Poisons

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Poison

A poison is a substance that interferes with the natural functions of a living creature's body, causing injury or death, typically requiring only a very small amount. The target of a poison may resist with a successful saving throw. Poisons can be delayed or cured with spells such as delay poison and neutralize poison.

Broadly speaking, when someone fails a saving throw against any poison, the poison deals some amount of non-lethal damage, which always ignores the target's defenses, and inflicts a status condition. The most common status condition inflicted by poison is Ability Damage (or ability drain).

Poisons have four categories, based on how they reach the target: contact, ingested, inhaled, or injury.

Contact: These poisons are delivered the moment a creature touches the poison with its bare skin. Such poisons can be used as injury poisons. Contact poisons usually have an onset time of 1 minute and a frequency of 1 minute.

Ingested: These poisons are delivered when a creature eats or drinks the poison. Ingested poisons usually have an onset time of 10 minutes and a frequency of 1 minute.

Inhaled: These poisons are delivered the moment a creature enters an area containing such poisons and do not usually have an onset time. For most inhaled poisons, 1 dose fills a volume equal to a 10-foot cube. A creature can attempt to hold its breath while inside the area to avoid inhaling the toxin. A creature holding its breath receives a 50% chance of not having to make a Fortitude save each round. See the rules for holding your breath and suffocation. If a creature is holding its breath and fails the constitution check to continue doing so, rather than suffocating it begins to breathe normally again (and is subject to the effects of the inhaled poison if still in the area).

Injury: These poisons are primarily delivered through the attacks of certain creatures and through weapons coated in the toxin. Injury poisons do not usually have an onset time and have a frequency of 1 round.

Applying Poison

One dose of poison smeared on a weapon or some other object affects just a single target. A poisoned weapon or object retains its poison until the weapon scores a hit or the object is touched (unless the poison is wiped off before a target comes in contact with it).

Applying poison to a weapon or single piece of ammunition is a standard action. Whenever you apply or ready a poison for use, there is a 5% chance that you expose yourself to the poison and must save against the poison as normal. This does not consume the dose of poison. Whenever you attack with a poisoned weapon, if the attack roll results in a natural 1, you expose yourself to the poison. This poison is consumed when the weapon strikes a creature or is touched by the wielder. If you have the poison use class feature (such as from the assassin prestige class or the alchemist base class), you do not risk accidentally poisoning yourself when applying poison.

Multiple Doses of Poison

The effects of poison cannot be stacked, unless different poisons are used. However, if a poisoned target is afflicted with the same poison an additional time, the non-lethal damage is applied each time the target fails the save. Multiple applications of poison do not raise the save DC of the poison, nor do they increase duration or effects of the status condition inflicted.

Types of Poison

Poisons have several characteristics which affect their cost for purchase, or their craft DC for creation.

Alcohol and Drunkenness

Perhaps the most common form of poison in any fantasy game is drunkenness. Nearly every tavern is happy to help lighten an adventurer's purse of all that ill-gotten gold, in exchange for a rarely-remembered bout of hedonism.

Outside of combat, alcohol behaves like any other ingested poisons, with an onset time of 10 minutes. It is assumed that most characters who drink alcohol are forgoing the saving throw, though, like any poison, a Fortitude save will negate the effects, if successful. Upon onset, alcohol lasts for 10 minutes per drink (a standard drink of alcohol is often much larger than a normal dose of poison; a beer, for example, is a pint (16 oz), which is assumed to have roughly the same efficacy as a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 1-ounce shot of spirits).

Most recreational drinkers will drink between 1 and 3 drinks, and will achieve a degree of light-headedness, reduced inhibitions, and, depending on the drinker, a tendency to see the best or worst in other people. For each drink imbibed prior to achieving drunkenness, alcohol has the following effects (assuming the Fort save is either eschewed or failed):

• 1d6 points of non-lethal damage per drink
• 1d6+1 temporary hit points per drink, which stack with any other temp hit points gained from alcohol
• a -1 penalty to Sense Motive skill checks per drink (max of -5)

Drunkenness, however, occurs at a number of drinks equal to your Constitution modifier. Drunkenness has a number of effects in addition to those listed above:

• the character suffers a -2 penalty to any Dex-based skill checks
• the character suffers a -5 penalty to any Int- or Wis-based skill checks (replaces the penalty to Sense Motive)

These effects persist for 4 hours, minus 10 minutes per point of Constitution modifier. For example, a character with a CON of 18 (a CON modifier of +4) would only endure the effects of alcohol for 3 hours and 20 minutes. A character with a constitution score of 46 or higher (constitution modifier of +18) cannot get drunk, since the duration is reduced to zero. Similarly, anyone immune to poisons is unable to gain any effects from alcohol.

If a character drinks twice his Con modifier in drinks before the duration expires,