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I'm DM'ing a Way of the Wicked campaign and I've got an Alchemist and a Rogue(Archetype) Poisoner who will be wanting to play with poisons soon enough.
Now I'm looking at the craft rules and I'm already thinking of houseruling this for poisons to change the progress. I would change this, so that the time it would take to craft this would change from SP to PP if they have the "Use poison" ability or have the "Alchemist" class.
My question however is does anyone have good resources for poisons? Or suggestions into collecting and gathering items. My players always ask if they can forage or try and gather components from slain enemies like spiders, etc.
They even go so far as to try and bludgeon critters to death as to preserve pelts to sell.
So far I've seen this The Secret of Herbs but I'm also interested in other pdf's or books.
In our games it is very common to harvest useful things from slain animals and beasts. However we simply go by rule of thumb. I know this is houserule territory, but here is an proposal you can use if you don't find anything better in the official rules.
The easiest way to for let's say, safely extracting the poison gland (intact) of a giant scorpion, would be asking for a skill check. This could be things like Heal, Profession(Surgeon) or Profession(Taxidermy).
The DC should probably depend on the CR as more potent monsters result in more potent poisons (or more valuable materials). From the top of my head I only know of one ability that asks for a skill check and works of CR and that is Kirin Style.
There the DC is equal to the CR of the creature +15. However you can scale it down to make it easier if you like. Or you could say that if they fail the check by 5 the lose half the resources they try to harvest and if they fail by 10 or more they poison or injure themselves.
I remember also a section in the PRD that talked about using monster parts as valuable components in crafting items. However I simply can't find it again at the moment.
Most creatures in the book don't have harvestable venom. Off the top of my head, a "Medium Spider", certain kinds of Vipers, a Dream Spider, and a giant scorpion.
Most of the rest come from herbs.
Harvesting these things is usually a Survival check in games I've played and run.