RFI is back this week, for a show that could be hazardous to your health, as we delve into poisons and the alignment concerns with their use. We dip over to the para-elemental plane of Air??? when the Mitsu takes center stage in the Creature Feature. We have all of that an notes from DM Matt’s impromptu trip to Gen Con, in this week’s show!
[powerpress]
Discover more from The Evil Dungeon Master
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hiya,
First, thanks for producing a great podcast, always informative and a lot of fun.
Now to poisons. The low view of poisons comes largely from how it is used. Think of the scheming noble who slips a dose of nightshade into a rival’s drink. Further, in a preindustrial society, poison would be difficult to detect, so this would make it the perfect weapon of the coward and the dishonorable. So it is easy to see how poison gained an evil reputation.
Setting aside matters of alignment, there are far more practical matters surrounding poison use. First would be the difficulty of making/acquiring a really toxic poison. Slower acting poisons are easier to come by, but figure any sort of save or die poison would be the equivalent of puffer fish poison, or nerve gas. So the very nature of the poison would make it very difficult to come by. Further, such poison would likely be as dangerous to the user as his target. One bad move and you poison yourself.
Finally, and this is going pretty far afield, poison is the gift that keeps on giving. After a party kills a tribe of goblins, what then? They have left behind a stack of corpses that are loaded with poison. Any wildlife that feeds on these corpses would likely be poisoned, as well as any predators that feed on these carrion animals. I suspect that the local druids might be upset with this, and go to great lengths to stop the indiscriminate use of poisons in their protected areas.
Just some thoughts. Thanks again for the podcasts.
Bryan