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.

More Work on Poisons

If there is a part of the game that I wish I could wave a magic wand and eliminate, it is the use of poisons.  It isn't just that they're potentially super-powerful and able to unbalance a game in the extreme (as a many a DM has discovered if the poison rules don't effectively restrain an assassin from causing havoc), it is also that the actual detail involving poisons is exhaustive and extremely difficult to define.  Pliny the Elder describes over 7,000 different poisons, not to mention that anything has an LD50 level if enough is ingested.  Add to this the difficulty in defining the game effects of each kind of poison, it's specific lethality and consequent difficulty in manufacture and it gets even harder.  Of course, many incredibly deadly poisons are obviously very easy to make, if someone difficult to get someone to swallow willingly.

I have never liked the "save or die" option.  Poison simply doesn't affect people this way.  Many poisonings give plenty of time for people to get to the hospital and be saved, as we well know.  A person could easily spend a full year building up a very complicated system and set of rules to describe all the variable forms of poison, but for what?  A method of killing that is, frankly, somewhat dull compared to hacking people to death with a sword.

Still, poison has to exist so waving it away is not an option.  I've been steadily working up my own rules to deal with poison, partly on the wiki and partly in my head.  I've gone an extra step today (in keeping with

working on medicine/physician rules) to codify these rules further. I include part of the relevant wiki page below:

Poison Damage
Because poison attacks a creature from the inside, the amount of damage that is done is PER hit die or level, meaning that creatures with a high number of hit dice or levels are no safer from poisoning than creatures with less. A 1st level character, therefore, has as much chance of surviving being poisoned as a 10th level creature. This keeps in line with my rules defining biological units (see Hit Points). Most poisons range from a lethality of 1 to 10 points per hit die or level.

For example, a 5th level fighter and a 1st level fighter are each poisoned by a substance with a lethality of 5 hp/HD & Level. Because leveled creatures do possess 1 HD in addition to their levels (see Hit Dice), the 5th level will suffer 6 x 5 hp (30 damage) and 1st level will suffer 2 x 5hp (10 damage). In my game, an average 5th level NPC fighter would have 32 total hit points: a d8 (for mass, counting as the character's 1 HD) + 5d10. The 1st level NPC fighter would receive a d8 + 1d10, for 10 hit points. Each would suffer an amount of damage that would seriously threaten their survival, particularly if either had already suffered damage from other means. Any constitution bonus would greatly increase their chance of survival.

Likewise, we might compare an Indian elephant with 10 hit dice to the above, encountering the same poison. The elephant would suffer 50 total damage - but because the elephant weighs about 5 to 6 tons, it has an average of 9.5 hp/HD, or an average of 95 hit points.

Time of Effect

The damage caused by poison does not affect the victim all at once. To begin with, the poison must have time to enter the bloodstream and spread through the body: this alone will require 1 to 3 rounds, during which time the poison will cause no damage of any time. Once this time has passed, the actual damage caused by the poison is then a random roll from round to round, according the following formula:

• Divide the total damage caused by the poison in half: this indicates the potential maximum effect (PME) of the poison per round.
• Each round, roll a die equal to the PME and remove the damage that has been done from the initial total.
• When the PME is less than the total damage remaining, reduce the PME to equal this remainder for each round that remains.
• Continue to roll each round until all damage has been suffered.

For example, consider the 5th level fighter described above (we'll call him Ethan). We begin by rolling 1d3 to determine how long it takes the poison to take effect, with a result of 2. This will mean that Ethan begins to suffer damage in the 3rd round. We calculate the PME at half of 30 damage, a total of 15. In the 3rd round we roll 1-15 to see the damage and get the result of 4. This isn't enough to stun Ethan, so although he doesn't feel "well," he is able to continue acting freely.

With the 4th round we roll a 2 and Ethan's free action is still unaffected. In the 5th round, however, we roll an 8 and Ethan is now definitely stunned. He has taken a total of 14 hit points so far, so in the 6th round the PME is unchanged: Ethan takes another 6 damage and is in trouble. Thankfully, however, he is probably past the worst: because he has taken 20 damage so far, the PME is reduced to 10 points. In the 7th round we roll 1-10 and Ethan suffers another 5 damage. We reduce the PME again and in the 8th round, we roll 1-5 and Ethan suffers 4 more damage. This leaves only 1 left, so that in the 9th round he takes this last damage and the poison has run its course.

While this does impose a more complicated procedure where calculating the damage done by poison, it does increase the game's tension where it comes to the character being unsure of how bad the poison really is. There is also time to give aid, allaying the damage caused by the poison with spell, potion or salve while it is happening, casting slow poison or neutralize poison if possible. Therefore, it is possible for a character to suffer more damage than initially possessed at the start of being poisoned. It also means that multiple poisonings (from monster attacks or consuming more than one dose before realizing the poisoning has occurred) could produce multiple PME rolls per round.

Saving throws against poisoning will reduce the total damage of the poison (and the PME as well) by 50%. Recognizing that a substance is poisoned before drinking is not considered part of a saving throw, but is a sage ability in its own right.

I intend to add this last (the ability to be able to smell/locate poison) to the assassin character's poison study ability.