One of my NPCs will use some of the poisons in Conan the Thief against the player characters soon, and I realized those poisons do not offer a chance to resist their effects. I read the core book and the Thief book and did not find any mention of possible tests to resist against the poison effects, like Sun Dust.
Is this intended? I have players that will without a doubt cry wolf over this matter, so before it happens I want to check with the experts.
How would you go about assigning a Difficulty level for poisons?
If the poison is successfully applied by injection, skin contact, or cut wound, inhaled gas, or ingested in liquid form or powder then it takes effect. As it should. Its normally one use or dose. The dosage has to be applied within a few hours on a weapon before the poison becomes inert. Powders last longer.
It takes a lot of knowledge just to create a poison through Alchemy or the Poisoner talent.
The player has the ability to parry an attack such as a weapon coated with poison. They can dodge a poison dart or thrown poison weapon.
Use Alchemy to defend from gasses or powders in an area. These are the most dangerous as a player can’t dodge out of the area.
Note that some harmful Herbal Concoctions can be resisted but they are a step below in potency when compared to the alchemy and poisoner talents.
So if you want people to resist a potentially harmful effect then herbal concoctions may be the right way to go. Example: Drug of Madness make a (D4) resistance test or be driven insane. Any rational action requires a (D4) Willpower test to perform while under its effects.
All of these abilities are from the Core book, Book of Skelos, and Conan the Thief.
I am reading Poisoner talent and it does not mention the difficulty for concocting the poison, just the difficulty to reasearch a new one (D3). The sample poisons in pg 20 do not have a difficulty to refine informed like Lotus Pollen or a difficulty to research like Healing Concoctions (and in case of the drug the difficulty to resist is already informed). In these cases how would one evaluate the proper difficulty?
Difficulty for Lotus Pollen is on page 166 in Conan Core book. It just isn’t in parenthesis like most of the other Petty Enchantments.
Concoctions on page 91 in Book of Skelos has the Lore necessary to learn the recipe. To Create one is a simple (DO) test and the extra momentum required to create additional concoctions is on the page.
Had to get to where I had the books. I am pretty sure all that is correct.
I agree on both of them, but my question is about the sample poisons in Conan the Thief pg 20. They do not have a difficult to refine and the Poisoner talent only indicates the difficulty to research a new poison.
The poisons I mention are called: Bile-maker, Sun Dust and Snake Venom.
That’s probably an oversight by the authors of this sourcebook. If you cannot get a official correction for this, you have to assign some Difficulties yourself.