Hello I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere but I was unable to find any definitive information after searching for the past hour or so. I'm curious to know if the poison feature of cunning strike can be used with the psychic blades from soul knife.
According to the cunning strike feature itself:
"Poison (Cost: 1d6). You add a toxin to your strike, forcing the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target has the Poisoned condition for 1 minute. At the end of each of its turns, the Poisoned target repeats the save, ending the effect on itself on a success. To use this effect, you must have a Poisoner’s Kit on your person."
My gut tells me that this would not be useable based off of the RAW for psychic blades themselves:
"Level 3: Psychic Blades
You can manifest shimmering blades of psychic energy. Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can manifest a Psychic Blade in your free hand and make the attack with that blade. ... The blade vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target, and it leaves no mark if it deals damage."
My thought process here is that since the blades themselves are composed of psychic energy and do not leave a mark upon landing a hit you aren't actually piercing the target and therefore do not have a way to deliver the poison itself. I'm sure there are ways to flavor it to get the same effect (small poison coated needle thrown at the same time as the blade, psychic energy acting as a "form" to hold a topical poison to make contact with the targets skin, etc, etc.) but I don't see anything specific saying that poisons can not be used on psychic blades.
Yeah, flavor-wise it feels a bit weird. But like you said, you can flavor it somehow to make sense of it. But since you brought up RAW, then by RAW it 100% works with Psychic Blades. The Poison option for Cunning Strike never says the attack has to be Piercing, Slashing, leave a mark, etc.
About flavor, nowhere does it say that the poison has to be liquid, or delivered through the wound caused by the strike. Maybe it's a poison you breathe, and when you hit it releases a poisonous gas that forces the Constitution save.
Oh wow that's a great point I hadn't even thought about. Our DM is still in the process of deciding on what if anything he wants to bring in from the 2024 rulesets, but I wanted to have a good line of reasoning on how this works just in case. He's pretty good about "flavor is free" so I think this is a reasonable take on this.
You could also flavor it as a poisonous energy; one that invades through the mind and affects the body. A psycho-metabolic aspect of the psionic attack if you will.
I'd flavor poisoning by having the PC whisper something to the target like "one divided by zero doesn't equal zero" or use some random insult. Kind-of like Vicious Mockery.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hello I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere but I was unable to find any definitive information after searching for the past hour or so. I'm curious to know if the poison feature of cunning strike can be used with the psychic blades from soul knife.
According to the cunning strike feature itself:
"Poison (Cost: 1d6). You add a toxin to your strike, forcing the target to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target has the Poisoned condition for 1 minute. At the end of each of its turns, the Poisoned target repeats the save, ending the effect on itself on a success. To use this effect, you must have a Poisoner’s Kit on your person."
My gut tells me that this would not be useable based off of the RAW for psychic blades themselves:
"Level 3: Psychic Blades
You can manifest shimmering blades of psychic energy. Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can manifest a Psychic Blade in your free hand and make the attack with that blade. ... The blade vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target, and it leaves no mark if it deals damage."
My thought process here is that since the blades themselves are composed of psychic energy and do not leave a mark upon landing a hit you aren't actually piercing the target and therefore do not have a way to deliver the poison itself. I'm sure there are ways to flavor it to get the same effect (small poison coated needle thrown at the same time as the blade, psychic energy acting as a "form" to hold a topical poison to make contact with the targets skin, etc, etc.) but I don't see anything specific saying that poisons can not be used on psychic blades.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Yeah, flavor-wise it feels a bit weird. But like you said, you can flavor it somehow to make sense of it. But since you brought up RAW, then by RAW it 100% works with Psychic Blades. The Poison option for Cunning Strike never says the attack has to be Piercing, Slashing, leave a mark, etc.
About flavor, nowhere does it say that the poison has to be liquid, or delivered through the wound caused by the strike. Maybe it's a poison you breathe, and when you hit it releases a poisonous gas that forces the Constitution save.
Glad someone was able to answer it for you. I left my question up for almost a week and never got a reply lol.
Oh wow that's a great point I hadn't even thought about. Our DM is still in the process of deciding on what if anything he wants to bring in from the 2024 rulesets, but I wanted to have a good line of reasoning on how this works just in case. He's pretty good about "flavor is free" so I think this is a reasonable take on this.
You could also flavor it as a poisonous energy; one that invades through the mind and affects the body. A psycho-metabolic aspect of the psionic attack if you will.
Hehe, so you are hitting them with daggers of toxic thoughts. I would absolutely be on board with that flavour
Psychic poisoning.
I'd flavor poisoning by having the PC whisper something to the target like "one divided by zero doesn't equal zero" or use some random insult. Kind-of like Vicious Mockery.