Poisonmaking
Poisonmaking represents skill in brewing poisons, harvesting raw materials for use in poison-crafting, identification of poisonous substances, knowledge about venomous creatures, etc.
Note: Poisonmaking is a class skill for rogues and for any class that grants the poison use class feature (assassin, blackguard, etc.). Any class that grants the poison use class feature also grants 1 free rank in Poisonmaking per class level. Additionally, taking the Skill Focus (Poisonmaking) feat or the skill mastery (Poisonmaking) rogue special ability also grants a character the poison use ability (enabling him to handle poisons without risking exposing himself to their effects).
See the Disease & Poison page for more information on poisons and related rules.
Check
Brew a poison
You can create a poison from raw materials. The DC of the Poisonmaking check required to create a poison is listed in the poison’s description.
Equipment
Brewing poisons requires access to an alchemist’s lab. Poisonmaking checks to brew poisons or identify poisonous substances gain the listed bonus to the skill check (+2 for a basic alchemist’s lab, etc.).
Cost of raw materials
The cost of raw materials varies depending on whether you have access to the active ingredient(s)—that is, the substance (creature venom, plant, etc.)—that actually provides the toxin.
Active ingredient available: If a supply of the active ingredient is available, the raw materials you have to purchase cost one-tenth of the market price (and are generally easy to acquire, as they are much the same sort of reagents and similar materials that are used in the creation of all manner of alchemical and magical items).
Active ingredient not available: If a supply of the active ingredient is not available (i.e. if you must purchase the active ingredient(s) as well), then the cost of raw materials is one-half of the market price, and acquiring the materials may be difficult (see next two sections).
Finding raw materials yourself
If you wish, you can acquire poison raw materials yourself—“in the wild”, as it were. This may mean slaying a venomous creature and extracting venom from its body, harvesting a toxin-producing plant, extracting a certain mineral, etc.
Step one: find the source. First, you must find the creature, plant, mineral, etc. In some cases, you may encounter a venomous creature or other toxin-bearing thing while engaging in unrelated adventures; in other cases, you might deliberately seek out the source of a poison’s active ingredient.
Finding poison raw materials during unrelated adventures: If you successfully identify a venomous creature, toxin-bearing substance, etc. that you encounter, and recognize that a poison may be created from it (which requires a successful check of the relevant Knowledge skill, or a Poisonmaking check—see Knowledge, below), then you can attempt to harvest the ingredients (see below).
Seeking out poison raw materials: If you wish to deliberately seek out the source of the ingredient, you (or an ally) must make a Knowledge check on the relevant topic (nature, arcana, the planes, etc., depending on the sort of poison you wish to make) to determine where the source might be found; you then travel to the appropriate location, where other skill checks (such as Survival) may be necessary to find the thing you’re looking for. (Naturally, combat or other adversarial interactions may ensue in the process of acquiring the ingredient, depending on circumstances.)
Step two: harvest the ingredients. Once found, you must make a Poisonmaking check to harvest the materials (see below). The DC for the Knowledge and other skill checks may vary widely depending on the nature of the poison. The margin of success of your check typically determines how much material you are able to harvest, though it is almost always one or several doses, no more.
Purchasing raw materials
Instead of seeking out a poison’s active ingredient yourself, you may purchase it. Poisons, and the special ingredients required to make them, are illegal goods in most civilized regions; even when their sale is permitted by law, they are nonetheless not commonly available, owing to the unsavory reputation that adheres to anyone buying or selling such substances. Thus a Gather Information check is always required to find the desired ingredient for sale (the DC for this check is typically equal to the crafting DC of the poison, but is never lower than 15).
Due to the difficulty of acquiring the active ingredients of poisons, and the demand for them, such ingredients are rare, and not much can be found for sale at any given time (perhaps enough for a small handful of doses may be purchasable at any given time). As with magic items, it is easier to find such items in larger and more cosmopolitan communities. As a general rule of thumb, it’s possible to find ingredients for a poison with a crafting DC of 15 in a small town; ingredients for a poison with a crafting DC of 20 may be found in a large town; and so on, with the ingredients for the rarest, most expensive, and most powerful of poisons (with a crafting DC of 40 or so) being potentially available only in a great planar metropolis. (This may vary somewhat depending on the nature of the poison, however.)
Characters who purchase ingredients for a poison may need to be wary of the consequences of such purchases; a reputation as poison-users may begin to follow them, and they may attract the attention of the local authorities.
Time required
Brewing poisons takes one day for every 1,000 gp of market price. You can brew multiple doses of poison (whether the same or different poisons) in a single day if their total market price does not exceed 1,000 gp.
Results
If you succeed on your Poisonmaking check, you have successfully brewed the poison. It is now ready to be used. If your check result exceeds the poison’s crafting DC by 10 or more, you have a chance to create an extra dose of the poison, create a more potent version of the poison, or both. Roll d%, then consult the table below to determine the outcome.
| Table: Crafting Check Results | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beat crafting DC by | Simple success | Extra item | Superior item | Both benefits |
| 10 | 01–70 | 71–90 | 91–00 | |
| 20 | 01–60 | 61–80 | 81–00 | |
| 30 | 01–50 | 51–70 | 71–90 | 91–00 |
| 40 | 01–40 | 41–60 | 61–80 | 81–00 |
Simple success: You create one dose of the poison.
Extra item: You create two doses of the poison (without using up any more materials than for a single dose).
Superior item: You create one dose of the poison, but it is more potent than usual: its save DC is increased by 2 for every 10 points by which you beat the crafting DC.
Both benefits: You create two doses of the poison (without using up any more materials than for a single dose). Both doses are more potent than usual, in the way described above.
If you fail the Poisonmaking check to craft the item, you might ruin the ingredients or even expose yourself to the poison.
- If you fail by 4 points or less, you have a 20% chance to ruin the raw materials per point by which you failed the check (20% if failed by 1 point, 40% if failed by 2 points, etc.).
- If you fail by 5 points or more, you ruin the raw materials, and have a chance to expose yourself to the poison. This chance is equal to 10% per point by which you failed the check (to a maximum of 100%).
Harvest raw materials
You can harvest the special ingredient(s) needed to brew a poison from a venomous creature, toxic plant, or other sort of source. (You still need to pay for reagents and other such common supplies; see “Cost of raw materials”, above.)
The Poisonmaking check DC for harvesting raw materials is typically 5 less than the poison’s crafting DC. (In some cases, where the procedure is particularly difficult, the DC may be equal to the poison’s crafting DC; in other cases, where it is unusually simple, the DC may be 10 less than the crafting DC.)
The process for harvesting a poison’s special ingredient(s) varies depending on the nature of the poison. You may need to carefully cut into a creature’s body and drain the contents of its venom sac into a prepared vessel; pluck a flower from its stem without triggering the dispersal of its toxin-bearing pollen; extract a creature’s living larvae from its nest; carve veins of a certain mineral from surrounding strata without exposing it to air; or perform one of various other sorts of delicate and potentially dangerous procedures.
Harvesting poison materials from a creature slain in combat
The Poisonmaking check to harvest venom from a creature takes a −8 penalty if the creature was killed in combat by damage from spells or weapons (rather than being killed by a death spell or similar non-damaging effect). This penalty is reduced to −4 if the creature was only wounded before being non-violently subdued, and is eliminated entirely if the creature was incapacitated or subdued without injury before being killed by a coup de grace.
Note that if you are attempting to harvest raw materials from a creature that leaves behind no body (such as a shadow), you must take a full-round action to harvest the substance while the creature still exists (generally, the round after its death).
Results
If you succeed, you harvest some amount of the active ingredient in question (storing it in a special container which you have prepared). When harvesting venom from a slain creature, this is usually enough to craft 1d4−1 doses of the poison (though this may vary depending on the way in which the creature was killed; death by disintegration, for example, makes it impossible to harvest a monster’s venom). When harvesting plant-based or mineral ingredients, you typically get enough for single dose from the plant or mineral found in a particular location.
If you fail the check, you may try again, but at a cumulative −5 penalty (as failure indicates that you have damaged the materials in some way). If you fail by 5 points or more, you ruin the materials.
Effects of other skills
If you have 5 or more ranks in the relevant Knowledge skill for the creature, plant, etc. from which you are attempting to harvest materials for a poison, you gain a +2 synergy bonus on your Poisonmaking check to do so.
You may also use the Survival skill in place of Poisonmaking to harvest raw materials for poison, but this is done at a −4 penalty to the check.
Preserving harvested materials
Once harvested, poison raw materials require special care to avoid losing their potency. If left untreated, the raw materials become unusable in 1d6 days. This period of usefulness can be discerned with a successful Knowledge (nature) check against a DC 10 lower than the poison’s crafting DC (minimum 10), and you can extend the duration of usability by making a successful Alchemy check (DC 15) to preserve the substance. Succeeding on this check prolongs the raw material’s usefulness by one week, plus one additional week for every 5 points by which you beat the DC. If you fail this check, you do not extend the material’s freshness; if you fail by 5 or more, you destroy the raw material in the attempt. A raw material’s duration of potency may only be extended once. Both the gentle repose spell and unguent of timelessness can also greatly extend a raw material’s “shelf life”.
Identify a poisonous substance
If you have access to an alchemical laboratory or similarly equipped workspace, you can attempt to identify an unknown poisonous (or possibly poisonous) substance. The Poisonmaking skill check DC to identify a poison is 25 for relatively common poisons, or ones which you are knowledgeable about; it may be higher for unusual, exotic, or supernatural poisons.
Failure on a check to identify a poison
If you fail a Poisonmaking check to identify a poison, you must make a Wisdom check (DC 5); failing this check means that you come to a false conclusion about the item (but still think that you have successfully identified it), while succeeding on the Wisdom check means that the results of your identification attempt are inconclusive, and you get no information. The DM should make the Poisonmaking check for identification, and the Wisdom check (if necessary), in secret, as you have no way to know if the conclusion you have reached is false. (Of course, a cautious character may choose to make multiple identification attempts, to reduce the chance of a false conclusion.)
Knowledge
The Poisonmaking skill may substitute for any Knowledge skill for the purpose of questions about poisons, venomous or toxic characteristics of creatures, ingredients of poisons, and so forth.
Action
It takes 10 minutes to identify an unknown poison using alchemical equipment. Harvesting raw materials typically takes anywhere from a minute (in the case of animal or vegetable based poisons) to an hour (for certain mineral-based poisons). (Finding the creature, plant, etc. from which you wish to harvest the poison generally takes 1d4+1 hours, in the event that you do not encounter it while on unrelated business.)
Brewing poison may take a day or more (see Brew a poison, above).
Taking 10 & 20
You can take 10 when brewing a poison, when harvesting raw materials (if you are not rushed or threatened), or when attempting to identify an unknown poison.
You can’t take 20 on any Poisonmaking check.
Special
Equipment
You must have alchemical equipment to craft or identify poisons. (Note that the detect poison spell allows the identification of poisons without recourse to the Poisonmaking skill.) A portable alchemist’s lab is the minimum equipment needed to brew or identify poisons.
Aid another
A character may aid the poison-maker in the brewing of a poison (but not in identifying one). Doing so requires that the assistant make a Poisonmaking check against a DC 10 lower than the crafting DC of the poison. If successful, the assistant grants the poison-maker a +2 bonus on his check to brew the poison. Failure on the aid another check incurs the consequences described above (potentially ruining the ingredients and/or exposing both characters to the poison). Extraordinary success carries no extra benefits, regardless of the margin by which the assistant beats the check DC. Only one character may assist at a time; additional assistants provide no further benefit.