In the back of this price list I use in my Swords & Wizardry is a herb list including poisons.

The worst poison is Gaethipa which is processed into a sticky white paste you can coat your weapon with. If you get injured by a Gaethipa coated sword convulsion will take effect in 1d3 rounds. The saving throw doesn't prevent the convulsion but rather see if you survive them or die from them.

Of course it very obvious that your weapon is coated with Gaethipa as it appears to be smeared with a white paste.

Even then if somebody hits you with a cure poison before the next round (if you are unlucky and rolled a 1 for when it takes effect) you are good to go as if nothing happened.

While Gaethipa is made up it similar to the worst poisons you find naturally. In short instant death by poison is pretty much fiction.

Depending on the game - I go by the rules for usage. A high fantasy world with lots of monsters in them are going to have more lethal raw materials, plus there may be magical processes used to make them more lethal, or more likely to remain lethal after being applied to a weapon.

I remember from the old version of either the Three Muskateers or the Four Muskateers that had Michael York in it, Milady de Winter was armed with two glass daggers with poison or acid inside of them. I usually imagined special one-use weapons such as those for D&D.

Quote from: jeff37923;676829I remember from the old version of either the Three Muskateers or the Four Muskateers that had Michael York in it, Milady de Winter was armed with two glass daggers with poison or acid inside of them.

Acid.

Quote from: talysman;676709Incidentally, The Judges Guild Ready Reference Sheets have an interesting poison system where, basically, the hit die of the monster is subtracted from 10 to get the rounds of delay for the poison and also affects the deadliness of the poison, so you get different poison effects and a little more time to deal with poisoning, which also solves the problem of "what is Neutralize Poison good for?" I think turning rounds to turns would be advisable, though, so that only the nastiest monsters can kill in less than ten minutes.

That's not a bad guidepost for general purposes. Of course, some very small creatures have deadlier poison than some very large creatures.  Ultimately I think the best way to go is to have each poison work in the way that's most emulative to it.

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Deadliest Warrior had a few examples, if I recall.  The Zulu were said to spit poison, and the Ninja Black Eggs were close (pepper and glass), but neither were fatal alone.  Blowgun darts, though, were said to be coated with puffer fish toxin that could kill in 30 seconds.  Arrow poisons existed, too.

No examples I could find of the typical depiction of a poisoned dagger.

Quote from: mcbobbo;677664No examples I could find of the typical depiction of a poisoned dagger.

I vaguely recall hearing that "poison daggers" actually did not inject poison into wounds; dagger blade was not used for stabbing, but for eating meat, and the pommel was hollow, allowing poison to be surreptitiously poured into a goblet at dinner. So, not actually a poison weapon, but a method of sneaking poison into food or drink.

Its very hard to convince players that no, if you're doing something quasi-historical there should not be a poison that can just be smeared on a 1d8 longsword and will immediately kill your 26hp opponent on the same round he's hit.

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Quote from: mcbobbo;677664Deadliest Warrior had a few examples, if I recall.  The Zulu were said to spit poison, and the Ninja Black Eggs were close (pepper and glass), but neither were fatal alone.  Blowgun darts, though, were said to be coated with puffer fish toxin that could kill in 30 seconds.  Arrow poisons existed, too.

No examples I could find of the typical depiction of a poisoned dagger.

Anything said about Ninjas on a program like "Deadliest Warrior", is certain to be unsupported bullshit.

Zulus too. No evidence of poison use in battle, to my knowledge. The British would have found time to denounce the savage perfidity of poison use, constrasting it with civilized warfare merely involving the blasting of large holes in the enemy's body with small pieces of burning lead.

Swiped from elsewhere:

ACONITE (Aconitum napellus), or Monk's-Hood was known even in Anglo-Saxon times, when it was called "thung." "Thung" became the word used for any very poisonous plant. Cultures used it as a weapon by coating their spears and arrowheads with its strong poison. The plant was used for killing panthers, wolves, and other carnivores. The Greeks termed it "lycotonum," or Wolfs-Bane, and believed that aconite was the first poison created, made by Hecate from the foam of Cerberus. Aconite was used as an arrow poison in primitive Europe, Alaska, and Asia. On the Greek island of Chios, aconite was used for the euthanasia of the old and infirm men. It was often used for criminal purposes—Claudius I, Emperor of Rome, was slain by his own physician who slipped him monkshood. It was so often used for political assassinations that Trajon banned its cultivation altogether. Anyone caught gardening these flowers risked a penalty of death. Gerard, an herbalist of Queen Elizabeth's time, wrote, "There hath been little heretofore set down concerning the virtues of aconite, but much might be saide of the hurts that have come thereby." When Hamlet faced Laertes in a duel, Laertes covered his blade in juices from monkshood. In a series of recent trials infamous in Japan, three women and one man were proven to have collected millions of yen in their murder-for-insurance ring; the women prepared for their husbands sweet-bean buns laced with monkshood. The trials ended in 2002, and all received long prison terms.

AKOCANTHERA: Usually used as arrow poison; see below. It has been reported that Puncture Vine seeds have been used in homicidal weapons in southern Africa; murderers smear sharp objects with the poisonous juice of Acokanthera venenata and put them where victims are likely to step.

ROSARY PEAS: Abrus precatorius. Rosary peas are so poisonous that the sharpened seeds are used as murder weapons in India.

POISON ARROWS

Poison arrows have been used since antiquity in nearly every continent, with the possible exception of Australia and New Zealand. The oldest evidence comes from ancient Egypt, circa 2181 BCE.

Common genuses used include Calotropsis, Dioscorea, Diospyros, Drepanocarpus, Euphorbia, Hippomane, Hura, Lonchocarpus, Mucuna, Paullinia, Pedilanthus, Pentaclethra, Perebea, Petiveria, Piscidia, Strychnos.

Africa: cardiac poisons African arrow poisons generally contain more than one component. Nearly 256 different species have been used in poison arrows in Africa. Generally the poison was never smeared on the tip but placed behind the tip so the penetration through skin and fur wouldn't wipe off the poison. Sometimes the poison was inserted in a hollow shaft. The cacti Euphorbium was consistently used as a glue to hold the poison on the shaft. Only the bushmen of the Kalahari desert used animal extracts exclusively.Other bushmen mix with plants or use plant material alone. Plants include Acokanthera, Parquetina, Adenium speciosum, Strophanthus, Tabernanthe, Adenium, Mansonia, Calotropis, Cassia sp., Crotalaria retusa, Securidaea lonqependuculata, Tephrosia vogelii, Pergularia, Corchorus, and Erythrophleum, Euphorbia, Gnidia, Strychnos, and Jatropha. In the early 20th century, arsenic was often used, but during the mid-century, cyanide became quite popular

Acokanthera schimperi: Prepared by building an underground fire pit—the pot is kept below ground level to reduce the danger. The fire is kept going for 3 to 4 days after which time the lid is removed to let the vapor escape. After a day the precipitate deposited at the bottom of the pot is moved to a wooden or leather container with a tight lid. It is then carried around for use in the preparation of poison arrows. The bark is also soaked in water to extract the poison. Death results in 30 minutes after entry of poison into the blood-stream" Snake venom is sometimes used in addition. The poison causes hair and nails to drop off. The only treatment against the poison is immediate excision of the flesh surrounding the wound. The container used to prepare or hold the poison must never be used in the house again, not even to burn as firewood because the smoke, if inhaled, is poisonous as well.

Strophanthus hispidus makes up Gombi arrow poison of Africa. The brew is evaporated by boiling to a syrupy consistency, and when smeared on the arrow or spear this dries to a varnish. The poison is called in Hausa yaßi, literally 'to smear poison', or zabgai, or simply dafi, poison, and in Fula toke.

South America: muscle-paralyzing Each tribe has their own curare recipe, but most implement the bark of Moonseed family members, which is often mixed with unspecified plants. Tube curare from western Amazonia was stored in bamboo tubes and made of Chondrodendron tomentosum. From eastern Amazonia is Calabash curare, stored in small gourds, and pot curare in small clay pots; both made from Strychnos guianensis. Often the mixtures included other substances, sometimes up to thirty. When it comes to the respiratory-paralyzing effects of the Chondrodendron, it can take as many as 15 darts to take down a human. The strength of the poison is also variable. The strength of a batch of curare can be tested in a number of ways, like counting the number of times a frog can jump after being pricked, or how many trees a monkey can leap to after being hit. One-tree curare is very potent; three-tree curare can be used to take down live animals to be kept in captivity. Machineel, used in Central America and the Caribbean is used by the Caribs as an arrow poison, watering hole poison, and the tied criminals to the tree to torture them.

Asia: Cardiac followed by tetanic symptoms ACONITE 'Monkshood/Wolfbane' Used by ancient Chinese and in India as an arrow tip poison & in medieval times to poison wolves.

North America: No generalizations Letharia spp. Achomawi: The principal ingredient for the poison used for the stone arrow tips was the yellow lichen (Evernia) which grows on pine and fir trees in the mountains. The arrow points were embedded in masses of the wet lichen and allowed to remain an entire year. Rattlesnake venom was sometimes added.

Pallid Hoptree: Leaves made into arrow poison by Havasupai tribe.


Oddly missing from these is the historical use of Chinese fire newt secretions, a complex neurotoxin that is lethal in small quantities if introduced to the bloodstream or ingested. It was reputed to have been used by Chinese soldiers in warfare, I used to own several of them.

Quote from: valency;678220Anything said about Ninjas on a program like "Deadliest Warrior", is certain to be unsupported bullshit.

Zulus too. No evidence of poison use in battle, to my knowledge. The British would have found time to denounce the savage perfidity of poison use, constrasting it with civilized warfare merely involving the blasting of large holes in the enemy's body with small pieces of burning lead.

I don't see how you can dole out certainty.   They do list, analyze, and then test the weapons.  The lever action on horseback is more effective than a than a Tommy from a car.

Along those lines I would assume that poison spit was a melee weapon, and probably not used against firearms for that reason.

But sources are sources, and some are better than others.

The dramatization at the end, for example, probably shouldn't even be there, IMO.

A very interesting contribution, Traveller!

Quote from: RPGPundit;678745A very interesting contribution, Traveller!

I'm sure there's much more information out there for the persistent, blood-borne poisons aren't exactly widely propagated knowledge, and less so as time goes by. Articles on the toxicity of the Chinese fire newt secretions are markedly less available online than they were five years ago, for whatever reason, and less informative when they can be found. Remarkable creatures, my fingers used to grow slightly numb after handling them for a short period.

I'm quite happy with how the Poison rules in ACKS turned out. I did quite a bit of research while writing them. Per the other commenters here, I discovered that (a) poison was expensive and time-consuming to prepare; (b) poisoners had to be very cautious of the risks of self-poisoning; (c) many mythological accounts of use of poison end with the poisoner dying by his own poison; (d) few poisons work very quickly; and (e) as used on weapons, poison was primarily a weapon of terror, as victims feared sickness and death from a scratch that was otherwise unremarkable.

Since the rules are OGL, I'll share them here for anyone's use. I won't claim they are "realistic" per se; the risks of self-poisoning are higher than they ought be, and with no rules for infectious wounds, some effects couldn't be modeled. But they are well-balanced and playable within the context of a D&D-style game.

Plant Toxins
Characters with Naturalism proficiency can search for a fresh specimen of poisonous plants each week. A successful proficiency throw against the target value for the plant (listed on the Plant Toxins table below) gathers enough fresh plant to extract one dose of toxin. Dried belladonna and wolfsbane can be easily found in most markets, but are more difficult to extract useful toxin from.

Extracting the toxin from the raw plant takes 1 week per plant and requires a successful Alchemy proficiency throw of 14+ for fresh plants and 17+ for dried plants. If either the proficiency throw to gather the plant, or to extract the plant toxin, is an unmodified 1, the character has accidentally exposed himself to the toxin. The character must immediately save versus Poison or suffer its effects.

Each plant yields one dose of its toxin. Some plant toxins can be used to treat weapons. For these toxins, a dose is enough to treat twenty missiles (arrows, bolts, or darts) or one melee weapon. Other toxins can be used to poison food or drink. In this case, one dose  is enough to poison one meal or drink. Extracted plant toxins generally cannot be detected by smell or taste. The Plant Toxins table shows the market cost, onset time, save modifier of the various plant toxins.
 

Plant Toxins
(presented in the following format: Poison, Naturalism Throw, Cost/Dose, Onset Time, Save Mod., Effect on Failed Save)

Belladonna,   11+,   350gp, 1 turn (injury) or 1d3 turns (ingestion) +2, 2d8 damage and confusion 1d4 turns

Curare, 20+, 1,500gp, Instant (injury), 2d12 damage and paralysis 2d4 turns

Foxglove, 14+, 275gp, 1d6 turns (ingestion), -3, 2d8 damage and confusion 1d4 turns

Hellebore, 8+, 225gp, 1 turn (injury) or 1d3 turns (ingestion), +2, 1d6 damage and sickness 1d10 days*

Hemlock, 8+, 225gp, 2d4 turns (ingestion), +4, 2d12 damage and sickness 1d10 days*

Henbane, 8+, 350gp, 1 turn (injury) or 1d6 turns (ingestion), +2,   1d6 damage and feeblemind 1d4 hours

Wolfsbane, 11+, 350gp,   1 turn (injury) or 2d4 turns (ingestion), +2, 2d8 damage and paralysis 2d4 turns

Yew,   4+, 200gp,   1 hour (injury) or 1d6 hours (ingestion), +4, 1d10 damage

Sickened characters move at ½ speed and cannot fight or perform other actions.

Use of Poison
Once applied, poison evaporates quickly, diminishing its effectiveness. On the first day, it will do full damage, on the second day half damage, and by the third it will be gone. Partially evaporated deadly poisons allow the victim a +2 bonus on his saving throw after the first day, and +4 after the second. Each hit with a melee weapon is equivalent to a day's evaporation, e.g. the poison will do half damage on its second hit and then be gone.

Using poisoned weapons is not without risk. Whenever a character's attack throw with a poisoned weapon is an unmodified 1, he has accidentally pricked himself. He must immediately save versus Poison or suffer its effects.

Good stuff; if you look over on the Albion thread in my subforum, you'll see my own poison listing, and you'll note that I chose for none of them to do straightforward HP damage.  Also, none of them are just instant save vs. death either.

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