D&D: The Best Poisons Money Can Buy
Want to add a pile of damage to your next attack? Reach for a vial of deadly poison. Just don’t grab the llama potion by mistake.
Fantasy adventure stories are full of deadly poisons and wasting wounds. From the broken-off tip of a Morgul blade to goblets full of poisoned wine served at weddings and feasts, there’s no end of poison.
And while, in D&D, your friend who’s very into min/maxing might tell you that poison is the most resisted type of damage in the game, most of the things you come across will take heaps of extra damage when you apply a vial of poison to your weapon. Just make sure you grab the poison chosen specifically to apply to your weapon, your weapon’s poison, the poison for your weapon, that poison.
Or suffer another effect, like one of these…
Oil of Taggit
This poison is potent and expensive. It’ll cost you around 400 GP for a single dose. But it’s a single dose that can change the course of a whole fight in one direction or another.
When a creature is subjected to this poison, which needs only be the briefest of contact, it must succeed on its saving throw or else become poisoned for 24 hours and rendered unconscious.
Used in the middle of a climactic battle, this poison can effectively remove a creature from the fight, either allowing your party room to focus on other enemies, or to capture that key lieutenant of the campaign’s archvillain.
Malice
This poison has the coolest name of any of the other ones. It’s the only one that sounds like it could also be some kind of fantasy perfume. Malice—sounds expensive. And stunning.
Which it is. 250 gold pieces will get you a single dose, which requires a fairly difficult Constitution save, or else become poisoned and blinded for an hour.
Pale Tincture
This poison is suited to killing someone when you don’t want to be around the immediate vicinity when it happens. It’s a slower poison, a subtle one too. It deals 1d6 damage upon first contact, and while afflicted, the creature takes the same d6 of poison damage every 24 hours, and until the poison ends, the damage the poison deals can’t be healed by any means.
But the effect doesn’t end until the affected creature makes seven successful saving throws against this poison.
Truth Serum
This poison is a classic, taken straight out of spy fiction. A creature who fails their save becomes poisoned (making it hard for them to fight) and the affected creature cannot knowingly speak a lie.
So it’s a zone of truth right in your pocket, all for only 150 GP.
Purple Worm Poison
This is, hands down, the most expensive poison on the market. A single dose will set you back 2,000 GP. But it stands to reason, considering that the only way you can acquire it is by harvesting it from a dead or incapacitated purple worm — a creature best known for eating anything and everything that fits in its mouth.
Still, that 2,000 gold pieces will buy you the equivalent of a 5th-level spell, adding 12d6 points of damage to a successful attack, if your target fails their save. And since this is bonus damage dealt on an attack, if you manage a critical hit? That’s an extra 24d6 points of damage instead. Which is enough to deal a decisive blow against your campaign’s climactic villain.
For best results, combine with grave Cleric and diviner Wizard.
