Poison Crafting Calculator - Create your own poisons!


Homebrew and House Rules


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Hello,

I was inspired by this blog post and its accompanying thread.

However we all know that RAW poisons have very little balance in comparison to one another. So I've decided to use his system and modify the numbers to create a more balanced system of poisons. Players crafting poisons will only use the new poison system - we're throwing out the old one.

The goals of this system: reduce costs, allow increased DCs, and decrease time(see below).

The system works by multiplying 8 factors to get a cost. Those 8 factors are:


  • Type (Injury, Contact, Injested, Inhaled)
  • Frequency (Rounds, Minutes)
  • Onset (Immediate, Delayed)
  • DC
  • # of times to cure
  • Duration (# of rounds/minutes)
  • Effect (Unconsciousness, Str, Dex, Con, HP)
  • Damage Amount (d2 ability, d4 ability, d6 dmg, 2d8 dmg) - unconscious assumes a value of 1 here

Reasoning for the weights:


  • Type: Injury must do damage to apply, contact can be a touch thrown vial which makes it more valuable, inhaled is a thrown vial that is an AoE (5ft radius) which makes it much more valuable, and injested is mostly ignored for combat's sake but should maybe be adjusted higher for it's RP value
  • Frequency: Happening every round is much more valuable than minutes, but minutes still has the initial affect.
  • Onset: Delaying should reduce the cost, but not by much.
  • DC: Scale the cost off the DC*1.5 which makes the DC really matter as that's the largest factor.
  • # of times to cure: Each consecutive cure is less and less valuable.
  • Duration: Each consecutive round is less and less valuable
  • Effect: Str/Dex are CC that takes a bit of time. Con is death after a certain piint and also reduces their HP. HP is very nice additive dmg. Unconscious takes an enemy out of a fight.
  • Damage Amount: Scaled based on their expected impact (average damage)

Poison Crafting Calculator

Please feel free to duplicate this sheet and play around with the numbers. I have put in some pre-existing poisons for comparison.

Factors to consider: crafting cost follows the norm of 1/3. Crafting time calculated by gold instead of solve (10x faster). Can craft multiple poisons at a time.
I plan to limit the maximum DC craftable to 13+half ranks in the skill(15 at 4, 17 at 8). That scales about the same as fort saves for fighters I think.

I would love any feedback that you provide. Thanks!


I've added a ton of conditions. Most come from pre-existing poisons, but some are just from the conditions page.

Blinded, Confusion, Cowering, Dazed, Dazzled, Deafened, Exhausted, Fatigued, Frightened, Lesser Mage Bane, Mage Bane, Nauseated, Panicked, Paralyzed, Petrified, Shaken, Sickened, Staggered, Stunned, Unconscious, Woundweal.

I'd love any feedback on how to weight these appropriately. I've ball-parked them, but it's a bit hard to compare them all.


I did a thing for creating custom poisons that tries to emulate the official costs somewhat, but many things end up being cheaper because of how bad they are as a poison (balances poison costs better).

Like yours I don't think I bothered to give values for every specific condition effect though, since it's difficult to do and/or may vary per opinion.

Making custom poisons
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p6xr?Poisons-Revisited#7


thanks - I've updated my copy of the spreadsheet and tinkering with it.
I'm reviewing the calculation methods to come up with a total.

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