Origin Stories: Witch
The votes have been tallied and our latest Patreon poll has a winner. Asked to choose which Handbook-World denizen deserves a backstory, our Quest-Givers settled on Witch, pictured here on at the very last day of her apprenticeship. (Better luck next time, Mr. Stabby! I’m sure the David Copperwield story of your growth from dagger to short sword to full-on bastard sword will one day be told!)
At any rate, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the murderous gleam in a young girl’s eye. Told ‘no’ by her erstwhile mentor, the child prodigy has proven her pharmaceutical talents by way of youthful rebellion. No doubt the authorities on the local coven oversight board will be lenient. After all, it is in all likelihood a one-time indiscretion. And just look how cute she is! Besides, some of the world’s finest adventurers are mildly parricidal too. At the very least, one can hope that poor Brutus the hedgehog won’t be corrupted by his association with such a wicked girl.
As for the rest of us, I think the lesson is clear. No matter how innocent the situation, be cautious when it comes to comestibles. Love potions, poisons, and unpleasant practical jokes can all find their way into an innocent-seeming vial. While it can sometimes be fun to push the big red button or drink from the enchanted fountain to find out what happens, the consequences are often dire. While you don’t want to be rude to your host by applying detect poison to every little delicacy, there’s something to be said for a healthy dose of not-dying-from-exploding-intestines. And that of course leads us to a very-important corollary: be extra careful not to insult a known potion-maker (or her familiar)!
Question of the day! What is the most effective / deadly poison you’ve encountered in a game? Was it used by the party or against them? And when do poisons cross the line from “challenging encounter” to “unfair insta-kill?” Sound off with your own terrible toxins and baneful beverages down in the comments!
Well, it technically wasn’t poison, but I’m sure it would have made our characters lose our lunches. Our goblin ended a campaign as a druid, but he didn’t start as one. I’m pretty sure he was an alchemist and he had a feat that let him re-use potions. There were a couple of teeth in them.
Alchemists, man. It’s always garbage pail alchemists: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/strange-brews
In my currently hiatuses warhammer fantasy inspired campaign, our party got ahold of 2 potions of mutation from a tzeetch cult in the first session, with each potion having 4 doses. We found this out when our two most murderhobo characters started chugging. One became part demon and gained various powers, at the cost that whenever he rolled a nat one, he would go berserk attacking everything in sight for a bit. This led to us accidentally killing him when our rogue crit him to try and knock him out during one such berserk craze, followed by him rolling a nat 1 vs the rogues poison which the dm says causes double damage, and him failing his death save. The other became a naga which also meant he gained a powerful poison that had a decent chance to stun enemies that he could apply to his weapons, as well as a tail attack. This was balance by his sight changing to infrared, which while good in the dark or vs invisible enemies, is kinda useless vs anything cold blood, or for reading and interacting with tools. Luckily for him, he drank the potion again and got the third eye mutation, which normally is cosmetic, but in this case gave him back normal sight. That character survived until we entered some gladiator battles and got killed by a necromancy and his group of huge undead. That poison he had was probably the strongest I’ve seen anyone really use in a campaign, cause poison usually ins’t used that much by allies, and has never been significant enough from an enemy for any major memories to form.
Sounds like everything is working as intended in the Old World.
How did you manage to hide your mutations from the inquisition?
In this world, the inquisition are not too kill crazy for demihumans like naga, so we just covered up their third eye and accepted that there would be a good amount of prejudice against him. The demon we just did our best to keep out of sight of them in in lots of hoods and stuff, which combined with my guy’s bardness, meant things didn’t spin too far out of control till threes sessions later in which he died after rolling a 1 on a stealth check shortly after he successfully convinced a nurgle cult that he was sent from the big man himself and got them to start listening to him. Surprisingly that was actually his first nat 1 since he got the mutation.
She’s so adorable…
Poisons don’t often tend to be effective, but I remember once playing an effective poisoner.
The trick was that we were using a houserule for wealth that the DM called “Guild Points”. The short of it is that each level, the guild gives you that level’s average wealth-by-level to outfit your character. Stuff from the previous level that you still had didn’t stick around unless you paid (if you wanted to keep Mr. Standby around, for example, you had to deduct him from your pool of cash each level). The end result was a system that didn’t encourage hoarding consumables.
We got a potion-brewing witch who promptly gathered every alchemical item she could find in the standard books (plus some from weirder sources. That concentrated human aggression pheromone came in handy more than once), and brewed a bunch of poison. Mostly drow-brand knockout poison.
Honestly the type of poison didn’t matter. It was the fact that we were using a wealth system where consumables didn’t permanently decrease wealth-by-level that mattered.
I was wondering if someone would bring up the drow poison. Giving an enemy a TKO on top of a crossbow bolt always struck me as a solid use of resources.
Did you guys keep using that system after your witch pal found the consumable exploit? Or was that deemed fair game?
We ultimately agreed that consumables often need some help, and the system was well-received, so we often still use it.
It’s more akin to an incentive to use such consumable things than an exploit. The consumables aren’t particularly broken, and any that would be broken–mostly anything that gives you a permanent stat bonus–was treated like an object always in your possession rather than like a consumable.
Well, the most effective/deadly (and only) poison so far was Purple worm poison. The PCs had to raid a Purple worm nursery in 5e Out of the Abyss, balancing on strands of resinous saliva and hack the eggs out with daggers.
The artificer couldn’t climb for shit though and resorted to shooting through the strands with her thunder cannon, which echoed through the tunnels, summoning a gargantuan venomous purple worm. The PCs were suprised that such a massive creature was doing only about 21 bite damage on average. Then they got hit with its stinger for an average of 62 poison.
With some flying shenanigans, careful positioning and a band of drow worm hunters returning a favor, the party managed to not die in its entirety. Afterwards however, the dwarf remembered his financier background and realized that a dosis of Purple worm poison sells for 2000gp,. The PCs also wanted to start crafting armor from the worm’s plates since they figured that the plates made it so resilient against attacks (nope, they just rolled low).
Luckily none of them had a or had proficiency with a poisoner’s kit, which dissuaged them from milking the stinger, as every failed check would subject them to another average of 62 poison damage. They had armorer’s tools to craft that PWPlate however… and naturally failed at handling the still venomous worm. I didn’t want to kill them, so I ruled that the plate was coming along nicely (and withheld that anyone wearing the plate for longer than an hour would be subject to the poison).
All in all, poisons seem to be rather niche. I would use them more often if they offered a plethora of status effects (“It’s hard to breathe. Concentration throws with Disadvantage”) instead of “you take even more damage”. I’ve yet to have this court intrigue-laden campaign where “I cast a non-verbal Detect Poison” replaces every other form of greeting.
I think my group got to that encounter as a random “travel through the Underdark” encounter rather than the egg-napping thing. As I recall that’s the one where my warlock’s newly-acquired banishment spell came in clutch. As it turns out, purple worms have lousy Charisma saves.
Like I said elsewhere in the comments, drow knockout poison seems to be the exception to the “poison = extra damage” thing. It’s always an exciting gamble whenever I shoot one of those bolts. 🙂
Ah yes, totally forgot about that bit in the beginning with a humongous NPC caravan and drow jailers.
I never got to use the drow poison crossbows. My players were desperately afraid of dying without access to any of their gear, spellbooks or weapons, so they just went along with anything they were ordered to without a fuss:
“Prisoners! Lieutenant Jorlan didn’t take yesterdays mushroom curry very well. In fact none of the officers did. Guess who’s on latrine duty overworld scum?”
The most effective use of poison I remember was in a shadowrun game, where we poisoned the sock drawer of our target with large amounts of contact poison brewed from that one super-poisonous-but-also-apparently-delicious fish.
It was a pretty fun solution. The thing had been set up as a straight fight against a really tricky opponent, but everyone, including the GM, enjoyed our alternative solution.
Ah yeah, alternative solutions is a big part of what shadowrun is all about. The main problem there though is that you can get alot of decision paralysis, and alot of moments where those alternative solutions only require certain people doing stuff meaning other players might start feeling left out if the gm isn’t careful, and since its a alternative solution that the gm didnt plan for, it can be hard for them to manage it.
Tell me about it: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unmasked-part-2-4
Nice! Sounds like you guys were playing Hitman. I hope that your incorporated a complex series of costume changes into the run.
The party stumbled across a nest of phase spiders. I was playing the tank, an inquisitor. Good fort save, judgement to back it up it up if needed, decent con, should be able to shrug off the poison just fine, right? Nope. Due to a series of rolling 5s or less, between the spider bites and the failed rolls from at least 3 potions of neutralize poison, I was down to about 4 con (from 16) before finally rolling high enough to shrug off the poison.
Way back at the beginning of my PF1 megadungeon, the players came across this monstrosity:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/vermin/centipede/centipede-giant-whiptail
Actually managed to get a cleric in the party down to ~4 Dex before the party killed the thing and got him stabilized. All it takes is a series of bad rolls for poison to move from “minor inconvenience” to “big hairy deal.”
Had a 3.5e character, a poison-dusk lizardfolk, and the name should be a hint… they’re smaller than regular lizardfolk, and tend to make up for it with stealth, cunning, and liberal use of poisoned weapons. Mostly, my guy just used simple hunting poisons, stuff that would paralyze or otherwise temporarily weaken an opponent… though hallucinogens are always entertaining, especially when tested on party members.
That said, he’d never pass up the opportunity to harvest suitable venoms and toxins from slain monsters. I don’t think we ever encountered a purple worm, but that kind of thing would have been a gift from the gods… at least, once someone had helped kill it.
Once upon a time I told my alchemist pal that milking venom from slain monsters wouldn’t work in my game. “You don’t have the equipment. It messes with loot distribution. Stop being creative and just move on to the next room, dammit!”
And today, looking back at PF1 poisons for the first time in years, I came across these 2017 rules:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/afflictions/poison/#Harvesting_Poisons
Wish I’d had the guts to go off-book a few years ago. Especially since the book caught up with my player. :/
Once again I’ll bust out the story of the Anti-gravity jellyfish. While technically a venom, not a poison, it was by far the most effective and most interesting I’ve ever encountered. Its poison caused the victim to float 10 ft. into the air, each round, with a save causing them to hover at their current height. We didn’t find out how many consecutive saves it to cure the poison, as the effects vanished when the creature died. However, it effectively disabled two of our melee fighters by sending them out of reach and was moving on to the squishy back row when I took it down by throwing my entire bandolier of alchemical weapons at it, including 5 vials of acid, 3 vials of alchemical fire, and 4 vials of alchemical ice.
Poison vs. Alchemy. Round 1. Fight!
We had three close encounters with poison in Return of the Runelords (spoilers below).
One came from an encounter with a bunch of Ivory Sentinels. They did a number on us with many attacks that added up in damage, and the poison led to a ‘save or die from the CON loss dropping you into the death range’ moment with a bleeding out PC. We had to force-feed healing potions just to keep our frontliner and healer dying from it mid-fight.
The second potentially deadly encounter was avoided entirely through diplomacy, as we agreed to protect a paranoid NPCs precious treasure. If we had decided to betray the NPC or steal said treasure from them (as we had a vested interest in using said treasure) we’d find ourselves on the receiving end of Tears of Death poison coating the treasure, which would have swiftly killed us in minures with a combo of paralysis, con damage, and the fact there was no save – you either had neutralize/delay poison spells, poison immunity, or you’d inevitably find yourself dropping to 0 CON when you run out of restoration spells.
The third encounter was through Prismatic sprays, notably a trap that mimicked the green color effect – which is a ‘save or die instantly’ poison. But by that point, we made it a habit to have everyone protected by a long duration ‘delay poison’ spell.
Ugh. Nothing more harrowing than the mid-combat full-round “trickle potion down the unconscious guy’s throat.” That’s how you know it’s a bad day at the office.
Well, this explains Witch’s CN/CE nature… But when did she start choking people with her hair?
All answers in good time. 😉
In one D&D game I was playing a high level conjuration wizard. We had raided an ancient temple for power to take down an Elder Brain, and found some very nice loot at the end for the party. For my character in particular, a Staff of Conjuration (converted from PF) caught my eye. Most of the spells in it were decidedly mediocre to meh, with one notable exception: Summon Monster VI. My favorite use of this was to summon 1d4+1 Coatls, which have several wonderful features. One lovely ability in particular is a venomous bite, which forces the creature to make a Con save or fall unconscious for 24 hours. The save DC is low, but it turns out that making 1d4+1 saves a round means it’s only a matter of time before the creature is snoozed out of a fight. And mindflayers have low con saves. This was towards the end of the campaign so I didn’t get a chance to abuse it too much, but it was effectively an encounter-ending poison that I could attempt to apply multiple times a round, in addition to all of the other awesome features coatls have (immunity to psychic damage and non-magic b/p/s damage, immunity to having your mind read, and the ability to cast bless, cure wounds, and greater restoration are also phenomenal against mindflayers.)
Well that’s awesome. I do have a very important question though. How the crap do you pronounce coatl?
I believe it’s pronounced ‘Wingsnek’ and ‘Fabulous’
I pronounce it “co-ATL” (“co” as in “Coke” while “atl” rhymes with “wattle”).
A quick jaunt to Wikipedia suggests the original Aztec word was pronounced more like “CO-aht” (“aht” sounds like “got”), but whatever; language is a fluid thing, and English is already a Frankensteinian mosh of vocabulary from all over the friggin’ everywhere. I’m not going to lose sleep over potential mispronunciations in my imaginary fantasy land.
The most memorable experience with poison I’ve had in game was with bloodleaf residue which my ratfolk ranger/alchemist used to poison the food supplies of an invading army after a prolonged stealth encounter. I think honestly what made the encounter so satisfying was that it was the one moment where that character really excelled they had the struggle of being much more of a skill monkey than a fighter so they weren’t terrific in combat so playing them often felt like a chore but that one session where all the choices i’d made allowed me to single handedly save an allied city really made it all worth it in the end.
Nice! When you’ve got a particular set of skills, you use ’em.
Shame that “the skill character” gets to shine so rarely. I kind of wish there were more skill challenge / combats. You know… Figure out the puzzles while your big dumb barbarian holds off the baddies. That sort of thing.
A little curiosity, i love poisons, but in TTRPGs i don’t use them that much. In D&D they are not so good, only a debuff, minor damage, is complicated to use. Now in other games, poisons are great fun. In Cultist Simulator you can use Sthenic Venom which: “[…] opens the body in uncountable places.” Or the Glassfinger Toxin: ” ‘What is within, without; what is without, within.’ ” And let’s not forget the Watch-Worms, don’t ask, you are not ready. Just the other days i got the final part to build Saryn Prime, the upgraded version of Saryn on Warframe. With a name like that in a game like that guess what she does. Poisons are great fun, back in high school that made attitude of mine made my chemist teachers got nightmares. But i haven’t use them that much on TTRPGs as i said. Since poisons are an “evil” weapon, not many games encourage and therefor make easy their use. Is more effective to just cut down the thing you want to kill than poison it. And many creatures are outright inmune or resistant at least to poisons. Check D&D or Pathfinder and you will realise that poison are just like a deseases, a tool for the DM to use on the players 🙁
I would like to poison more things 🙁
Godbound, in the gifts of the Murder Word, what a nice word, make things straight forward. You touch, hit or prepare food for someone and you can poison him with anything you wish as rapid or slow as you wish, as long as the poison proves fatal in the end. And all the fun stuff you get in The Soul Reaver. That book made the Dark Eldar my favorite choice of explorer 😀
By the way is just me or Young-Witch has some Star Butterfly vibes? o_O
There may or may not be several posters from individual Star episodes hanging in Laurel’s office.
So getting Witch as Star, Antipaladin as Tom and Paladin as Marco isn’t outside the possibilities 😀
Just hope she doesn’t make Cleric as Glossaryck. The horror… THE HORROR 🙁
😛
dies angry should be a band name. Or a Twilight Zone rip-off TV series.
Dies Angry is also a classical German opera made by Franz Schutzwarg. Represented around the world in multiple occasions. I have heard that a rearrange using metal music was on the make in collaboration between the Hamburg Symphony and Rammstein to commemorate the anniversary of this piece 😀
I have no idea if you’re being serious.
I am being serious 🙂
Or am i not? 😉
Good in any case you don’t know 😛
Just finished watching Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. I’d watch more weird sci-fi dystopia.
I love seeing Witches with hedgehog familiars. My main Pathfinder Society character was a Witch with a hedgehog familiar (mostly because hyenas can only be animal companions.)
Why did you want a hyena?
50% percent because they’re just my favorite animal in general (see my avatar,) 50% because my character had the Madness patron theme, so Cackle hex + Hideous Laughter + a hyena familiar seemed like a home run.
My most effective use of poison as a player was my Pathfinder Rogue Shadowdancer, where I used Cloudthorn Venom (1d3 strength dmg), Ninja Trick Pressure Points (+1 strength dmg to sneak attacks), Shadow Companion with (1d6 Strength damage touch) to horrify my Gm with the ability to deal large amounts of attribute damage to people in a very short time. It was fun.
I hope Laurel doesn’t see this. She’s planning to go shadowdancer in my gestalt Crimson Throne game. 🙁
The most effective poison I’ve thrown at my players was simple sleeping gas. In an “air” pocket in a water filled section of the dungeon. The player with the best lung capacity comes along exploring alone, sees a spot to refresh his air supply, takes a deep breath… Nasty.
I remember seeing an article a million years ago about hazards in natural caves that are useful in dungeons. This was one of them. Apparently the “bad air pocket” has killed IRL adventurers.