I'm trying to have an assassination -- masked as a hunting accident -- for my PCs to investigate. Basic story would be that a dire boar surprised a hunting party and gored a member, who was also hit by a crossbow bolt supposedly fired into melee. (The boar was commanded by the assassin, who also fired the bolt from hiding. Bolt is treated with basically a blood thinner, to try to ensure the hunter bleeds out and is killed by the dire boar injuries.)
The question is this -- would you have the blood thinning substance (which you could argue is a medicine as opposed to a poison that causes bleed damage from wounds) come up on a detect poison spell?
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That depends if you want the PCs to be able to detect the curious presence of lingering poison in the body via a detect poison spell. My suggestion is that you go for this; not only does this give a rarely-used spell a purpose, but it also rewards the players for coming up with the idea in the first place.
Just because there are no current poisons that cause bleed type effects doesn't mean you can't invent one that does.
After all... that's basically what rat poison does (and, I believe, various blood thinning medicines that are derived from the same chemicals).
Since mosquito saliva is a blood thinner as well, I would name the poison "Stirge Venom" and have it be derived from stirges. It's basically an anticoagulant. It causes Con damage from bleeding until wounds are bound or otherwise healed.
It's also amusing to think of a witch or alchemist milking a stirge.
My problem is I want the assassin to be a fairly competent, dangerous foe; i.e. one who would cover up the presence of poison.
As the death actually happened about eight months ago, what I'm thinking is this:
The PCs are going to want to investigate the bolt themselves (they've told me that's what they'll investigate when they return home from their current adventure, after recently having had it confirmed that the death was in fact a murder). I was thinking they'll find traces of poison, which will bring up the question of why it wasn't found before, as the victim's wife is also competent and would have checked.
Answer will be a new spell (based on nondetection) designed to prevent detect poison from working. Thus, find the creator of the spell and you've got a lead to your assassin. Seem workable/fair?
My problem is I want the assassin to be a fairly competent, dangerous foe; i.e. one who would cover up the presence of poison.
Would the players even remotely suspect poison from somebody who had gore wounds and bled out?
Also, detect poison doesn't come with the name of the person that applied the poison. It may take them a bit to even figure out that poison was used at all, and even when they did, there's plenty of room for obfuscation even if they figure out a poison was used.
I think you're overthinking it. :P
Old rat poison and the therapeutic drug are actually the exact same chemical, warfarin. Dosing is a bit higher in the rats. Heh heh.
The stirge saliva thing is a cool idea, and I agree. The visual is quite amusing.
It's also amusing to think of a witch or alchemist milking a stirge.
+1
On a side note, Stirges are awesome monsters to hit a low level party with. I had a 3rd level group of 6 members try to take out a nest of Stirges (I just made some crap up), they were doing fine fighting the ones "buzzing" around the next, until the Barbarian charged the nest itself...
There's a far simpler spell to foil Detect Poison: Neutralize Poison.
If the assassin is able to neutralize poison on the body, there will be no poison to detect.
However, as the boar gored the victim before this was cast, there will still be poison in the blood on the boar's tusks.
Basically what you're doing here is having a competent assassin who is trying to cover most traces of their work, but they're not going to get all of them.
Someone could use the crossbow bolt to Scrye for the face of the shooter.
There are also some poisons which degrade after use and so would not register on a Detect Poison, but would be detectable by a competent alchemist. However, the alchemist might be getting a false positive, the same way that detecting for opium use actually is detecting for a certain chemical which is also contained in poppyseeds.
There's also the business of hiring a druid to do Speak with Plants on all the trees which were in the area when the assassin sniped the guy with the poison bolt. Did the assassin threaten the trees to not ever say what they may have seen?
What about the forest life? Plenty of birds and squirrels were probably witnesses as well and would know about the guy with the crossbow in the tree.
And a Speak with Dead cast in combo with Speak with Animals on the boar's head might reveal that the boar was charmed if it was asked the right questions.
In short, in CSI Golarion, it's impossible for the assassin to cover every avenue of inquiry. However, he could still cover most.
Of course, if he's got access to Charm Animal or Dominate Animal, a far more effective course of action is to just dominate the hunter's horse to buck him then step on his head. Horseriding accidents happen plenty of times, and if you just throw a little snake in the path for everyone to see, people will assume that the snake spooked the horse and the horrible accident occurred, no poison needed, though Speak with Animals on the horse may still reveal the Dominate.
Would the players even remotely suspect poison from somebody who had gore wounds and bled out?
Also, detect poison doesn't come with the name of the person that applied the poison. It may take them a bit to even figure out that poison was used at all, and even when they did, there's plenty of room for obfuscation even if they figure out a poison was used.
I think you're overthinking it. :P
I think that's my biggest weakness as a DM. I overthink things. And it's still not enough. If I so much as name an NPC, my PCs will investigate him/her to the limit -- I've learned to fully details my red herrings: names, breed, where they're from, what rivers they go up to spawn, why they're going up rivers to spawn when they're not trouts, etc. etc.
I'm assuming they're going to suspect poison because they told me they wanted to know if the bolt was kept -- seems like it'd be a standard check for them once they get their hands on it. I could be wrong, though, and I'm trying to come up with some other ways for them to learn the assassin's ID if they don't try for that.
@Kevin: Very true. And I need for there to be some avenue for them to find the assassin, since I want them to do that, so that's for the best. But I don't want it to be something where the assassin's going to use a poison knowing that almost any Tom, Dick and Jane (it's a 0-level cleric orison, after all) can tell that some poison is involved.
(I do like the horse toss idea, though.)
I think your problem here is the Detect Poison spell itself and the incredible range of vagueness in how it works.
For example, does it detect alcohol? Will it ping on bottles of wine? Bottles of elven brandy? Drunk dwarves? The amount you have to imbibe to reach toxicity is more than a taste, but it's easy enough to kill yourself if you chug a large bottle of hard liquor. How about rubbing alcohol? That can kill you and make you go blind too, even if it's commonly kept around as an antiseptic.
There are plenty of varnishes which are toxic as well, and conceivably its standard to use these on crossbow bolts and no one worries about them because this was the era when people were putting salts of lead in wine to improve the taste.
What I would do is let them know that Detect Poison will detect poison on all sorts of things and very frequently gives false positives.
For example, contrast detecting poison on a glass of wine, a glass of wine sweetened with salts of lead (which will kill you eventually via lead poisoning but hardly immediately), and a glass of wine sweetened with salts of lead and spiked with cyanide. Which pings? If only the last one does, what happens when the glass is dumped out and refilled? There'd still be a trace of cyanide, but not enough to do any damage, whereas pure salts of lead mixed with pure alcohol could probably kill someone very quickly.
In short, does Detect Poison detect any toxin or just detect toxins in large enough quantities to constitute a lethal dose?
It may very possibly be that the amount of venom left on the crossbow bolt is insufficient to set off Detect Poison because there's not enough poison left to be harmful. Tell your players that who have the spell and are using it--they should know how their spells work--but also know that alchemists (meaning people with Craft Alchemy) can do more elaborate tests to detect for traces of poison.
Set the DC for the toxicology based on how exotic the poison is. Stirge Venom is pretty rare. That said, if someone in the party has Craft Alchemy and rolls well, they should be rewarded for it, and if they go and pay money to an NPC alchemist for a tox screen, that's a good roleplaying opportunity and also a chance to sink more gold. Testing for really exotic poisons would be the most expensive, but would let the party know that the bolt was poisoned with stirge venom which is pricy stuff and usually only high level assassins would have access to it, or maybe the occasional wizard with a stirge familiar.