D&D Meta Thread

[Alice]

Sounds good to me.
I guess the plan is to pick up my cloak, the mules and then get going? Or do we need to do anything else in Neverwinter? It doesn't look like Ashley's going to return the book before we leave.

[Wofl]

It doesn't look like Ashley's going to return the book before we leave.

Hell no, it's mah book nao!

[Kashtan]

lol poor Yulya will have to cope with being an accomplice in this brazen thieveryAlice you gotta look for shards and shreds of clothes for wicks. the city cant be perfectly clean

[Wofl]

I have a forage system now, you will find something if you look long enough in hours, not days, so it's more of a guarantee because at one point Bear and I spent days, literally days, dozens of rolls, looking for honey and never found any bees.

[Kashtan]

lol thats realism for youbut i think foraging for trash in a city should be easier than finding honey.im waiting for Bernds poison handbook but knowing his perfectionsim it may take a while

[Wofl]

That's easy, we'll just make a random list of unrelated poisonous plants randomly off the internet.

Water Hemlock, Oleander, Deadly Nightshade (Belladonna), Poison Ivy, Ricin, Bitter Almond and Datura.

Done.

[Τamamo]

I figured they would not make it to the rest stop today but wasting another day?
I was thinking about bullseye lanterns but thought this wpould make us too much of a target. I mean Gundren's cart didn't have them either

[Wofl]

You can stop along the side of the road in many spots. You will find periodic rest areas with remnants of camping such as piles of wood and rock rings, but most traders stick in a convoy and arrive at the rest area together for  sdded safety.

The bullseye lanterns are a good choice and needed with animals not used to pulling at night, if you want to train them, pull past dusk until they begin to become wary.

Mules and other equines may refuse to move and dig in, start kicking, panic and run, or start breying loudly, rear up, reverse, become inconsolable for a time. The aftermath of pushing a mule too hard may be lingering issues.

So the bullseye lamp gives them a bright, wide, forward view which is reassuring so they may not even care that it's dark.

I'm going to say Gundren's cart had them but you didn't need them.

[Alice]

Alright alright, we get that we absolutely need to buy that bullseye lantern for reasons.
As we have time, we could go to the bath again to waste more money. And yeah, I gotta go dumpster diving for glass shards and strips of old clothing. Even if I probably won't get the quality of that half-orc panties again.

[Alice]

That's easy, we'll just make a random list of unrelated poisonous plants randomly off the internet.

Water Hemlock, Oleander, Deadly Nightshade (Belladonna), Poison Ivy, Ricin, Bitter Almond and Datura.

Done.

This kills the host

[Wofl]

It really doesn't matter when you leave, there are no convoys or camps on the triboar trail.

The 36 mile trip to the camp is pretty grueling for new animals anyway, wasting a day may end up being pointless as at some point the mules will refuse to go further like the horses did earlier, so expect it be slower than expected at first.

You don't need the lamps if you don't intend to travel at night.

[Alice]

I think it's a good addition to the hooded lantern but do we really need 2?

Host is working on an arrow poison paper, He says Ricin is pointless as an arrow poison against an attacker. Good for assassination but far too slow to have an effect in combat. same with Colchicine. We need substances that cause an effect quickly. You'll get it shortly, maybe an initial version today. We could even forage in the city, Archaeophyte weeds like Datura, Hyoscyamus niger or Papaver somniferum that spread with human activity are almost exclusively found in ruderal vegetation near human settlements or agricultural land. You won't encounter them in nature.

[Wofl]

I don't think you need 2.

Bear says that there is Datura all over Southern California, anywhere rural or urban. It's very common. Jimsomweed is potent enough that just getting the sap on your habds can make you sick. Bear pulled one out of his front yard without knowing what it was, it had an American football shaped tuber 18 inches underground. He became woosie and things "didn't look right" for hours afterwards.

[Bernd]

The same happened to me with the Datura innoxia my father had collected as seeds somewhere abroad. Hands got numb when you just brushed against the leaves. Sadly the plants wouldn't propagate from seeds after a few years, they're not hardy here.

I have uploaded Vol. 1 of my field guide in the endchan meta thread. The girls should be able to find plenty of nightshade relatives in or around the city. Keep in mind that not all plants are available throughout the year but as you said those weeds should be growing permanently in a frost-free Mediterranean environment.

There will be fewer plants available along the trail, especially if snow covered, but there is plenty in any habitat at any season. Even in the mountain. Absurdly the best place to forage are urban or agricultural wasteland.

Gameplay-wise I still think this is a bit too easy, poisons are expensive for a reason even if they are laughably easy to produce. The goblins with their distillery could mass-produce poisons that take out any non-resistant creature with a single hit. Good thing they're not smart enough for this - I hope.

Basically it's enough to heat any of those plants with alcohol and let it evaporate. There are optional ways to extract the alkaloids in a higher concentration but I don't know if it's worth it. It would require more equipment. A small amount of a strong acid and base, organic solvent and a few glass vials and a pipette or syringe. Or we can let Alice siphon off the top organic phase with a thin pseudopod at the risk of getting poisoned. And we'd need her to produce small amounts of organic solvent like ethyl acetate or better yet acetone.

That would at least make things a bit more complex, otherwise every idiot could poison anyone

[Wofl]

That's why you need a specific set of three ingredients to counter the natural resistance of these magical touched inhabitants of the material plane. Any single poison is nearly useless but three specific ones put together are more useful. I'll let you discover which combinations work. The ones you can make are limited to 1d4 poison damage.

The expensive poisons are already fully optimized and overpowered with proprietary formulations and preparations that even when analyzed won't predict the secret process to develop them.