Poisons are IMPORTANT to get in D&D 5E!

can u apply poison on kobold's claw and teeth

the poison extraction dc is way too high. it should be made a dc 10 medicine check instead.

also 100 gp for a poison that doesn't incapacitate or kill is extortionate.

I’m playing my first D&D as a rouge, poisons we’re the first thing I started investigating, they seem OP, I’m also a Tabaxi, so poison coated claws sound badass.

nice guide as always!
A thing to note: as a DM if you spamming conjure familiar to harvest for poison from sudodragon, i will change your alignement to evil, and your find familiar will be either terrorize by you, sarcastique, evelish and sometime being a nuisance. he always obey your command, but can act independantely, he could leave a message on the ground to help foes, insult someone in a middle of a conversation. nothing in the spell say that the spirit is always the same or not, or if they know each other

Our DM has a table where we can forage for poisons using nature or survival. table is split into 3 parts, 1-10, 11-20, 20+ based in you roll for foraging. Then you roll for which poison you can make. Nothing like purple worm poison, but there are some that get up to 10d6 from local plants and animals. Some for sleep, some for incapacitate, some for madness. Its pretty cool and makes our ranger a lot more dangerous.

Pseudodragon poison milking is canonically a thing but it is very unethical and uncomfortable for the pseudodragon.

You know what I love about DnD is something as functionally simple as poison ties into player morality and the opinions of the gods. For example say a player taked poisons and puts them into a cake. They put the cake into the cabin of a murderer expecting him to think his wife made it for him and eat it whike his wife is out. What you didn't count on is his 10 year old son coming home from tutor early and finding the cake first then eating it. This happened because you put the poison there. Some players would argue the player is "wrong" and "at fault". Some would say innocent and not even to worry about it as long as you're not caught. Some of the Gods might say the player is responsible and some gods wouldn't be bothered ay all. Some evil gods might be glad you did it but refuse to give you credit or a blessing. Other evil gods might give you a boon and a mark you don't even want. There's so many different things that could happen here from an accident from a mundane item.

how much gold are you shoveling into your parties warchest that they can afford poisons?

talks about poisons including ingestion. proceeds to do a sponsor for cereal

The problem is that on higher levels poison becomes useless, especially in homebrew campaigns with DMs uses exotic enemies.
Don’t get me wrong, I poisoned a chicken and fed it to a swarm of dinosaurs which kicked ass.i probably could have killed a gargantuan using some deadly stuff that we found and a troll pieces.
But it isn’t very pood when you fight demons and lichs.

I have never thought of harvesting poison from a summoned creature. Thanks Mr tactics!

I wish there was an easy access to a basic venom for weapons.

No. Poisons aren't a lot more important than everyone makes them to be.

Only the highest tier poison does meaningful damage and you bet the DM will make it very rare and expensive.

Poisons suck.

A rogue in one of my campaigns managed to get her hands on a briefcase full of Purple Worm poison... plus 14th level sneak attack and an Oath Bow... there be a lotta-damage!

Made a poisoner goblin and it was a nightmare for my DM

It's great seeing someone as entheusiastic about D&D poison as I am. "But a crossbow does so much more damage" Yeah, but it's thematic having my forest prowler have a blowgun and numerous types of creature poison to take down various types of prey

Peak game design, the poisoned condition does not cause damage but poisons that you buy instead do 🤔

European who can't order magic spoon cereals -> cries

Thing is: 100gp for a ONE use thing that could fail, especially so at a relatively low DC, is just not worth the effort, to me.

And all the fun stuff (harvesting and designing new ones) depends too much on the GM willing to put work in, over which I have no control.

Criminal Contacts access to poison makes the Criminal background actually worth something for a change.

I can only find the condition immunities by cephalon but not damage immunities, was it taken down?

AND ALCHEMIST ARTIFICER IS THE MOST SKILL AT MAKING THEM OR EXTRACTING/ HARVESTING and ARTIFICER CAN INFUSION ACIDS TOO
POISONER FEAT IGNORES POISON RESISTANCE
Acid vial can be a homunculus servant

Love to see you on these other ads

Something hits different hearing your matter of fact voice give an ad about Protein Cereal lmao

Too bad that it's easily one of the most common immunities in 5th edition. 436 of The creatures in 5e have immunity to the poison condition, while 96 of them immune to poison damage. Not to mention that Dwarves, Reborn, Warforged, Green Dragonborn, Yuan-Ti, and Stout Halflings all receive poison resistance from their race.
In most cases, you're trying to poison a human target, sure that can work.
But imagine someone trying to poison someone your character doesn't know wether or not it's immune.

In my last session my rogue stole a cockatrice spine. The dm ruled it the same as a dagger plus when I hit someone with it, they have to role a DC 11 con save or be petrified by the cockatrice venom for 24 hours. Earned that weapon the hard way by being petrified by it first. Luckily the sorcerer befriending this weird celestial flying snake thing that cured me and I got to keep the spine. Instead of a dagger though I use it as crossbow ammo.

And there is a spell that makes it that an enemy that is a immune tl element is no longer immune and this works with poison to

I think part of the reason players disregard poisons is that the first one they see (and indeed the only one unless they look at the DMG!) is Basic Poison, which is ridiculously priced for what it is and does. An injury poison that only lasts one minute, costs 100 GP, and is good for a maximum of three attacks (if you apply it to ammunition rather than to a melee weapon) — and on top of all that, you get 1d4 damage with a mere DC 10 CON save to utterly negate it. Even if you harvest or craft it, the action economy on that is just awful. Other poisons are far better, but are much more expensive and/or harder to harvest.

There are ways to work around this — harvesting beast venoms is an excellent example! — but by the time they're under consideration people have already anchored on the basic poison and dismissed the whole category.

Put the video on 1,25 speed and you almost talk in a normal pace :D good video tho, but the talk is reaaaaaaal slow :D

I definitely need to give my artificer some poisons.

Anyone have a link to that cephalon damage resistances page featured in the video? The description links the condition resistances, not damage ones, and I can't seem to find the correct one on their site.

obtain a poison scabbard

These videos really make me realize how terrible my past DMs were.

you will always find my characters packing at least a dose or two of malice

When they work they are cool. 1/3rd of the monster manual is immune. Player races are resistant, Dwarves, Reborn, Warforged, Green Dragonborn, Yuan-Ti, and Stout Halflings, autognomes, and I think there is another but that's just a list. Poison has been made a lot less useful so when it works it really really works. But to invest in a damage type so heavily resisted is not worth it unless you know you aren't doing undead, demons, or yaunti based campaigns.

Dead or Incapacitated is mostly just suggesting you are getting it from a wild source. One could assume, with DM-permission of course, that an ally or tamed creature could be convinced to share its poisons or venoms as well... Without being dead or disabled. (Taking a live snake, friendly or not could still be "milked" as it bites down on something to deposit a dose of poison with successful animal handling or dexterity checks... Fun scenario if the player attempting this possibly getting bitten once or twice before getting the sample properly.)

Thank you for your information video

Why do people not use poison? Maybe thats just our group but undead and fiends are pretty much our enemies of choice.

I once committed a warcrime with poison spray by gassing an entire mansion with poison spray in a game of hide and seek..... so many dead semi-innocent goblins......

One of my characters is an alchemist artificer who specialises in poisons, and while I unfortunately haven't had much of a chance to play her properly I absolutely love poisons in 5e
One thing I've been finding particularly fun is trying to figure out ways to make poisons that might bypass the resistances of certain creatures, for example using holy water in one to make an anti fiend/undead poison, it's a neat little thought experiment

So, my DM went to great lengths to make poison incredibly relavant in our Storm King's Thunder campaign. Spoilers.



So, in STK, you have the option of fighting each kind of giant in their home base. Normally it's a bit of a Schrodinger's Quest, where the giant's are only relevant if you choose to engage them. To that end, the giant's actual schemes arn't that relevant in the long run, and most of them are entirely destined to fail.

Our DM did something cool to really kick up the tension. Instead of passively failing to end the world or accomplish their goals, each of the giants have become serious threats. To name a few, the Frost giants actually succeed in acquiring a homebrew version of the Ring of Winter, and the stone giants kidnapped family from 2 of the PC's.

For the hill giants, he made them carriers for a deadly and mysterious disease which spreads via contact. Creatures who succumb to this 'Hill Plague' become mindless slaves to the hill giants. Healing magic FAILS to rid patients of the disease, and the Harpers are getting desperate. The disease makes normal monsters (such as ogres, orcs, and giant spiders) much deadlier, jumping their CR by about 2 or 3, dealing extra necrotic and acid damage, and there are a crap ton of them since it spreads so quickly. By the time we were able to actually ready to deal with the hill giants (we're level 9 now), they had infected almost all of the Dessarin Valley, and were about to expand even further.

We had just finished a deadly fight with a hoard (30-40 plus homebrewed plauge spreader orcs) of these zombie slaves in Ulivin, when our cleric somehow caught that the juiced orcs we fought dealt half their normal acid damage after suffering poison damage from our rogue. By this point, we are in the single digits and HEAVILY infected, and we were preparing to bust out some treasure for raise dead to see if dying and coming back to life would cure the disease.

But it turns out, the disease was actually hill giant bacteria, and dealing poison damage to it, or an infected creature reduces a creature's infection rate to 0 if enough poison damage is dealt! We take some poison, throw up, and now we're back on our feet! Nobody questions our rogue anymore, he's been pivotal.


I applaud our DM for figuring out a believable and fun way for poison to actually be critical in both the story and the fights!

Happy family appreciation month from italy 🇮🇹

Love to see some some Artificer content.

I run with the save or die mechanic with some poisons.

Most poisons in my games do further damage if the save is failed, but some are just plain nasty enough to exact the ultimate price for failing the save.

Save vs poison or die.

Can’t wait to bring mustard gas to my next combat encounter

My players are going to hate you in the next session of my Witcher campain

See, I keep wanting to make a poison user, but everyone always says "don't do that, everything is immune, do something better instead". I love the idea of a discreet poison user, a ghost who kills without leaving a trace.

Happy Pride! <3

Isn't the use of poison considered an evil act?
Therefore Good aligned characters should not use them.

I am going to create a poisoner character now.