Poisoning your blade

Do you ever apply poison to your swords and other blades? Is it something a paladin could do without breaking his oath? Does it ever backfire on you?

firstly there't the issue of the poison 'keeping' and staying on the blade, meaning it's only especially useful if you know you're about to fight

secondly the poison would need to be extremely strong and fast acting to end a fight from a minor wound, if it's not fast then there's no real advantage and if it only works with a deep wound then why have the poison, if you inflict a deep wound you've already gained a bigger advantage than the poison would give you.

You should probably stick to poisoning people normally

Just make sure you don't lick it.

>if it's not fast then there's no real advantage

Sure there is. You just knick the fucker then run away like a huge coward.

It's good way to keep him from running away.
>"Hey, before you try to leave, I should tell you something. That wound that you have was done by a poisoned blade, and I have the anti-dote. Your only getting it if you drop your weapons and come with me peacefully though."

...

>Is it something a paladin could do without breaking his oath?

This is expressly forbidden in certain oaths.
But not all of them.

In general, it's typically just a dick move, because most poisons are too slow in effect to be anything more than insurance that if you don't kill them, they're still going to suffer and perhaps even die, and the poisons that are effective for immediate combat are too cost prohibitive and difficult to concoct to make their routine use economical.

The only time I ever use poison is in the case of a known enemy that's simply too strong to defeat otherwise. For these enemies, particularly wizards, I've employed poisons that hurt them exactly where it hurts most, damaging their mind and making it impossible for them to cast their most powerful spells, which often makes the use of poision the deciding point of the battle.

>Is it something a paladin could do without breaking his oath?

It's the only way to fight honorably.

For your paladin question, I would think paladins generally do not save for perhaps some kind of tranquilizer to knock out foes to keep them alive. That said, if one got handed a poisoned sword and they didn't know it was poisoned in a fight, would not make one fall.

Just remember that it's A-OK to electrify your blade and cover it with flaming acid and you don't need any special skill or proficiency to avoid shockburnmelting yourself.

Or he could kill you, and take it.
Yeah, I know. He may not know what bottle it's in, you could hide it somewhere off your person, or you could cut down the middle and imply that you hid it while simply keeping it in your pocket.

It's all situational.

Ravages from book of exalted deeds are something a paladin could use without getting alignment fucked.

Personally poisons aren't my jam.

Keep the antidote back in town. Carry a couple vials labeled "antidote" that contain more poison.

I like the idea of a big dumb guy just killing you anyways, then dying because he didn't think ahead.

Yes, that is a situation. I like the one where you just cover your sword in lemon juice, and bluff that it's poison.

>cover your sword in lemon juice
That's just being mean.

>Cover one sword in acid
>Cover other sword in base
>Only way to stop burn from acid sword is to be stabbed with base sword in same place

That would actually make the burn worse. You treat an acid/base burn with running water.

>Cover one sword in acid
>cover a piece of metal in acid
Gee, I hope I hope you didn't need that sword for anything, dumbass.

Depends on the compound. There's plenty of acids and alkali substances where putting water on it is VERY NO.

We've got some use out of poison arrows in the ACKS game our group just wrapped up. Mostly as a means of throwing another save or die attack at endgame stuff for that 1% shot of just ending a difficult opponent. Same reason my Mage kept Polymorph Other in their spellbook,

>firstly there't the issue of the poison 'keeping' and staying on the blade

I assume the poison was deposited into the scabbard so that the blade was coated the moment it was sheathed.

>fast acting

I don't think the point is to make a conflict go any faster. Aren't you just ensuring your opponent eventually dies if they manage to flee?

A lot of times people would fight, get minor wounds, retreat, heal and then come back in another battle. Poisoned weapons make sure that the "healing" and "coming back" part is harder or impossible.

What if it was made from a special metal, like diamond?

>a special metal, like diamond

I think (s)he meant "special material".

>people don't recognize the meme anymore

>the meme has died
Well, that certainly took long enough.

Clearly it wasn't adding anything to Veeky Forums. Good riddance.

Its been a long time afterall.

is there any more to firbolgs other than whats leaked? even like a paragraph or two?

Was just referenced here:
its too bad, but i noticed it earlier tonight.

Could be a pain poison. Something like box jellyfish or platypus venom would very well have you disabled from pain with a wound. On a scale of 1-10 for pain when paramedics as victims of box jellyfish stings, people usually report 10 and often 12-13. It's some of the worst pain you can feel without actually passing out from it.

Still, something fast-acting and deadly might be cone snail or stonefish venom, which still leaves you with about 6 minutes to live, which is about 60 combat rounds (although I expect a lot of the damage is going to come pretty quickly rather than just dropping dead suddenly after 6 minutes). Otherwise, paralysis poisons might work, but even the blue-ringed octopus takes about 10 minutes for its venom to swing into lethal effect.

Of course, this is fantasy, and in a world with magical beasts and wondrous bullshit, it's quite within the realm of possibility for a fast-acting poison to take effect after just a few rounds or inflict excruciating pain on wounding. Everything else is extreme in fantasy-land, why not also this aspect? Although it's a good idea to keep it at least partially informed by reality.

What do you gain out of it? This plan is really fucking stupid.

I don't see how poisoning your weapon to kill the enemy faster is any different to killing them anyway for a paladin.

On occasion, when I REALLY want someone dead, regardless of whether I win or lose.

It's a nice idea, I always wanted to try it but it's just doomed to fail. First off, the goal of a party is never to assassinate anyone, so the only viable reason for using poisoned weapons is off the table. Next, no poison in any game can end a fight any faster than a less situational ability can. Ever though there are some tempting poisons that can make the target shit all their organs out and die, the wizard probably can do it better with a spell. In addition, more than half the things you could possibly fight are immune to poison and on top of all that, most systems make it so that anyone except a master poisoner has a high probability of poisoning themselves while attempting to coat their blade.

Tl;dr no system handles poison well and it's a shame.

in one of the dnd editions, as a paladin you're not allowed to get an "unfair" advantage and must meat on even ground but in 5th edition if you take the right oath then go for it

My players don't but my bandits sure as hell do

>60 rounds
d&d folks are lucky, us GURPSers have to wait 600 for 6 minutes.
that said, poisoning your weapon is actually pretty useful anyway since most poisons come into effect nearly instantly when used as a follow-up poison, which enter the bloodstream after a piercing or impaling attack that penetrates DR and deals damage

THE SHINING ONE DENIES THE USE OF ALL COWARDLY POISONS AND SNEAKING TREACHERY! WE WILL ENGAGE THE ENEMY, BLAZING WITH LIGHT AS OUR GOD WILLS AS WE CAST UNDEATH AND THE FOUL SERVANTS OF THE DARK GODS BACK TO THE PITS OF HATE FROM WHENCE THEY CAME! YES EVEN THE SMALL ONES OR THE ONES WITH BIG TITTIES! NO EXCEPTIONS!

I never really got the paladin prohibition on poisons. Sure, it makes sense for them to not want to achieve slow, sneaky, possibly agonising and dishonourable victories through killing someone that way, but there's more types of poison or potion or chemical in the world than 'kills slowly'.

I could totally see a more pacifistic paladin without access to the proper magics yet administering truth serums or incapacitants to a blade so that they can bring down some threats bloodlessly, whether out of principle or to extract information.

Of course, most fantasy PCs are psychopaths who don't actually care about killing so long as the guy disagrees with them on some axis or another, so that's probably why. Lord knows Gygax's description of paladins is a long way from the modern interpretation.

Or you could tell him that he bested you but that the blade was with poison.
Just offer him to hand the antidote if he let you go.
Then throw him the poison vial and go.

All of those poisons take effect in a matter seconds. Sure you don't actually die for a few minutes, but you will be completely incapacitated in 30 seconds or less.