Pease correct any mistakes I make here, I'm surprised nobody has posted this before. To harvest poison you will need a poisoner's kit, prof in the kit or nature, and a dead or incapacitated subject. But it's a dc 20 and if you miss by 5 or more YOU are poisoned. So: 1. Be a rogue, then take criminal background which will double up your thieves' tools and allow you to swap in poisoner's kit. 2. Take expertise in Nature. 3. You now have prof in both the kit and the skill so you have advantage on poison harvesting rolls from nasty stuff you kill. 4. Take a level of warlock and pact of the chain and the sleep spell. 5. You can now conjure any familiar type you want for 10 gold, cast Sleep on them to incapacitate them and get a crack at that sweet sweet poison. I'm not going to list them all but they're awesome (my fav is Quasit). None of them will do anything too bad to you if you botch your roll, so everybody will get a good laugh, which is very important. You want the DM to send cool poisonous monsters your way because it'll be funny if you fail. Guidance, bardic inspiration, regular inspiration, and lucky are your friends. 6. Use your bonus action in combat to apply that poison to your weapon or a friend's (in 24 it is a bonus action even without the feat). Feel free to poison your weapon THEN use the poison feature of cunning strike sneak on the same atk so they have to make TWO saves. They'll probly fail one. 7. This also works for necromancers, ghoul venom is already on the list of buyable poisons (you will need hold monster to harvest). 8. If you have a prep round before a big fight, EVERYBODY can apply poison to their weapons! The hard part can be getting the poisoner's kit prof, if your DM won't allow the background skill or let you train in it, you're looking at assassin subclass or poisoner feat. Or just have nature, buy the kit without the prof, then roll that die without advantage and give everybody even more laughs at your expense ;)
So, one minor issue here is that you can't "conjure any familiar type you want" for this, because harvesting poison has to be done with a "venomous creature" according to the DMG rules, and not all the familiar types qualify.
There's no actual formal definition of "venomous creature" in the rules, but a reasonable definition might be "a creature that can deal Poison damage or apply the Poisoned condition". Going by that definition, only half of the special Pact of the Chain forms work: Imp, Pseudodragon, Quasit, and Venomous Snake. For anyone casting the spell without Pact of the Chain, the Spider and the Scorpion are the only forms in the 2024 core rules that work.
A familiar is a spirit in the form of a creature it would be quite reasonable f9r the dm to say you can n9t extract poison from spirit's.
A dm could also view such a tactic as an exploit if they believe it will interfere with the fun of other players they can prohibit it.. "Some players enjoy poring over the D&D rules and looking for optimal combinations. This kind of optimizing is part of the game, but it can cross a line into being exploitative, interfering with everyone else’s fun."
1. Be a rogue, then take criminal background which will double up your thieves' tools and allow you to swap in poisoner's kit.
Also not sure this is still a thing in 2024 core rules, i remember in 2014 Background rules as shown below but don't remember seeing it in the revision.
If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead.
Yeah, that's a little unclear. The 2024 Player's Handbook removed that language but didn't replace it with anything, so a strict reading of the 2024 rules says that you can't do that anymore.
That said, the only reason to do that in this specific scenario is to get proficiency with the Poisoner's Kit, which can also be achieved by taking any of the backgrounds that provide the Skilled feat — Charlatan, Noble, or Scribe — or playing a Human of any background and taking the Skilled feat as your extra origin feat. Despite the name, Skilled allows you to take proficiencies in tools as well as skills.
Yea, going to stop you on #5, no DM with half a brain will permit that.
.. why? Seems entirely legit. A bit cheesy, but entirely within the rules and reasonable.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
It's worth noting that of the Chain familiars only the Pseudodragon has a poison that operates along the rules for poison consumables. Just don't allow the other Invocation that matches creature DCs to your Warlock DC to carry over to extracted poison and you've got something with slight less than even odds someone can beat straight rolling the save.
Well you'd definitely want to talk it over with your DM... if they don't want to let you harvest poison from familiars then you can skip that step. The real scaleability of poison harvesting is taking it off the monsters you kill. If your DM is specifically going to avoid sending any poisonous monsters your way, and refuses to let you harvest familiars, then I'd say this is not the build for that table, but it sounds like a pretty boring table :D
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Pease correct any mistakes I make here, I'm surprised nobody has posted this before. To harvest poison you will need a poisoner's kit, prof in the kit or nature, and a dead or incapacitated subject. But it's a dc 20 and if you miss by 5 or more YOU are poisoned. So:
1. Be a rogue, then take criminal background which will double up your thieves' tools and allow you to swap in poisoner's kit.
2. Take expertise in Nature.
3. You now have prof in both the kit and the skill so you have advantage on poison harvesting rolls from nasty stuff you kill.
4. Take a level of warlock and pact of the chain and the sleep spell.
5. You can now conjure any familiar type you want for 10 gold, cast Sleep on them to incapacitate them and get a crack at that sweet sweet poison. I'm not going to list them all but they're awesome (my fav is Quasit). None of them will do anything too bad to you if you botch your roll, so everybody will get a good laugh, which is very important. You want the DM to send cool poisonous monsters your way because it'll be funny if you fail. Guidance, bardic inspiration, regular inspiration, and lucky are your friends.
6. Use your bonus action in combat to apply that poison to your weapon or a friend's (in 24 it is a bonus action even without the feat). Feel free to poison your weapon THEN use the poison feature of cunning strike sneak on the same atk so they have to make TWO saves. They'll probly fail one.
7. This also works for necromancers, ghoul venom is already on the list of buyable poisons (you will need hold monster to harvest).
8. If you have a prep round before a big fight, EVERYBODY can apply poison to their weapons!
The hard part can be getting the poisoner's kit prof, if your DM won't allow the background skill or let you train in it, you're looking at assassin subclass or poisoner feat. Or just have nature, buy the kit without the prof, then roll that die without advantage and give everybody even more laughs at your expense ;)
So, one minor issue here is that you can't "conjure any familiar type you want" for this, because harvesting poison has to be done with a "venomous creature" according to the DMG rules, and not all the familiar types qualify.
There's no actual formal definition of "venomous creature" in the rules, but a reasonable definition might be "a creature that can deal Poison damage or apply the Poisoned condition". Going by that definition, only half of the special Pact of the Chain forms work: Imp, Pseudodragon, Quasit, and Venomous Snake. For anyone casting the spell without Pact of the Chain, the Spider and the Scorpion are the only forms in the 2024 core rules that work.
pronouns: he/she/they
A lot of this is down to the DM.
A familiar is a spirit in the form of a creature it would be quite reasonable f9r the dm to say you can n9t extract poison from spirit's.
A dm could also view such a tactic as an exploit if they believe it will interfere with the fun of other players they can prohibit it.. "Some players enjoy poring over the D&D rules and looking for optimal combinations. This kind of optimizing is part of the game, but it can cross a line into being exploitative, interfering with everyone else’s fun."
Also not sure this is still a thing in 2024 core rules, i remember in 2014 Background rules as shown below but don't remember seeing it in the revision.
Yeah, that's a little unclear. The 2024 Player's Handbook removed that language but didn't replace it with anything, so a strict reading of the 2024 rules says that you can't do that anymore.
That said, the only reason to do that in this specific scenario is to get proficiency with the Poisoner's Kit, which can also be achieved by taking any of the backgrounds that provide the Skilled feat — Charlatan, Noble, or Scribe — or playing a Human of any background and taking the Skilled feat as your extra origin feat. Despite the name, Skilled allows you to take proficiencies in tools as well as skills.
pronouns: he/she/they
Of course! I knew I was forgetting something! Thanks wagnarokkr!
Yea, going to stop you on #5, no DM with half a brain will permit that.
.. why? Seems entirely legit. A bit cheesy, but entirely within the rules and reasonable.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
It's worth noting that of the Chain familiars only the Pseudodragon has a poison that operates along the rules for poison consumables. Just don't allow the other Invocation that matches creature DCs to your Warlock DC to carry over to extracted poison and you've got something with slight less than even odds someone can beat straight rolling the save.
Well you'd definitely want to talk it over with your DM... if they don't want to let you harvest poison from familiars then you can skip that step. The real scaleability of poison harvesting is taking it off the monsters you kill. If your DM is specifically going to avoid sending any poisonous monsters your way, and refuses to let you harvest familiars, then I'd say this is not the build for that table, but it sounds like a pretty boring table :D