Poisons

The issue of PCs wanting gather and make use of poisons is becoming more prevalent, so I thought I would clarify the rules for this before we go any further. According to the DMG (p 258) harvesting one dose of a poison requires a DC20 Intelligence (Nature) check or proficiency in a Poisoners' Kit can be substiuted but it's still an Int roll. If the check fails by 5 or more, you become exposed to the poison and must make a saving throw or suffer the poison's effects. Note that this procedure takes 1d6 minutes for 1 dose....................

I may add: these are the rules for harvesting poison. If you want to craft certain poison it becomes much more difficult (Player hand book rules Pag187 crafting). You can create 5gp of  value per day when creating objects. The example is that creating a plate armor takes 300 days. IMO this is a bit excessive bc creating certain things takes more time and money than creating others. Creating a poison, depending on your materials, can be extremely simple or extremely complicated. (is it supposed to imitate a natural death or not?) etc etc... 

Thank you kindly for the information Stephen. Edit: Removed pointless question.

Gathering poison from a natural source would fall under harvesting would it not?

According to my reading of the rules you craft only basic poisons If you harvest a poison from a monster, you don't need to craft that poison to make it useful. You just need to harvest it So from the Wyvern stingers (from last night) you would need to harvest the poison (we will retcon that the poison glands are still attached). It also seems to be DM fiat as to how long the poison will last after extraction; oxidation is a series problem with real world poisons as they are often highly reactive substances.

the basic poison is one example of crafted poisons. I think some of the other ones in the DMG are also not harvested and therefore require crafting, e.g.: Assassin's blood, drow poison, malice, pale tincture etc. Although I would like to see someone harvesting drow poison from a drow :D

Generally, when the ingredients are not specificed, it's crafting and when it's from a monster it's harvesting. Obviously this is crazily artifical but welcome to 5e! The rules muddy the water by saying that ...sometimes you need special ingredients to craft a poison' but that's just another way of saying 'DM fiat' again.

-Is jonesing to get his hands on his DMG and read all about it- Also; Syvil - poisons? Bad idea or good idea? As a player I would argue weapon as weapon but I know Syvil would once have had very mixed feelings about it.

I once asked stephen and he said it should be only non good characters doing it. I guess it depends on what poisons you use. A sleep poison might be OK to use for syvil, something that causes the target to have immense pain and suffering will surely be nothing for good ppl

I don't think you can put it quite like so; if you are cutting someone to pieces anyway I don't think you can call using poison for the same purpose "evil" and be done.

Actually; that's EXACTLY how the rules for Paladins and Good characters using poison were in every edition of D&D before 3rd. You couldn't use them because it was dishonourable. Killing is not the issue; it's about honour and valour! Sort of like how some martial traditions regarded missile weapons as cowardly; but really it's just justifying restricting poisons for reasons of game balance.

What is your ruling for 5E? I agree on the it being "cowardly" but since when do the rules forbid you being a coward?

I'd say they don't... otherwise Marokin has a VERY BIG problem ;) I mean in western culture there is this weird idea of a "humane death" or "killing humanly" whatever that is supposed to mean. Exposing somebody to a poison that tortures the person in the last stages of them loosing their life might be less "humane" then fighting them and cutting off their arm because it showed an opening and dis-armed that person.  Exposing someone to a poison that makes them fall unconscious and die might be more humane than literally cutting them to pieces for enjoyment ;) The honour thing of paladins is a different issue. I would rather say this is a matter of being lawful or not. A lawful evil character might have more issues with poison than a chaotic good person... And then it might just be a law issue: the law on maladon might prohibit the use of poison... so doing it might classify you as "evil" in the view of the empire :)

Can my Unseen Servant do the poison making, under my supervision of course ;)

you mean the harvesting?

Whichever...

This spell creates an invisible, mindless, shapeless force that performs simple tasks at your command until the spell ends. The servant springs into existence in an unoccupied space on the ground within range. It has AC 10, 1 hit point, and a Strength of 2, and it can’t attack. If it drops to 0 hit points, the spell ends. Once on each of your turns as a bonus action, you can mentally command the servant to move up to 15 feet and interact with an object. The servant can perform simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food, and pouring wine. Once you give the command, the servant performs the task to the best of its ability until it completes the task, then waits for your next command. If you command the servant to perform a task that would move it more than 60 feet away from you, the spell ends.

And this helps me how?

... simple tasks that a human servant could do, such as fetching things, cleaning, mending, folding clothes, lighting fires, serving food, and pouring wine. ... Making poison is no "simple task" as it can be done with proficiency and requires a check above 20. Of course Stephen rules what goes but from what I can tell; RAW is a no and the spell itself tells us so.

I would argue that pressing poison out of a poison sack or equivalent source is not that hard to do. Living creatures need to be careful with extracting the venom because they can be affected by it, a shapeless force needs not to be so careful.

I would say it is very circumstantial... The intellectual work might not be done by the servant, but tasks like: pour this here, pour that there, mix it, shake it, cut off this tail, press here to press out the poison... I don't think it is harder then serving food... GM call in anyway... he might be budging it ...

Agreed; broken into steps it is easy. So are most things... Perhaps a suitable compromise is that it could do it; but you make the check and have to directly control it? Thus putting yourself out of harms way. It's an idea anyway.

Ithiloneth M. said: Agreed; broken into steps it is easy. So are most things... Perhaps a suitable compromise is that it could do it; but you make the check and have to directly control it? Thus putting yourself out of harms way. It's an idea anyway. Sounds agreeable. Although it's quite hard to mess up if I put the Servant to do the extraction  inside a vial so there's no possibility of spilling :] The job might be really slow but hey, PCs aren't exactly short on spare time.

Well the difficulty comes from these vessels being maybe damaged or bursting when you press them, poison spreading out form the side... Remember your servant has 1 hitpoint: If anything goes wrong and it is exposed to the poison in any way it most likely - puff - evaporates and drops everything :)

An Unseen servant is not intelligent or dextrous enough to carry out this action unless the caster is nearby directing everything. And if the caster is close enough to do that, they are close enough to get splashed, tread in the poison or overwise come into contact with it; hence the DC would be lowered by 2 to 18, but it is still fairly dangerous. The reason is that poison glands are surrounded by smooth muscle and this type of muscle often spontaneously contracts or relaxes after a creature has died. Hence, there is some uncertainty surrounding the process of milking the gland. In addition, an unseen servant has no finesse. If you tell it to press, it presses as much as it can etc.

Smooth muscle is a mystery to be sure; you can control your heartbeat (with practice) but you can't control your heart. Or so I've heard... Very interesting to learn poison glands are controlled by such muscle; seems a bit dangerous XD