Does the volume of poison (injected) delivered matter?

[Thinyser]

So my group killed 4 Tautons and harvested the super potent poison from their stingers. Being that they are giant creatures (11 feet tall) my GM stated that we got about a gallon of this Uber poison. The poison normally does 6d6/melee to supernatural and 1d6x100/melee to mortal creatures and lasts 2d4 melee rounds. Looking at PFRPG the poisons don't have volume listed for doses. I figure that most "blood poisons" (which is what palladium calls injectable poisons) are effective in very small amounts as they are able to be delivered by the edge of a blade, arrow or even a blowgun dart. Would you say that the Tauton's poison has full effect in similar small amounts? or would you say that to have the full effect the dose has to be "giant sized" (like an ounce or two)?

If you say that the dose must be giant sized to have full effect what reduced effect would you say that a normal (ie what is delivered by a blade, arrow or blowgun) would have?



Personally I'm divided. On one hand I think that the poison would do full damage at small doses since its meant to be injected like a scorpion's BUT it does come from a giant creature that has lots of poison to deliver and so COULD require a bigger dose to have full effect. If it was a big dose for full effect I would think that a small dose would do 1d6/melee to supernatural creatures and 1d6x10/melee to mortals with the same 2d4 melee duration.

[flatline]

Well, the poison is in the dose...which is another way of saying the in sufficient quantities, anything is a poison.

Poison effects are totally dose dependent, but for game purposes, the GM just needs to decide how much is enough.

--flatline

[Alrik Vas]

Smaller doses could just make someone sick, or take forever to have an effect...yeah. It's really up to your GM to decide. I mean, a gallon of the stuff might be necessary to achieve the effect, haha. ...and at that point you'd be drowning them in the liquid anyway.

[Thinyser]

Well, the poison is in the dose...which is another way of saying the in sufficient quantities, anything is a poison.

Poison effects are totally dose dependent, but for game purposes, the GM just needs to decide how much is enough.

--flatline

Yeah I know all about LD 50. Even water, something we need to consume to survive is lethal if you drink a large enough quantity in a short amount of time. Unfortunately the poison descriptions do not say if they are a neuro toxin, hemorrhagic toxins, hemolysis toxins, Cardio toxins or what. Knowing that might help to determine if they needed a bigger dose or if a small one is sufficient.

I'm not the GM but I'm the experienced GM that the newb GM asks for help and in this case I'm divided so was wondering what others here would do.

I'm leaning towards the "Needs a large dose to do the full 6d6/1d6x100 but still does 1d6/1d6x10 in normal (ie blade/arrow/dart delivered) quantities."

[Thinyser]

Smaller doses could just make someone sick, or take forever to have an effect...yeah. It's really up to your GM to decide. I mean, a gallon of the stuff might be necessary to achieve the effect, haha. ...and at that point you'd be drowning them in the liquid anyway.

Well since he said we got about a quart per stinger and one can assume that a single sting can do the listed damage then its obviously no more than 1 quart per dose.

Thinking about it further, most animals that envenom have several doses at hand and the dose they actually deliver is usually much larger than necessary to kill their prey let alone a human.

If the Tauton have a quart of venom they probably have many doses in that amount since they would have either evolved or been created to have "more than enough" to cover most situations and being warlike creatures they probably had need for many more doses than an animal would have available. 32 oz to a quart, 1oz per dose = about 32 doses before the stinger is empty and needs time to refill. That doesn't seem too much for a supernatural, 11 foot tall, warlike crocodile man, to be toting in what looks to be a nearly football sized stinger.

Still a rather large dose but certainly not out of the realm of believability. Most poisons still have some pretty nasty effects in smaller than the normally delivered dose, so I think that using a fraction of the normal ounce would still do significant damage. For easy math stating that 1/10th oz (evaporated down to a paste) is what it takes to coat a blade or arrow or dart and that the subsequent damage would be approximately 1/10th as well (1/6th to supernatural creatures) but you get 10 times as many of these smaller doses when used this way.

[Svartalf]

Well, the poison is in the dose...which is another way of saying the in sufficient quantities, anything is a poison.

Poison effects are totally dose dependent, but for game purposes, the GM just needs to decide how much is enough.

--flatline

Yeah I know all about LD 50. Even water, something we need to consume to survive is lethal if you drink a large enough quantity in a short amount of time. Unfortunately the poison descriptions do not say if they are a neuro toxin, hemorrhagic toxins, hemolysis toxins, Cardio toxins or what. Knowing that might help to determine if they needed a bigger dose or if a small one is sufficient.

I'm not the GM but I'm the experienced GM that the newb GM asks for help and in this case I'm divided so was wondering what others here would do.

I'm leaning towards the "Needs a large dose to do the full 6d6/1d6x100 but still does 1d6/1d6x10 in normal (ie blade/arrow/dart delivered) quantities."

It's a supernatural toxin, likely an enhanced form of scorpion venom... doses would still be large as the delivery system is geared to enough stuff to affect supernatural beings. If I was in charge, I'd say about 4 or 5 doses held in reserve by each tauton, or a total of 20 uses to your gallon... of course, your GM can specify lesser effects for smaller doses.

[Thinyser]

Well, the poison is in the dose...which is another way of saying the in sufficient quantities, anything is a poison.

Poison effects are totally dose dependent, but for game purposes, the GM just needs to decide how much is enough.

--flatline

Yeah I know all about LD 50. Even water, something we need to consume to survive is lethal if you drink a large enough quantity in a short amount of time. Unfortunately the poison descriptions do not say if they are a neuro toxin, hemorrhagic toxins, hemolysis toxins, Cardio toxins or what. Knowing that might help to determine if they needed a bigger dose or if a small one is sufficient.

I'm not the GM but I'm the experienced GM that the newb GM asks for help and in this case I'm divided so was wondering what others here would do.

I'm leaning towards the "Needs a large dose to do the full 6d6/1d6x100 but still does 1d6/1d6x10 in normal (ie blade/arrow/dart delivered) quantities."

It's a supernatural toxin, likely an enhanced form of scorpion venom... doses would still be large as the delivery system is geared to enough stuff to affect supernatural beings. If I was in charge, I'd say about 4 or 5 doses held in reserve by each tauton, or a total of 20 uses to your gallon... of course, your GM can specify lesser effects for smaller doses.

Hmm I don't know if stating that its a supernatural toxin likely an enhanced form of scorpion venom and then following up that assertion with the dose needing to be 6.4 ounces (128 oz per gallon to 20 doses) each to do the listed damage logically follows. Scorpion venom is already super potent and tiny doses can kill. A SN enhanced scorpion poison would therefore probably be even more potent and upping to dose from less than a ml to 6.4 ounces doesn't follow. Thats a huge volume to deliver via a stinger, even one so large.

[flatline]

My inclination would be to let the players have the full effect without ruling on the dose, but then give the venom a very short shelf life once removed from the creature. This way your players benefit from it, but it also explains why others don't routinely harvest the venom from slain critters.

--flatline

[Thinyser]

My inclination would be to let the players have the full effect without ruling on the dose, but then give the venom a very short shelf life once removed from the creature. This way your players benefit from it, but it also explains why others don't routinely harvest the venom from slain critters.

--flatline

I could go for that but what would you consider short shelf life? hours? Days? Weeks? A month or two?

I would probably say 2d4 weeks that way its at least a couple weeks maybe as long as a couple months.