There are several monsters with poison attacks and my question is, after you've defeated them, what skill would be needed to drain their venom sacks without poisoning yourself and are their any guidelines listed for how much poison you can get from a creature?
I was thinking along the lines of making it a handle animal or survival check for doing it but for how many doses the players can get I'm kind of at a loss.
Maybe some kind of chart that gives you a number of doses depending on the creature's size, whether or not the poison delivery attack is a primary or secondary attack, or whether or not the creature uses the substance as a poison at all (i.e. Dragon Bile is stomach juice, not an actual poison attack).
Suggestions?
If I remember correctly other monsters that have had venom sacks removed were a Heal Skill Check to keep from poisoning yourself. As for how much venom a creature has it would seemingly depend on the size of the creature. For example, a medium spider might give up 2 doses of medium spider poison if it had not used its poison attack during the encounter.
I could be wrong though.
Just my 2 cp.
This could open your campaign up to some horrible abuses.
Something important things to know about poisons:
1) Venomous animals produce their own toxins (ex: rattlesnake)
2) Poisonous animals use toxins generated by another creature (ex: poison dart frog)
3) Some toxins degrade quickly and may not be something you can extract
4) Some toxins are excreted while others are injected. In Pathfinder there are other methods as well which would make things more challenging for the extracting process.
5) Extracting toxins is dangerous, even from a dead creature.
I don't know the best answer but I do know that the rules assume a Craft (alchemy) check for creating all poisons, even things like black adder venom. You could just pick an appropriate skill and keep the DC the same. So if someone wants to extract black adder venom from a living black adder, you could use Handle Animal. If they want to extract the venom from a dead black adder, you could use Survival. In both of these cases, I would not allow one to Take 20 because failure could result in self poisoning. I would allow only a single dose from Small or smaller, 2 from Medium and Large, 4 from Huge on up.
There are several monsters with poison attacks and my question is, after you've defeated them, what skill would be needed to drain their venom sacks without poisoning yourself and are their any guidelines listed for how much poison you can get from a creature?
I was thinking along the lines of making it a handle animal or survival check for doing it but for how many doses the players can get I'm kind of at a loss.
Maybe some kind of chart that gives you a number of doses depending on the creature's size, whether or not the poison delivery attack is a primary or secondary attack, or whether or not the creature uses the substance as a poison at all (i.e. Dragon Bile is stomach juice, not an actual poison attack).
Suggestions?
Oh you dirty rat,
"Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples."
"I have nipples. Greg. Could you milk me?"
Perhaps a Knowledge check? I'd imagine knowing how to extract venom is a more relevant issue than successfully performing the action if the beast/monster is laying there dead.
As for how many doses could be collected, good question. Many GMs seem to want to minimize what can be extracted from a corpse (otherwise the game can slow down to a taxidermy lecture). I say honor the kill and take it down to bone, and then wear those bones like a pretty girdle.
Oh you dirty rat,
"Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples."
"I have nipples. Greg. Could you milk me?"
I wrote a serious response to your question, but the responses above are a bit more thoughtful.
Assuming the creature is dead, I'd say it would be a medium difficulty Knowledge check of the appropriate type to determine where the poison would be stored in the animal's body, and then a Survival check to successfully remove the organs in question. After that, I'd probably still require a Craft (Alchemy) check to successfully prepare, store, and preserve the poison, with the DC being equivalent to the poison's Fortitude save, per the Afflictions rules. Of course, you could have multiple PCs cooperating -- it wouldn't have to be the same PC making all the checks. A 1 on either of the Survival or Craft (Alchemy) checks would mean self-poisoning
If the animal is still alive, I would substitute a Handle Animal check for the Survival check. The Knowledge check would still let you know the best way to get the poison, and the Handle Animal check would let you attempt to do it safely. Again, you'd need to make the Craft (Alchemy) check to prepare, store, and preserve the poison.
As far as the number of dosages goes, there are a lot of factors which you've listed, and you could argue that any apply. I'd be tempted to go with a standard answer, such as 1d2 doses from a dead animal, and 1d3 doses from a live animal on a daily basis. These numbers are entirely off the top of my head, but I think it'd be the easiest way without trying to spell it out on a monster-by-monster basis.
Eerie coincidence. One of my players is running a druid, the party has recently defeated a few giant spiders, and he wants to extract the venom. Once he and I come up with what looks like a sensible system, I guess I could post it here.
Mark L. Chance | Spes Magna Games
Heh, he said poison "sack", heh hehheh heh...anyone else stoked about Beavis an Butthead coming back? Of course I am not really sure I am...buttmunch...
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From what I've seen on the Discovery channel and elsewhere, "milking" venom from a creature is tricky stuff. And each creature is different. Or rather, each category of creature is different.
I don't think I'd get too detailed with it. Just tell them they have enough venom to make X doses of poison and set the value of X where you want it. That doesn't change the price required to make a poison out of it, however; there are still other costs for catalysts and reagents and "fermentation" of the venom and so on. (It's not called "fermentation" but I don't recall the name. :))
Heh, he said poison "sack", heh hehheh heh...anyone else stoked about Beavis an Butthead coming back? Of course I am not really sure I am...buttmunch...
Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh... Yeah, everyone is stoked because I'm so smooth. Oh yeah, and Beavis is pretty cool too. Huh-huh-huh-huh. Cool.
Well what i'm seeing is very similar to what I had been originally considering.
Using a Craft: Alchemy or Survival to extract the vemon from a dead creature, and Handle Animal to extract it from a live one. Then a further Survival or Alchemy check to preserve it properly once you have it.
The DC for the check would be the DC of the venom.
The number of doses you could extract would not depend on how many doses the creature had used that day in combat, poison producing creatures have glands that would be pumping away under the stress of combat to keep the vemon sacks full.
Creatures could be milked for venom based on their sizes:
Fine, Diminutive - 1 dose
Tiny - 2 doses
Small - 4 doses
Medium - 6 doses
Large - 10 doses
Huge - 16 doses
Gargantuan - 24 doses
Colossal - 32 doses
This dosage amount would be a one time thing for a dead creature, and half as many doses may be extracted per day from a live creature.
For live creatures, unless it is a bonded familiar, companion, intelligent and willing, or charmed and/or dominated, you must make the appropriate roll per dose extracted per day. If it is any of these, you may make one roll for all the vemom extracted using any of the poison related skills; Alchemy, Survival, or Handle Animal.
Success and failure
During extraction for evey 5 points you succeed over your required roll, you gain one extra dose of venom above and beyond the maximum for a live creature (this represents your skill in manipulating the creature) but never more than you could draw from a corpse. For every point you fail your roll by you lose one dose to mishandling, if you fail your roll by more than half, or roll a natural 1 (i.e. The poison you are extracting has a DC of 19 and you roll an 9), you gain nothing and poison yourself. You maky not take 10 or 20 on this roll.
Example: You have a wild medium sized giant spider in captivity, you may attempt to extract 3 doses from it each day. It is uncharmed so you must roll a DC 14 handle animal check for each dose. You roll a 24 and gain three doses, a 19 and gain two doses, and an 19 and gain one dose. You are now done milking that spider for the day.
For the preserving, all the poison gained for the day will be preserved or lost on the second successful roll for Alchemy or Survival, whichever was used to extract the poison.
It would make sense for me to base the amount and duration of the poisoin based on the creature's CR. Somewhere I believe I read that the things you harvest from a creature shouldn't exceed 20% of its treasure value by CR (but that might have been back in 3.X for just power spell components). Really, if it had no other treasure, you could simply substitute the value of the poison harvested for the amount of treasure that would have been gained, of course moderated by the circumstance of the harvesting and the check roll of the PC.
It would make sense for me to base the amount and duration of the poisoin based on the creature's CR. Somewhere I believe I read that the things you harvest from a creature shouldn't exceed 20% of its treasure value by CR (but that might have been back in 3.X for just power spell components). Really, if it had no other treasure, you could simply substitute the value of the poison harvested for the amount of treasure that would have been gained, of course moderated by the circumstance of the harvesting and the check roll of the PC.
This stuff basically, not sure about the specifics but you should definately keep an eye on treasure value.
A milked poison will most likely not be usable in it's raw form, at least not to full effect, milking poison from a dead creature is likely to ruin it. There is a reason poison is so damn expensive, unless you are ok giving the pcs freebies do not make it easy on them to milk them.