Homebrew Poisoner Bandoleer

[Johann Weiss]

I'm Dming a game and my Alchemist player asked me if his character could craft a special bandoleer. He wants something to allow his poisons to not take so long to use. I was thinking something that combines the worn Tools rule where you can access up to 2 bulk of tools and accessing them is a part of the actions to use them. So a bandoleer that he could prep up to 1 bulk of poisons into it and then apply a poison to a weapon using just the 2 actions listed in the poisons stats, then attack as his third action.

What level item would that be and what cost? I tried finding a similar special item in the published material, but nothing that makes sense to me.

Also can anyone see this becoming a game imbalance item?

[CookieLord]

Toxicologists can use a single action to apply injury poisons and use class DC for infused poisons.

[Decimus Drake]

I've always been a bit weary of giving out items that effectively mimic class feats and abilities.

Interestingly while there seems to nothing to support it RAW, as a GM I've always just assumed that the two actions to use poison on a weapon consisted one action to draw the poison (so long as it's in a belt pouch or bandolier) and one action to apply it. I'd recommend adopting this approach instead of trying to come up with an item.

As you can tell I'm quite generous in my approach to poisons. Another rule I have is that once a poison applied to a weapon or added to food etc it's considered "used" for the purpose of time limits relating to quick alchemy and advanced alchemy.

Even if you decide that advanced alchemy poisons on weapons become inert after a day the alchemist can still envenom their weapons and ammunition at the start of the day and reapply it as and when.

If ever I escape the GM seat and get to play in a suitable campaign, I have an idea for a toxicologist alchemist with the medic and/or snarecrafter archtypes. My plan for using poison in combat is to use a blowgun with pre-prepared darts (with the Subtle Delivery feat), blight bombs (with Quick Bomber), a crossbow for long range and four envenomed daggers. The daggers would give him a two-action (at most) melee/short range poison attack. I think this setup would provide me with more than enough envenomed attacks for most encounters.

[shroudb]

Decimus Drake wrote:

If ever I escape the GM seat and get to play in a suitable campaign, I have an idea for a toxicologist alchemist with the medic and/or snarecrafter archtypes. My plan for using poison in combat is to use a blowgun with pre-prepared darts (with the Subtle Delivery feat), blight bombs (with Quick Bomber), a crossbow for long range and four envenomed daggers. The daggers would give him a two-action (at most) melee/short range poison attack. I think this setup would provide me with more than enough envenomed attacks for most encounters.

but why use blowgun (and subtle delivery)?

Do you think it's worth it to do 0 damage on every attack so that on the 1/20 attacks you crit and IF the enemy fails his save on this one particular attack you do a bit extra poison damage?

i mean, apart from aesthetics, blowgun+subtle is functionally way worse than just using any other ranged weapon without wasting a feat on it.

(if it's just for the aesthetics ok i guess, but you will be putting the group at a disadvantage if you do 0 damage even when you hit)

[Johann Weiss]

Yeah, I was unsure about it because it's so similar to the toxicologist ability. My thinking was that I'd have it use up 1 of the 2 bulk you can have for held tools (as per the recent errata). It's not a huge trade off but it's something.

I had used the same rule for poisons and considering them "used" when applied. Otherwise a normal alchemist can't use poisons with quick alchemy.

I think I'll have a Poisoners Bandolier, Level 2 item, 3gp (holds up to 1b of poisons).

Since it didn't cause any big issues in your game to have an alchemist draw the poison as part of the application, I can't see it causing any balance issues.

Thanks for the help.