Warlock Chain Poison Harvesting

I am undecided on this and seeking input. If a warlock in my campaign has investment of the chain master and a Pseudodragon familiar, as well as a poisoner’s kit, what is the save DC of poison harvested from their Pseudodragon familiar? (Pseudodragon DC or Warlock Spell DC) 

It does say that. An optimized warlock will have access to a very powerful save or sleep poison at an early level, I guess 

Just because a creature secretes venom doesn't mean you can harvest it and have unlimited amounts of it - it needs to be preserved in some way, for example. I would require characters wanting to do this to have proficiency in the poisoner's kit.

Player has proficiency in both poisoner and herbalism kit. I mean, it seems reasonable for the effort they’ve put in, still, at 5th level they can make a poison for the ranger that has a DC 17, with 12- meaning sleepy-time. 

I'd go with the base stat poison DC for the actual effect itself.  A poison valued at 200 gp only has a DC of 11, so allowing the full Investment of the Chain Master DC for someone else using the poison on top of PC weapon damage might be a bit too much. 

Honestly, I'd be careful about letting them chain effects like this too much. There's a reason player access to this effect is tied to a creature that will typically go down after one or two hits. Letting a Ranger use something like this even 5 times in a day could really turn up the volume on their attacks, particularly if you give them the amped up DC.

I totally agree, but given how generally underwhelming poison is anyway, and given that this is two characters working in concert, I’m not sure I have grounds to overrule RAW. 

your point about the “base poison” makes sense, though. Once harvested from a familiar, should the poison become simple poison of the indicated type? 

Huh. Interesting.

Well, first of all, I have a question. The find familiar spell (I think) states that the creature you summon is fey, fiend, or *something else that I forgot*. In this case, what exactly is your familiar in the first place? Is it a real pseudodragon or not?

It would be a planar spirit in the form of a pseudodragon. 

for me, that might explain that once harvested, the poison poofs, but that doesn’t work because if that’s how it worked, it wouldn’t keep a target poisoned once it’s in their system.

I'd say that the poison will poof as soon as the Pseudodragon poofs, but otherwise, I would allow harvesting with proficiency with the poisoner's kit and a vial.

Quote from BellaCoolaBattleMaster >>

I totally agree, but given how generally underwhelming poison is anyway, and given that this is two characters working in concert, I’m not sure I have grounds to overrule RAW. 

your point about the “base poison” makes sense, though. Once harvested from a familiar, should the poison become simple poison of the indicated type? 

You always have grounds to overrule RAW as a DM. Or rather, the first rule is that the DM has the final word on how the rules are applied.

I agree, and on a deep level, i know it is true that a DM has to make some calls and stand by them so the game works; in as many cases as possible, though, I want to be reasonable and transparent with players. 

Quote from BellaCoolaBattleMaster >>

I agree, and on a deep level, i know it is true that a DM has to make some calls and stand by them so the game works; in as many cases as possible, though, I want to be reasonable and transparent with players. 

I mean, there are no actual written out rules for extracting venoms from any given creature with a poison type attack, just a handful of items that mention they're extracted from a creature. The ball's in your court. Run with the idea if you want, but if you make it easy for them to get multiple doses of poison in a short timeframe, that's going to seriously amp up combat performance. This isn't an entirely awful thing in and of itself, but it does mean you might need to rebalance future encounters to maintain the challenge level you're aiming for.

If I were DMing a game with this situation, I would propose that the warlock, if they have proficiency with the poisoner's kit, can harvest and maintain a number of doses per long rest equal to their proficiency bonus, with a DC equal to the creature's base DC or (if the warlock has the investment of the chain master invocation) the warlock's spellcasting DC. It gives the warlock an advantage because of their proficiency and resourcefulness but isn't an overwhelming amount of poison they can distribute.

I’m late, but you guys need to check the actual text of Investment of the Chain Master:

• If the familiar forces a creature to make a saving throw, it uses your spell save DC.

This doesn’t modify the poison, it modifies the actions of the familiar. This means you can have your sprite poison its arrows with, say, Oil of Taggit, and use your spell save dc instead of Taggit’s usual dc (14). If you use your familiar’s poison, however, it instead has the normal dc values.

Quote from monochromaticPrism >>

I’m late, but you guys need to check the actual text of Investment of the Chain Master:

• If the familiar forces a creature to make a saving throw, it uses your spell save DC.

This doesn’t modify the poison, it modifies the actions of the familiar. This means you can have your sprite poison its arrows with, say, Oil of Taggit, and use your spell save dc instead of Taggit’s usual dc (14). If you use your familiar’s poison, however, it instead has the normal dc values.

Eh, you're stretching there because that's not a part of the familiar's stat block.

investment of the chain master as written States that it's the player's save DC

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

I mean, there are no actual written out rules for extracting venoms from any given creature with a poison type attack, just a handful of items that mention they're extracted from a creature ... etc

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/dmg-2024/dms-toolbox#HarvestingPoison

Except the DMG ... It's an official book too, just cos it doesn't have classes, feats and spells in it you shouldn't bin it.

DMG: "A character can attempt to harvest poison from a venomous creature that is dead or has the Incapacitated condition."

That is gonna sour relations with your familiar real quick, and as an NPC creature being abused like that cos it's profitable will come back to bite the character if I was DM. Trying to stealth ... Pseudo dragon makes a loud noise etc etc.

Theres cause and effect, players call, but make em aware what they're playing with. And how does their patron view their "gift" of one of their children to the Warlock being effectively tortured cos they're too cheap to make poison like regular folks?

Look at Purple work poison, on the worm it does 10d6 damage. As a poison it is still 10d6 damage but with a Dc21 save for half. There is no save and no half on the tail stinger, so making it as a poison seems to "dilute the effect" a little. I would therefore make the Pseudo-poison similarly less effective than the real thing. Because DMG precedent.

:o)

The pseudo dragons venom/poison is not valuable because of its damage alone, it's valuable because of its effects and rarity. You're right about the familiar having its own feelings about it, if I were the player I would have this conversation with the familiar myself and make sure The familiar is okay with it and that we harvest in a safe sustainable manner 

:3

"A character can attempt to harvest poison from a venomous creature that is dead or has the Incapacitated condition. The effort takes 1d6 minutes, after which the character makes a DC 20 Intelligence (Nature) check using a Poisoner’s Kit. On a successful check, the character harvests enough poison for a single dose, and no additional poison can be harvested from that creature. On a failed check, the character is unable to extract any poison. If the character fails the check by 5 or more, the character is subjected to the creature’s poison."

That is the full text.  You can't harvest from your familiar when it is "dead".  It just disappears.  So you need to harvest from it in the incapacitated condition and you need 1 to 6 minutes.  There is only one spell that is workable to the best of my knowledge and that is Feign Death.  There are likely poisons that could do it, but then you would be using a poison to harvest a poison and that is not very useful.  Get you a wizard friend.

Quote from Elfdope >>

"A character can attempt to harvest poison from a venomous creature that is dead or has the Incapacitated condition. The effort takes 1d6 minutes, after which the character makes a DC 20 Intelligence (Nature) check using a Poisoner’s Kit. On a successful check, the character harvests enough poison for a single dose, and no additional poison can be harvested from that creature. On a failed check, the character is unable to extract any poison. If the character fails the check by 5 or more, the character is subjected to the creature’s poison."

That is the full text.  You can't harvest from your familiar when it is "dead".  It just disappears.  So you need to harvest from it in the incapacitated condition and you need 1 to 6 minutes.  There is only one spell that is workable to the best of my knowledge and that is Feign Death.  There are likely poisons that could do it, but then you would be using a poison to harvest a poison and that is not very useful.  Get you a wizard friend.

That's really the key point though. You summon the same "creature" each time with find familiar, you can bind it to a different form (imp, quasit, owl etc) but it's the same. So as per the DMG you can only harvest ONCE from any creature. So they get one dose - period. RAW. Pretty damn hard to abuse that, and familiar will prob live with it once ... 

ok second thoughts on that, the Find Familiar spell allows you to dismiss a familiar forever. So presumable you can then bond a new one, harvest poison, dismiss it, get a new one ... but lets revisit that pissing off your familiar and patron game. It places a very small logistics barrier to it, 10gp and an action. So the 10gp is prob cheaper than store bought I admit.

With our DM I would not want to travel that path ...

Secondly --> Your Save DC. If the familiar forces a creature to make a saving throw, it uses your spell save DC.

If you harvest the poison and put it on a Rangers arrow and they shoot it, then the Ranger is forcing a creature to save vs his poisoned arrow, the familiar is NOT. As the invocation is "Investiture of the Chain Master" and not "Give our eldritch power to any peasant with a bow"  and the power of the INVESTITURE comes from the entity holding your pact, as DM I would simply withold that ability unless their servant (the familiar) forces a save.