I had discussed this previously on MIRC when it was first implemented for the food/drink application, but would like to discuss it overall.

Would it be possible for poisons to have the DC listed on the item, and what the check is, for both applying to a weapon and applying it to a food/drink?

I know almost nothing of poisons, because everytime I have tried to apply it to a weapon it has failed. That's about twenty times. It's hard to figure out what factors into why I'm failing, but most people tell me the DC's are just too high.

Maybe it wouldn't be too much to ask, to just have a lot of the secrecy involving how poison works(the mechanics) revealed to us?

-The duration it lasts -The DC's to apply -Does applying it in combat have a higher penalty?

I don't think it's right that poison is only useful to Assassins and Blackguards. I made this post to get ideas flowing, and to possibly get some of the mystery of what poison actually does, and maybe why everyone seems to -always- fail at applying it.

I heard one great idea while discussing it on mirc. Make it a stat check of INT mod+Dex mod vs single DC. Sounds very reasonable to me. And if you fail, a reflex save to avoid poisoning yourself.

I am not entirely sure, but I think even the weakest poison requires a successful dexterity check DC 25. The process is delicate and requires extreme caution, and thus it's not that easy. I think the INT+DEX idea's pretty nice, but the DC should still remain high - we can't let any person with high DEX/INT or both suddenly poison everything possible just because he can.

Moved to the Suggestions forum.

I think that the mechanics of applying poison to weapons need to be reworked substantially. They're pretty broken at the moment.

Our custom poisons also need better descriptions, and that's a separate issue.

Given the expense and rarity of strong poisons, I think that the concern about somebody going and "poisoning everything" is pretty unwarranted. Be careful when buying potions from shady brewers or secondhand!

As an aside, this sounds like Brew Potion could be mixed into this and implemented nicely somehow.

Maybe for dection of the poison? Extraction of the poison from the substance?

(1) Poison effects and DCs are all available on the NWN Grimoire, other than the few custom poisons we have (2) Poison duration on weapons is indeed short, and the DCs high. It is a major perk for blackguard/assassins, however there are two very rare items that can be found that grant the Use Poison feat. (3) Anyone (as I understand) can use those poisons for potions, drinks, food.

I kind of like it how it is, but am open to specific suggestions.

Edit: The NWN Grimoire should generally be considered OOC knowledge unless your character has exceptional reason to know about the effects of these different and obscure poisons. There is a book (and more to come) that detail IC knowledge of just what many poisons do.

Alright...so I tested out some of the weakest poisons. I drank a potion of cat's grace, putting my dex mod up to 7 with the potion. I was in armor with no skill check penalty(no shield equipped either). I was not in combat at the time.

I destroyed four spider venom, mild, before I got one to work.

Still seems a -tad- broken if someone has to have a 7+ dex mod to get poison to take, for the very weakest poison types.

Just an explanation, for those who don't know; this is how it "should" work according to PnP.

1. Applying any contact type poison to a blade always incurs a 5% chance of self-poisoning. This is the risk which the "poison use" feat eliminates. Although this is nice, as you can see, it is not "huge" unless you are using poisons which alone can kill you. (And those would be extremely rare and powerful.)

2. Rolling a 1 in combat means your unlucky self fumbles, and you may poison yourself with the weapon. This is where you normally roll a DC 15 reflex save in PnP to see if you can avoid being poisoned.

3. Buying poison or having it on yourself is typically illegal.

4. Traps can include contact poisons, and as such you would assume that they last longer than 3 or 4 rounds after application. Although I'm not sure of any "official" rule, I think a fair DM would agree that the timer should not start running until you start using the poisoned weapon in combat, at the very least; perhaps from the time you first use the weapon against something until an hour or so IG.

(If you wanted to be picky, you could also determine how many "hits" the weapon could do before the poison is all cleaned off from the weapon once you start hitting stuff. Of course, cheaper versions of the poison being weak and dispersing fast, and more expensive versions of the same substance sticking to the blade for a longer time.)

It seems NWN once again half-arsed their implementation. As you can see, classes that gain higher reflexes are supposed to get substantially better at not accidentally poisoning themselves when it really matters, which is in combat. (NWN's absurdly low poison duration means that even the poison application itself must by default practically be in combat anyway, though.) Losing the 5% chance when prepping a weapon is nice, but not so much of a big deal while you're not using high-powered stuff.

(I kind of suspect that they grabbed the DCs that are meant for the combat reflex saves, and shoe-horned dex checks in for it instead, god knows why. Maybe the lack of "moral repercussions" in the OC made them decide it was better to make them much more difficult to use, or perhaps it was because there was no longer any real risk of poisoning yourself during combat.)

Edit: Ok, so this is in suggestions, I guess I better suggest something. Here we go...

1. Make poisons last longer. 2. Make them slightly easier to use, or switch back to a reflex-save application. 3. Add a chance of carrying "poison sacs" to any creature with natural venom. 4. Remove all poisons from vendors. Instead, replace these with some sort of venom-processing device, ("Small fluid distiller?") which you can operate to make a usable poison from aforementioned poison sacs. 5. Possibly have some "harvestable" poison types in the wilds as well, for making ingestable poisons.