Our feature this week is about poison in AD&D. Sparked by this post on Dragonsfoot, we went back to Dragon magazine #81 for a read of Chris Landsea's article, "Taking the sting out of poison: Another view on how to use toxic cocktails."
Unsurprisingly, Vince & Nick split with Jayson on readings of the article - we'll leave it to Dear Reader to guess who felt the article was a treasure trove of tables and text, and who thought 8,000 words was too much to devote to a subject that gets less than a page in the Dungeon Masters Guide.
Interested readers may want to dig up a copy of Dragon 81 (January 1984) to find the article, which includes:
A table of monster venoms, listing the number of doses that can be extracted from a given monster, its value per dose, deadliness, saving throw adjustment, onset time / run time, and more
Detailed tables of ingestive, insinuative, contact, and gaseous poisons; including different damages, saves, strengths, possibilities of detection, etc.
Specific effects of holy and unholy water on poisons
Suggested rules for "hitting" with ingestive poisons
A table for determining how many doses of poison can be used to coat various weapons
Contact poison dosage and usage for items such as needles, doorknobs, and other items you may want to trap
Percentile chances to recover venom from a monster, based on the manner in which it was killed
Antidotes listed by cost, effectiveness, and type
Poison potion tables
We also discuss the idea of creating a new monster venom table to include monsters from Fiend Folio, Monster Manual 2, or other sources.
How do you handle poison in your game?