Hi all! I'm running a Pathfinder campaign set in modern day where the players are filling the role of the 'Magical Girl' trope of anime (not the Vigilante archetype :p).
However, one villain is using a bard using spells like suggestion and beguiling gift to kill people- by giving them bottles of poisonous cleaning chemicals. I'm not sure how to stat something like drinking bleach in PF- would it be a poison? If so, how would it be statted?
The saying is, it is the dose that makes the poison, so to get real world examples it would depend upon how much of a substance was ingested.
While accidental household bleach poisoning is very common, it is rarely fatal. The solution in household bleach is fairly dilute and with treatment their is usually no ill effects. And of course either with suggestion or beguiling gift, the victim would still know what happened afterward that they would be able to seek treatment.
From a game perspective, injested poisons have a long enough onset time (10 minutes usually) that they are not an 'in combat' thing.
I would probably just look as some of the different ingested poisons that Paizo has published for pathfinder use that for stats. The big downside is that pretty much anything like this is going to be obvious (poisons that are difficult to detect are usually expensive) and with medical treatment probably not going to be fatal.
Of course if you want it to be fatal (this is still a fantasy after all) you could certainly look at higher DCs and larger consequences. Quicker onset time would increase the danger as well.
As I understand the rules, neither beguiling gift nor suggestion would work to make a character drink bleach if they knew it was bleach and therefore poisonous.
Beguiling gift is iffy, because it says they use it as is appropriate for the item (either drinking or donning) but you don't drink or don bleach. Suggestion is simply right out as any obviously harmful activity is automatically barred per the spell.
I'm planning on fluffing it as the villain giving them a water bottle filled with bleach etc. so that it resembles something safe, because you'd assume you're drinking water.
I'm planning on fluffing it as the villain giving them a water bottle filled with bleach etc. so that it resembles something safe, because you'd assume you're drinking water.
Until the moment you smell it (probably) or taste it (certainly). Does the villain have illusions to cover those?
Yes, but that's not the issue at hand. I'm asking about statistics.
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The best I can offer is try looking up the symptoms of cleaner poisoning (maybe the fine print on the labels will go into the details, but they'll probably just say "harmful or fatal if swallowed, etc," which doesn't help you much), then based on what you find, judge what kind of ability damage that translates to.
The main problem is that, unless something does Constitution damage, poison in 3rd Edition/Pathfinder is more about disabling victims than killing them.
Given their reputation for being abused by the stupid/desperate as narcotics, most cleaning supplies may effectively do Intelligence and/or Wisdom damage.
Yes, but that's not the issue at hand. I'm asking about statistics.
Fair enough.
According to Material Safety Data Sheets for Common Household Products, Windex is not actually poisonous and the most you'll get from ingesting it (or getting it in your eyes) is discomfort to be alleviated with milk or water. The other products I checked there are also pretty wussy, nothing I'd call poison. :-(
If you don't mind varying from the common-household-chemicals motif, the bard might have better luck stealing prescription meds and mixing them into water to make people OD. IRL those can get arbitrarily nasty, including comas, seizures, and death.
Under the Pathfinder Unchained poison rules, I would make these Int or Wis poisons ranging anywhere from onset 1 min & freq 1/rd for 10 rds down to onset 10 min & freq 1/10min for 20 min. The villain can pretty much take their pick of values, there are lots of different dangerous prescription meds.
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Hi all! I'm running a Pathfinder campaign set in modern day where the players are filling the role of the 'Magical Girl' trope of anime (not the Vigilante archetype :p).
However, one villain is using a bard using spells like suggestion and beguiling gift to kill people- by giving them bottles of poisonous cleaning chemicals. I'm not sure how to stat something like drinking bleach in PF- would it be a poison? If so, how would it be statted?
Thing about bleach is how revolting it is to smell. I'd imagine you couldn't use suggestion to make people drink bleach, unless you really disguised the smell and taste with something.
Anyway, to your question, I did a report on the dangers of household chemicals a while back, and bleach will kill you if you drink it. One of my sources included a report on someone who had "successfully" commited suicide by drinking a couple liters of bleach. It didn't say how the person managed to get it down, but they did die.
For realistic bleach drinking, I'd grant the Nausiated condidition with a Successful fortitude save....unsuccessful saves would probably depend on how much you drank, but it will kill you. Not a pleasent chemical and should be handled with care.
On the other hand, at least according to CSI, you should be able to determine household chemical cause of death, and even locate the stores and factories that sell and make it, realitively quickly (CSI, the show where overqualified multiple master degree super models fight crime with an unlimited budget....).
It's probably much more efficient if you extract the chlorine/ammonia from the bleach and use that.
Not really. First off, no there's no ammonia in bleach. Second, by "extracting" the chlorine you mean concentrating the hypochlorite, that's not that easy, and anyone able to pull it off decently could do something better.
Now, for game purposes, go ahead and have the villain use boiled down 'super bleach' as a weapon, as long as you aren't trying for a realisitc framework that the players can apply real world logic to.