or easy to use.  Or kills 10th level characters too easily and makes the game unfun.  There is no reason not to use poison when only the construct of the game universe is considered.

In the real world, when anyone uses poison as a method, including Vlad, the impression this makes on the remainder of human beings is not a good one.  Kill a person with a sword and you might get some sympathy.  Waste someone with a fireball in the heat of battle and chances are you might reasonably expect a pass from higher ups who respect or revere magic.  But fall into the hands of an authority that learns that you used poison to overcome an enemy ...

And you will never, NEVER, catch a break.  Even if you are innocent, the forces that exist to judge you will see you BURN, on principle.

Count on it.