Deadly Poisons in Creation ( Please help! )

[Zaramis]

Hello everyone.


I have a problem. In many places in the Exalted games is poisoning mentioned as a method of killing people, most often Dragon Blooded. I planned to use this in my campaign in Rin Yuan, but..


My problem is the following:


There isn't a single poison in any of the Exalted books that can actually kill any type of Exalted. No failed rolls on poison resistance ever induces more than 7 health levels of damage.  How the hell are you supposed to kill your rivals with poisons then? They always survive, no matter how low resistance and stamina they have..


Stonefish Poison from Savage Seas is the strongest Ive found, causing 7 health levels of damage. Where can even stronger poisons come from? They could cost 5 resources or something, but I need them

 

[Flagg]

Just make something new up, or make the existing poisons do more damage.


-S

 

[Zaramis]

I hate easy solutions. And since I'm a sucker for realism..


Can I just make new things up without ruining the balance of power? I guess I can.. Thanks for the smack over the head..

 

[Jakk Bey]

You introduce poisons that do several turns worth of damage. 5B every few minutes. For an hour or three.  Bashing turns to Lethal, and it simulates the effect of a slow poison shutting down the breathing functions, and turning everything off.


Most poisons aren't an all or nothing sort of thing.  They have nasty effects that last.  Neural toxins might be considered un-soakable without Charms.  Hemotoxins might be soakable with Stamina, but increase the number of damage checks with activity.  Mycotoxins might not be soakable without Charms either. Foodborne poisons continue to do damage until they 'pass' one end or the other.  


I treat poisons as doing a set amount of damage, per turn, until either flushed, metabolized, our countered.  With some, that means a LOT of Stamina checks, with others, it's not so much.

 

[Zaramis]

Thanks alot, Jakk! Greatly helped me


What are food poisons most often made of? Chemical stuff, natural animal poisons? Would they be created with Alchemy or taken from nature using medicine?

 

[Navander]

Stonefish venom from Savage Seas does 7L and has a difficulty 4 roll.  It also imposes a -4 roll.   Of course, a little Ox-Body will take care of that, but it'll kill a mortal outright, and the -6 (-4 poison, -2 wound) penalty isn't something to sneeze at.

 

[Ker'ion]

You could go an easy route and look up poisons from the d20 systems.


Some do mass damage.


Some do damage unless you relent to them and turn evil (Demon's Blood for instance).


One makes your friends forget you if they don't make a successful Wits roll every hour, it's called 'Nevermore'.


The best source for this is called "Assassin's Handbook" by Green Ronin Publishing (GRR1301).  You can usually find it online, but it make take some searching.  I use Kazaa, so I know it's there.


You could also make stuff up.


Here's a sample I just concocted:


A magical poison derived from rancid water from the Well of Udr mixed with the remains of an innocent that has been left sitting in the venom rain from a casting of 'Rain of Doom' through calibration, stirred with a Yozi Tooth dagger 13 times on the stroke of midnight every night for a fortnight (2 weeks), then cursed with a Labryinth level Necromancy spell.


Mother's milk.  Make it do like 1 Agg. per hour for a month or something equally vicious.


:twisted:  :shock:  :twisted:  :shock:  :twisted:  :shock:  :twisted:

 

[Jakk Bey]

Depends.  A lot of food borne poisons are naturally occuring, others, like arsenic, are pretty straighforward chemicals.  


Coumarin, or warfarin sodium, aka rat poison, is derived from fermenting hay, and kills by thinning the blood to the point where the victim either cannot carry enough oxygen in their blood to carry out normal function, or the blood is thinned to the point where blood vessels pop open, and the poor bastich, or rat, bleeds internally.  Kills a few hundred cows in this country a year when they munch on fermented hay, and plenty of rats.  All natural.  


Mercury or arsenic are old standards.  Not so naturally occuring in plants or animals, but readily available.  Don't forget old favorites like cinnabar .


You might want to check this book for further ideas.

 

[Ker'ion]

One makes your friends forget you if they don't make a successful Wits roll every hour' date=' it's called 'Nevermore'.[/quote']
I forgot to post the rest of 'Nevermore':


Once everyone else has forgoten the target, he must make a Wits roll every hour (One success per day since the poison was administered plus one for the initial day - so day one is 1, day 2 is 2, etc.), or lose a dot of (virtual) wits.  Once this hits zero, he forgets who he is, his body dies and vanishes from creation, and he becomes a ghost with no memories of his last life.


Sounds like something a sidereal would make.


And Demon's Blood eats your soul, no matter who you are.


Sinner's Scythe kills you if you don't change morality. It has a good version and an evil version.  Hell of a way to instill morals in someone.


Or, you could make a poison that doesn't do health level damage, but instead, drops them into a coma and turns them into a vegetable befiore shutting down their body (which is actually how the original 'Sinner's Scythe' works).  Make a Stamian roll every so many - turns, minutes, hours - or lose a dot of Intellingence till you are veggie matter forever.

 

[Kajata]

tbh, I'm much more of a fan of poisons that work medically than ones made magically.  I like the idea of transferring real-life poisons over to Exalted.


I mean there are any number of animals in the world that can kill a human with their toxins, and, whilst they're not gonna be half as effective on an exalt, I can see hybrid versions of them in Exalted; things that have adapted to kill magical beings.  Maybe instead of thinning the blood maybe they thin the essence flow in a being?  Giving you a decent excuse to do severe damage to anything, as the life giving essence ceases to reach parts of the body.


I don't mind magical effects, as long as they have a decent explination as for why they're DOING things.  I don't really like the idea of "well.. it's magic so it makes you forget things..." or whatever.  I see that kinda thing as the perserve of sorcery, not poisoning... but that's just my opinion.


If I were you, I'd go and look up deadly animals, see what their poisons do, and then maybe adapt them to being hybridised for the world of exalted.

 

[Ker'ion]

SEASNAKE VENOM!!!!!!


Or possibly Shellfish toxin.


Both badass.