Hello adventurers! welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 76th episode of our feat series. Today we are going over a very special feat! not just in terms of mechanics and all that stuff which is fine. Really special to me because i’ve always been a huge fan of using poison in dnd. Really in most games i’ve been a huge fan of poison.
That being said, i don’t know how i quite feel about this. I like the idea i don’t like the example too much and i’ll be talking about that a little bit later on. That being said however today we’re going to be covering poisoner 5e feat which was found in tasha’s cauldron of everything and i don’t know i’m cautiously optimistic about the playstyles that will emerge from this. That being said, if you’d like to check out the full 5e feats list with all the feats in it please click on that following link. In any case let’s dive right into its description here. So that we can get to know how does the poisoner feat work?
Table of Contents
Description
You can prepare and deliver deadly poisons, granting you the following benefits:
When you make a damage roll that deals poison damage, it ignores resistance to poison damage. You can apply poison to a weapon or piece of ammunition as a bonus action, instead of an action. You gain proficiency with the poisoner’s kit if you don’t already have it. With one hour of work using a poisoner’s kit and expending 50 gp worth of materials, you can create a number of doses of potent poison equal to your proficiency bonus.
Once applied to a weapon or piece of ammunition, the poison retains its potency for 1 minute or until you hit with the weapon or ammunition. When a creature takes damage from the coated weapon or ammunition, that creature must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or take 2d8 poison damage and become poisoned until the end of your next turn.
Now this is the main effects, there is a lot more to go over however. It actually details and outlines a poison for you to use which is pretty cool. It seems to imply that it is the poison, however i’ll talk about that a little bit more later on. So let’s take a look at what they say here.
The Poison
With one hour of work using a poisoner’s kit and expending 50 gp worth of materials, you can create a number of doses of potent poison equal to your proficiency bonus. Once applied to a weapon or piece of ammunition. The poison retains its potency for 1 minute or until you hit with the weapon or ammunition.
When a creature takes damage from the coated weapon or ammunition, that creature must succeed on a DC14 constitution saving throw or take 2d8 poison damage and become poisoned until the end of your next turn.
If you are not super familiar with the poison condition, it essentially forces the creature to take disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks which can certainly be useful in terms of protecting allies or even setting up your allies for some potential big brain plays.
That being said however, this is safe to be called only an example of a type of poison you can create. It is as far as i know the only poison creatable by raw. I know there’s a lot of examples but i think this is the first time a poison, kit poison has been actually laid out in such a manner.
Personally i always customize the heck out of my poisons, i talk it over with the DM and there are certain spells you can use that will help you find ingredients and creatures needed. However that being said, it is up to the dungeon master and if this is the only poison you’re allowed to make then this is the only poison you’re allowed to make. That being said, let’s move on to its walkthrough here.
Walkthrough
So the way this feat’s laid out is there’s four major parts. Ignore resistance to poison, bonus action lets you apply poison and you gain proficiency with the poisoner kit 5e and lastly one hour of work using a poisoner’s kit and 50 gold will let you make some poison and the number of doses is equal to your proficiency bonus.
So overall it is quite a simple feat and personally i don’t know what’s more useful. Like the resistance to poison or the ability to ignore resistance to poison damage that doesn’t just apply to the poison you’re making right! That applies to literally all poison based attacks you can make, which means it also applies to the imp familiar that the warlock gets which is really interesting.
I’m kind of assuming that based on you’re the one that’s making that damage roll, right technically. I suppose the DM could argue that the imps the one making the damage roll but i feel like that’s kind of split in hairs. In any case i really like this, the ability to apply as a bonus action of course frees up your actual action to attack with the poisoned weapon, so that’s why that’s there.
Proficiency with the poison kit not a whole lot to say about that, other than the fact that you do not gain the poisoner’s kit. Because of this feat so you still have to go out and procure that or purchase it. However your DM wants to do it before you can start to make the poison and of course the poison itself….which is pretty good.
The DC14 constitution saving throw it’s relatively good early game but might not scale quite as well and that’s why i would always allow my party members to kind of make their own poison recipes and stuff like that. Just really quick little side quests or some things you might just stumble across the way. Really cool stuff! Now let’s get on to my personal thoughts.
Thoughts
So if you can’t tell i’m a pretty big fan of poisoning in general. I find that it is often a rather overlooked component of gameplay and because of that i think it’s interesting to take advantage of it. However i know a lot of DMs might be relatively new to it and a lot of players might try and use it to break the game.
However if that’s what you’re worried about there’s nothing to stop you from just using this feat and adhering to it rather strictly and then eventually testing and seeing how your party interacts with it and kind of base your assessment of there. It might also be worth noting that you can always incorporate checks like medicine checks for example to see how successful they are at doing something and then kind of base everything off of that.
That being said however, i’m very very curious to see what kind of meta strategies this will lead to. In terms of what comes to mind i think arranged individuals are going to gain a ton out of this. That being said, i mean who knows right! fact of the matter is is each application only really lasts for one attack. So that is a little disheartening. However the ability to apply disadvantage is certainly nothing to be overlooked.
Conclusion
So i don’t know let me know what you guys think down beneath in the comments section. Personally i feel like this is one of the best feats that was added into tasha’s cauldron of everything but i’m quite a bit biased so maybe that’s it. In any case let me know what you think, mention any thoughts, questions, comments or concerns you have regarding poisoner.
As well as any 5e poisoner feat build ideas or maybe even unique poisons you’ve tried out throughout the years or any recipes for potential pisons that you think might be incorporable into some people’s games. As always i hope you have a wonderful day and of course happy adventuring.