Ranged weapon and Poison

[Erfar]

So according to rules

• Bow(crossbow) is a weapon so you could apply poison to it (CRB 550) [An injury poison is activated by applying it to a weapon or ammunition, and it affects the target of the first Strike made using the poisoned item. ]
• You may use a bow to Strike target (CRB 471) [Roll the attack roll for the weapon or unarmed attack you are using]
• Strike with bow usage deal piercing damage (CRB 282)

My POV to ruling is.
• You could poison Bow OR arrow
• Poisoned bow use standard rules for poisoned weapon (lost poison on anything but failure with strike) and arrows get same benefits from poison as from any bow enhancement.
• Poisoned arrow lost regardless of hit or miss target, but you could prepare more poisoned ammunition ahead of time.

Reason:
• That make general usage of poison with range weapon not less effective then with meele or throwing weapon (like returning shuriken/starknife)
• It allow to use "high risk - high reward" tactics in addition to general usage

But I meet idea that you can't poison ammunition-weapon or get anny benifit from it because "you hit with arrow not a bow" but I can't find anything that proof that POV.

[HammerJack]

Seems pretty legalistic.

I think that you're going to find most people reading the rules about poisoning weapons or ammunition as "the intent is clearly that the poison goes on the pointy bit that inflicts injury".

In your concept of poisoning the bow, where, exactly, do you picture the poison physically going in order to work that way? Without a good answer to that which makes sense, I dont think you're going to convince many people that throwing out clear intent for tortured, legalistic RAW is a usable interpretation of the rule.

[HumbleGamer]

HammerJack wrote:

In your concept of poisoning the bow, where, exactly, do you picture the poison physically going in order to work that way?

Clearly contact poison which triggers when the archer draws the bow.

[Erfar]

HammerJack wrote:

In your concept of poisoning the bow, where, exactly, do you picture the poison physically going in order to work that way?

0. This is game-mechanic that each table/PC could fluff as they wish. Main position of "poisoning bow" as opposed to "poison single piece of ammunition"

1. You attach vial with poison near arrow-head placement on weapon and drop few drops of venom on arrow right before shoot. If you criticaly miss or hit read this as "you spend all poison on this shoot".
2. You just pour poison into a quiver, not particular arrow. So as you hit/criticaly miss - there is your most poisoned arrow and other ones are dry now.

Main reason for those ruling to make ranged weapon at least not worse then throwing weapon.

Also If you read poison rules as "you must apply poison to singular piece of ammunition" then few class feats doesn't work or work poorely for exemple:
• Subtle Delivery - Feat to usage poison with ammunition weapon at 1st level from CRB should not lead to trap of "haha you spend resources and gain nothing"
• Sticky Poison - If you read that you apply poison to single piece of ammunition and try to combine that with Subtle Delivery you will find that feat doesnt't work at all. While it's clearly intended to work for Poison-based alchemist.

[breithauptclan]

Erfar wrote:

Main reason for those ruling to make ranged weapon at least not worse then throwing weapon.

I'm trying to interpret the reason for creating this houserule. (as well as wondering why this thread wasn't put in homebrew to begin with)

The problem seems to be that a melee weapon keeps the poison on it if you regular miss with the weapon - so the poison attack can be attempted again. Yes? While using a ranged weapon you poison the ammunition and if you regular miss then your poisoned ammunition is either destroyed or inaccessible and you don't get to try again.

And thrown weapons can be upgraded with the returning rune so that they get the same benefits as the melee weapon (you can try the poisoned attack again). Otherwise they also end up inaccessible even though they are still poisoned and can be used again later.

Am I understanding that correctly?

------

Have you considered the other balance points?

* You can poison several pieces of ammunition ahead of time. Instead of having to re-poison your melee or thrown/returning weapon.
* Ranged attacks are less risk to your own health.
* Ranged attacks let you change targets with fewer actions.

So in a whiteroom 1v1 combat where the enemy stands there doing nothing but dodging attacks, yeah melee poison seems to be a better choice.

In an actual combat where there are multiple enemies and they are doing everything that they can to kill you and your allies, ranged ammunition poison will let you poison more enemies with fewer actions.

[Nefreet]

Conversations like this are why I appreciate Paizo including a section on Ambiguous Rules:

"If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed."

If I were your GM, for either PFS or a homegame, I wouldn't allow "poisoning the bow" to work (unless you're beating people with it). But poisoning the arrows so that you can use your feats seems logical to me.

[Erfar]

breithauptclan wrote:

Am I understanding that correctly?

------

Have you considered the other balance points?

* You can poison several pieces of ammunition ahead of time. Instead of having to re-poison your melee or thrown/returning weapon.
* Ranged attacks are less risk to your own health.
* Ranged attacks let you change targets with fewer actions.

So in a whiteroom 1v1 combat where the enemy stands there doing nothing but dodging attacks, yeah melee poison seems to be a better choice.

In an actual combat where there are multiple enemies and they are doing everything that they can to kill you and your allies, ranged ammunition poison will let you poison more enemies with fewer actions.

1. This is not intended as houserule but for clarification of RAW with links to the book. And in pre-errated books there only option is "poisoning weapon" and I think them errated that statement to allowing of prepare ammunition ahead of time (And you could check them mentioned thay want to increase usability of Poison in game not reduce it)

2. You could pick up weapon after attack and it cost single action and not cost huge value of money.

Next:
• Poison few separated pieces of ammunition cost you a lot of money.
• Ranger attack with no throwing weapon has lowest basic damage as you not add your STR to damage, and ranged weapon are garder to gain benifit of flat-footed targets.
• Ranged weapon could require spen those actions to reload instead of stride.

Anyway I still doesn't see any proofs of Points:
• That you can't poison the bow
• That you could strike the ranged attack with bow and arrow without usage of poisoned bow.

[breithauptclan]

From me as a GM, I would definitely say no.

You could technically poison the bow if you really wanted to, but you would have to hit enemies with the bow itself as an improvised weapon. Firing ammunition from it wouldn't poison the ammunition.

There are already clear rules existing for poisoning the ammunition, and there are not rules for having a poisoned bow automatically poisoning the ammunition that it fires. There are also clearly stated rules for the rune effects on a ranged weapon being transferred to the ammunition that it fires.

There are also other types of special ammunition that can be fired that will have separate effects than what the firing weapon itself provides to it. So having the act of poisoning a piece of ammunition create a special ammunition type makes sense.

[Erfar]

breithauptclan wrote:

From me as a GM, I would definitely say no.

You could technically poison the bow if you really wanted to, but you would have to hit enemies with the bow itself as an improvised weapon. Firing ammunition from it wouldn't poison the ammunition.

There are already clear rules existing for poisoning the ammunition, and there are not rules for having a poisoned bow automatically poisoning the ammunition that it fires. There are also clearly stated rules for the rune effects on a ranged weapon being transferred to the ammunition that it fires.

There are also other types of special ammunition that can be fired that will have separate effects than what the firing weapon itself provides to it. So having the act of poisoning a piece of ammunition create a special ammunition type makes sense.

If Bow are poisoned then strike with using poisoned bow that deal piercing or slashing damage deliver poison. You not nith to strike with the weapon, you need make strike with weapon usage.

Please provide link to statement where is runes transferring to ammunition.

Anyway you still must provide a solution to feat Sticky Poison. Or you will just say to your player "Lol kek, that does nothing for you crossbow, sick to be you"

While if you using poison the bow solution then Sticky Poison work SAME for all kind of weapon regardless of is it throwing, melee or ammunition-ranged.

P.S. Anything about "But range", largest maps for combat that I seen is 40 by 40 inches, and you mostly never would shoot or cast from one corner to other. And most dungeons rarely has rooms larger then 12x12. And poison is NOT common strategy if you are not build your character to use poisons. So having extra +2 to hit on bow over Starknife is mostly never worth to so big nerfing the bows

[breithauptclan]

Erfar wrote:

Please provide link to statement where is runes transferring to ammunition.

Interesting. I thought I had read that somewhere. It may just be edition confusion.

Still, the idea is that with the existence of special ammunition and rules for poisoning ammunition it severely weakens the argument that poisoning a ranged weapon is going to work the way that you want it to. Ruling it that way would mean that the line about being able to poison ammunition would be null and void. And special ammunition would probably also not exist - it would instead be something like runes or talismans that would be applied to the bow instead.

Erfar wrote:

Anyway you still must provide a solution to feat Sticky Poison. Or you will just say to your player "Lol kek, that does nothing for you crossbow, sick to be you"

While if you using poison the bow solution then Sticky Poison work SAME for all kind of weapon regardless of is it throwing, melee or ammunition-ranged.

There are a lot of feats for a lot of classes that only work with melee weapons. That isn't a balance problem.

[Erfar]

breithauptclan wrote:

Erfar wrote:

Please provide link to statement where is runes transferring to ammunition.

Interesting. I thought I had read that somewhere. It may just be edition confusion.

Still, the idea is that with the existence of special ammunition and rules for poisoning ammunition it severely weakens the argument that poisoning a ranged weapon is going to work the way that you want it to. Ruling it that way would mean that the line about being able to poison ammunition would be null and void. And special ammunition would probably also not exist - it would instead be something like runes or talismans that would be applied to the bow instead.

Erfar wrote:

Anyway you still must provide a solution to feat Sticky Poison. Or you will just say to your player "Lol kek, that does nothing for you crossbow, sick to be you"

While if you using poison the bow solution then Sticky Poison work SAME for all kind of weapon regardless of is it throwing, melee or ammunition-ranged.

There are a lot of feats for a lot of classes that only work with melee weapons. That isn't a balance problem.

There is no mentions that you can't benifit from poison ranger weapon, More over, there is a feat that makes blowgun stronger poison-deliver options.

My POV
• You poison a weapon and use general rules for poisons by using quotes from rulebook

Your POV:
• You somehow force poison only ammunition while rules allow you use poison on weapon without any restrictions.
• You somehow read ammunition as singular arrow instead of bunch of them
• You somehow apply ammunition rules for poison rules
• You make list of feats that not mention any restrictions to "melee only" useless for few ranged weapon (!)
• You start resolving ranger attack different for Bows/Crossbows and Shurikens/Starknifes
• You can't proof by book that other POV is not legit

Do you see why your POV is overcomplicated?

[breithauptclan]

Erfar wrote:

• You poison a weapon and use general rules for poisons by using quotes from rulebook

So you want me to use more direct rules quotes... Odd. I would think that most people get irritated when I do that to them.

-----

Special Ammunition wrote:

When using magic ammunition, use your ranged weapon’s fundamental runes to determine the attack modifier and damage dice. Don’t add the effects of your weapon’s property runes unless the ammunition states otherwise—the ammunition creates its own effects.

This supports my statement that Fundamental Runes and Property Runes have their effects transferred to the ammunition normally. It would be better if the rules stated this explicitly, but this is sufficient for my thinking.

Method of Exposure wrote:

An injury poison is activated by applying it to a weapon or ammunition, and it affects the target of the first Strike made using the poisoned item.

If you poison the bow, you have to injure them with the bow itself. If you want to injure them using the ammunition, you have to poison the ammunition.

Yes, there are a lot of abilities and actions that only work with melee weapons, such as Attack of Opportunity, Flanking, Retributive Strike, and Precise Strike. Doing similar with ranged weapons is considered more powerful and typically costs another feat. This is the game balance decision that the game devs created. For example Ranged Reprisal or Flying Blade. There are also feat choices where you can choose to either use ranged weapons or melee weapons, but not both with the same feat. The best example being the Twin Takedown and Hunted Shot pair.

[Erfar]

Quote:

If you poison the bow, you have to injure them with the bow itself. If you want to injure them using the ammunition, you have to poison the ammunition.

No

> and it affects the target of the first Strike made using the poisoned item.
You need USING item to strike, Not injure with it, not anything else. You need to USE it with you Strike

Please send me any proof that while you shooting with a bow you don't use a bow.

Also Please Read feat Sticky Poison. It DOESNT CARE what kind of weapon you use. Same as Poison doesn't mention any difference between Ranged or melee weapon, and nothing if forcing you to apply poison to weapon instead of ammunition.

Just open you mind and accept that is you just somehow hate Bows and crossbows and players who want use Bows and Crossbows over throwing weapon. Because functionally there is 0 difference between range attack with Throwing weapon and Shooting.

Do you see any balance from prohibit/restrict to use Crossbow with Reload 1/2 with poisoned arrow, same time as poisoned returning starknife/shuriken work SAME WAY as melee weapon. Or you just like to hate alchemist?

[MEATSHED]

This is extremely odd to me because you listed the main benefit of poisoning ammo in your first post (pre poisoning a lot of it and being able to use it when needed) so why do bows and crossbows get to have that and weapon poisoning? It also opens up a lot of odd rule questions like if I attack with a poisoned bow with poisoned arrows do I get both poisons?

[breithauptclan]

Erfar wrote:

Quote:

If you poison the bow, you have to injure them with the bow itself. If you want to injure them using the ammunition, you have to poison the ammunition.

No

> and it affects the target of the first Strike made using the poisoned item.
You need USING item to strike, Not injure with it, not anything else. You need to USE it with you Strike

Using the poisoned 'item', not the poisoned 'weapon'. The weapon includes its ammunition, but the item that you poisoned is the bow itself and the bow alone.

Erfar wrote:

Please send me any proof that while you shooting with a bow you don't use a bow.

The most you are going to get with a request for proof is to show that the rules, as they are currently written, are ambiguous.

And as Nefreet mentioned, there is a rule in place for handling ambiguous rules - and it doesn't say to use the most permissive ruling possible.

Since we are both looking at the same rule quote and coming to different conclusions, an ambiguous rule ruling is the likely result.

[Erfar]

MEATSHED wrote:

This is extremely odd to me because you listed the main benefit of poisoning ammo in your first post (pre poisoning a lot of it and being able to use it when needed) so why do bows and crossbows get to have that and weapon poisoning? It also opens up a lot of odd rule questions like if I attack with a poisoned bow with poisoned arrows do I get both poisons?

You will get benifit only once and spend 2 doses. But I will remind you do this exept times you REALLY want to burn resources. (Same as you could spend your maggic missle to hunt few animal for dinner)

As GM I would preffer you to use single option.

BUT I could allow even more stronger option. To prepare few "quivers" of poisoned arrows. So you could pile them... For example by 3 and decide as "I spend 1 poison to poisoning those 3 arrows" after this them become "single ammunition slot". If you noncriticaly failure with a strike with arrow, then poison is left on other arrows from that pile.

This is rulling that I could apply for my own games, but not expected that any other GM will allow me to use it like this.

[Claxon]

In this thread the OP comes looking for validation of their view point rather than the practical interpretation of how things work that everyone else seems to share.

Sorry mate, if you put poison on the bow you're going to have to use the bow to hit someone (not the ammunition) to poison them. It doesn't transfer.

What are my rule points? The one someone already posted about ambiguous rules couple with a dash of common sense.

Even if the rules as written support the position that placing poison on your bow can somehow allow it to transfer to your ammunition, I as a GM, would absolutely rule that's not how it works.

[Erfar]

Claxon wrote:

In this thread the OP comes looking for validation of their view point rather than the practical interpretation of how things work that everyone else seems to share.

Sorry mate, if you put poison on the bow you're going to have to use the bow to hit someone (not the ammunition) to poison them. It doesn't transfer.

What are my rule points? The one someone already posted about ambiguous rules couple with a dash of common sense.

Even if the rules as written support the position that placing poison on your bow can somehow allow it to transfer to your ammunition, I as a GM, would absolutely rule that's not how it works.

I come to any proof exept the "common sence: arguement

For me common sence is there is:
• If you could use Common rule don't create special ruling (If you could use same rule for Melee, throwing and ammo weapon, you should not create separate ruling for ammo weapon)
• You DEFENETLY should not making PC feats useless in situations for which it created. As example Subtle Delivery and Sticky Poison deffenetly created to be used by Poisonist alchemist, but with your ammunition poisoning rules you make one of them useless. And that is BAD and Unfun.

[graystone]

Erfar wrote:

• You DEFENETLY should not making PC feats useless in situations for which it created. As example Subtle Delivery and Sticky Poison deffenetly created to be used by Poisonist alchemist, but with your ammunition poisoning rules you make one of them useless. And that is BAD and Unfun.

You're talking like you can't hit 2 targets with 1 piece of ammo and that just isn't true. For instance, take Penetrating Fire [Gunslinger 10]: "You blast a bullet through one foe and into another." It works with bullets or bolts. You also have Penetrating Shot [ranger 10], that works with any ammo.

[Claxon]

Erfar wrote:

Claxon wrote:

In this thread the OP comes looking for validation of their view point rather than the practical interpretation of how things work that everyone else seems to share.

Sorry mate, if you put poison on the bow you're going to have to use the bow to hit someone (not the ammunition) to poison them. It doesn't transfer.

What are my rule points? The one someone already posted about ambiguous rules couple with a dash of common sense.

Even if the rules as written support the position that placing poison on your bow can somehow allow it to transfer to your ammunition, I as a GM, would absolutely rule that's not how it works.

I come to any proof exept the "common sence: arguement

For me common sence is there is:
• If you could use Common rule don't create special ruling (If you could use same rule for Melee, throwing and ammo weapon, you should not create separate ruling for ammo weapon)
• You DEFENETLY should not making PC feats useless in situations for which it created. As example Subtle Delivery and Sticky Poison deffenetly created to be used by Poisonist alchemist, but with your ammunition poisoning rules you make one of them useless. And that is BAD and Unfun.

Not all options are equally good for different kinds of builds.

Nothing stops an alchemist from delivering a poison with a melee weapon (even if it's not an ideal tactic for them).

Subtle delivery isn't negatively impacted by ruling that you can't put poison on the blow gun and that it must go on the ammo. It works perfectly fine. It's simply that if you miss, you've lost that piece of poison ammo which is equivalent to a gold loss. Which sucks, but that's kind of poisons deal in the first place (IMO). It's high risk, high reward.

It's true that sticky poison wont work with ammunition based weapons. Personally I think that's fine (going back to not all things are good for all builds). If you want to make a ranged only poison character, don't pick up sticky poison or focus on thrown weapons.

I don't see a problem.

[_benno]

RAW, I don't see why it shouldn't work. Everything I have read is just worded such that it includes strikes with a ranged weapon. That is something that should probably be errataed.
That being said it just makes no sense to me at all and therefore I would definitely not allow it because it would damage the immersion in the game.

[Jared Walter 356]

For me, it clearly doesn't work. If you could apply it to the bow, they wouldn't have needed the errata to specifically allow ammo.

Again RAW, includes the text about problematic implications and too good to be true, so it's a hard no from me as well.

[Matthew Jaluvka]

hey wait didn't we already have this discussion and get absolutely nowhere?