[LifeLikeSage]

I just went through and greatly reduced the price of all poisons. Some have been reduced by several thousand gold, except for the two poisons that cause permanent abilities score decreases. I also turned off the restriction that the Use Poison feat is required, so that anyone can use them now as well. BUT, I also increased the Handle DC by quite a bit, so make sure you have decent dexterity before trying to use them or you'll poison yourself more often than not.

They can be applied to ranged weapons, melee weapons, and even food/drink items in Thay. Poison here lasts until the weapon successful hits a target, and should remain once applied to a weapon/food/drink even over server resets as well.

Overall though, I've always felt poisons in D&D 3.0 rules were pretty...'meh'. I feared poison a helluva lot more in games like Baldur's Gate (2nd edition rules), where poison would do damage for a number of rounds until either neutralized or it ran its course. This conversation has got me thinking that a type of wounding property, while not in alignment in D&D 3.x rules, might be a good way for poisons to start seeing some use. Especially after the large amount of time that was sunk into completely revising the poison system here long ago - and including all poisons types with it. Or, if nothing else, at least give Blackguards/Assassins an added benefit of wounding/poison damage with a successful strike. Kind of a hybrid of 2nd and 3rd edition rules. Any comments on that idea?

The idea of being able to do wounding damage could make it worthwhile to take more assassin levels, especially if the wounding damage cannot be resisted by the damage reduction that most enemies tend to have (maybe make the wounding damage be magical instead of physical).

Additionally, to counter monsters not being able to avoid damage through resists the way they do with poopy throwables like caltrops, you might give all NPCs a change in the loot table so they have a range of 0-2 healing potions they can spawn with to both heal and counteract the wounding; It would be a good alternative to them not taking any damage from wounding at all because they have DR.