Toxic Talents

Continuing on with my current theme of Talents within Tunnels & Trolls, I've
had another brainwave that I thought was worth sharing partially inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons supplement, Complete Scoundrel and, partially by the fact that I have never (ever EVER) like the poison rules as they are written for Tunnels & Trolls.

As presented in the rules all poisons are pretty much instantaneous in producing their effects and, most of the effects only cause additional damage.. Which is pretty dull, not to mention inaccurate. Most poisons take time to take effect and the actual effects of poisons, venoms and, toxins varies greatly.

How does this tie into our Talents theme though?

Well inspired by Complete Scoundrel, a Talent that I thought might be fun to play with would be Poison Master. Which is the same name as a Feat in the supplement but, my implementation is quite different. In the original supplement the Feat simply makes the poisons that you brew more deadly, where I envision the Talent being much more wide-reaching. Allowing you to both create your own toxins, and affording you a degree of resistance against poisoning due to your extended exposure to hazardous materials.

So for me, Poison Master looks something like this: Poison Master (CON / INT). To really work though, I need to change the nature of how poisons are handled. Given that I have never been too happy with poisons as is though, this really isn't an issue.

So what's the plan for poisons?

It'll take sometime to re-write all of the various toxins present in the 7.5 rulebook, but the plan is that every poison will be statted out something like this:

Name: The name of the item in question.
Type: Venom (generally naturally occurring and delivered through injection or contact), Toxin (venoms can be considered toxins by definition but this classification will be used to cover ailments such as diseases that can be delivered through open wounds or by ingestion), and Poisons (Almost exclusively consumed to be effective).
Cost: The cost of the materials needed to prepare one unit (one dose) of this poison.
Craft: The level of the INT SR required to manufacture one unit of this poison safely.
Save: The level of the CON SR that needs to be made by someone exposed to this poison to resist it's effects.
Failure: If you fail to safely manufacture the poison you suffer this effect unless you make a CON SR at the poisons level (the "Save" value of the poison).
Critical Failure: If you roll a fumble when preparing the poison or trying to resist it's effects you suffer this effect with no further SR allowed.
Effect: This is the effect of the poison when successfully delivered.

I'm also hoping to create more diverse poisons too, moving away from the purely vanilla nature of poisons causing a few more hits in combat. Effects such as nausea, hallucinations etc. Before I get too involved though I really do need to playtest the idea to see how well in pans out under scrutiny.