Animate Objects for Fun and Harvesting Poison for Profit in 5E D&D

Over on Nerdarchy the YouTube channel, Nerdarchists Dave and Ted discussed a killer combo for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Using poison coated daggers and the animate objects spell a character could drop some serious damage (and serious coin) with the right kind of poison. In the video they mention several varieties of poison from the 5E D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and brainstorm a few ideas how to inject a little poison into the storytelling adventure of your game. Like most of our talks about games the fun part is imagining how these things play out at the gaming table and make the story of the adventuring party more interactive. On one hand, a player interested in trying out this killer combo could explain their intention to the Dungeon Master and hash it all out during downtime. On the other, the quest for poison could become a central theme for a campaign. Either way the players initiate the course of action, and with the DM guiding them towards telling the story of their characters the games become more memorable experiences.

Benefits of harvesting poison in 5E D&D

Acquiring and using poisons in 5E D&D can take several forms. The easiest by far allows players to use their acquired treasure to purchase poisons like the ones in the DMG for the listed gold piece cost. If you’re games tend towards kick-in-the-door dungeon crawls, this is probably the best option to take. No small number of players often discuss what characters should do with all the treasure they accumulate, and here’s a great answer. Purple worm poison tops the charts at 2000 gp per dose so adventurers looking to employ this extremely deadly injury poison will run out of money long before they run out of supply.

To make things a little more interactive for players, take the same approach but add some dice rolling. The DMG explains how to harvest poison from dead or incapacitated creatures, so characters with Nature or poisoner’s kit proficiency can roll a d20 and their result can influence either the price or quantity of poison harvested. If the check succeeds by 5 or more, they get two doses or the price is reduced by one quarter. If they fail by 5 or more, they spoil the poison gland, or it costs one quarter more. (Those are parameters I just made up as an example.) You can do this during downtime and involve the player by asking them what their poison harvesting experience was like.

Harvesting poison on the reg during an adventure follows the same guidelines as above, except now the character is spending time while the rest of the party is on the clock. Like the downtime harvesting, this is a great opportunity for storytelling too. A character who makes a habit of harvesting poison from dead creatures any chance they get says something about them. Are they merely practical, using every advantage they can? Maybe something in their backstory compels or fascinates them to extract poison and watch its effects on living creatures. A lucrative business could be built on the poison trade too. That purple worm could be worth a lot more than the XP.

Depending on the player group’s interest, the whole party might be drawn into a shady world of poison and poisoners. Like Ted says in the video, isn’t that part of the fun of the game? Keeping an avid interest in poison on the down low sounds advisable. It would cause suspicion going around town asking where to get deadly undetectable poisons after all. And right about now is where the players and DM intersect, because a seedy subculture of poison means there are NPCs involved too. So maybe the party won’t be quite as surprised when an adversary sends animated poisoned daggers after them!

For a DM looking to be more proactively poisonous, consider how challenging it would be for adventurers to solve a series of serial murders when the killer uses animate objects and a variety of specialized poisons right under everyone’s noses. Imagine a magical assassin who uses Subtle Spell and animate objects to lace a target’s food with Midnight Tears from afar, or even use a poison coated needle to injure a creature, barely leaving a mark. This spellcasting poison enthusiast could be anyone, anywhere and use anything as a delivery method for poison. There’s no need to even get very kludgy working out what level they’d need to be to cast the spell.

Animate Object. The serial poisoner can use an action and choose one nonmagical object of Small size or less it can see within 120 ft. The object animates under the serial poisoner’s control for 1 minute. As a bonus action, the serial poisoner can mentally command the creature if it is within 500 feet, deciding what action the creature will take and where it will move during its next turn, or it you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor. If it issues no commands, the creature only defends itself against hostile creatures. Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete. The object has AC 17, 22 hit points, +7 to hit, and does 1d6 + 3 damage on a successful hit. Its speed is 30 feet; if the object lacks legs or other appendages it can use for locomotion, it instead has a flying speed of 30 feet and can hover. If the serial poisoner commands an object to attack, it can make a single melee attack against a creature within 5 feet of it. It makes a slam attack and deals bludgeoning, piercing or slashing damage, determined by the GM.

That works in a pinch. Now you can take any old stat block from commoner on up, give them this feature and a supply of poisons and see what happens. This could easily become a B-plot for your campaign if you lace the party’s travel and adventures with hints and clues about unexplained deaths. There’s a great movie called The Minus Man about a serial killer who poisons his victims, and explains he feels he is helping them and to die without pain. This would make a terrific villain for a 5E D&D campaign who the party might not pick up on for quite some time. It almost works better with a more innocuous sort of NPC who would not stand out in a crowd.

Now, whether using poison in D&D is evil is a matter for a different post, one we already explored! One last thing worth mentioning when it comes to using poison for campaign inspiration is the other side of warfare — espionage. Wars are fought on the battlefield but just as often in the shadows, and in a fantasy setting like a 5E D&D campaign warfare would be extremely dangerous and unpredictable. A small group of people like, say, an adventuring party might find themselves acting as a special operations team in a warfare setting. Using a killer combo like animate objects and poison could be a remarkably effective tactic for both sides in the conflict.

Like Ted mentions in the video, we created a combo with sponsor Nord Games with the promo code NORDARCHY20 to give you 20% off everything in your cart from the Nord Games store. One of the things you’ll find there is Ultimate NPC’s: Warfare. This resource contains a wealth of information for developing plot points, character behaviors, histories, guilds, and many other valuable assets designed to aid in the running and playing of warfare in fantasy roleplaying games like 5E D&D. There’s good, neutral and evil factions along with individual NPCs scaled for a variety of levels and challenge along with an army of generic NPCs, unique new items and spells. One of the NPCs is a mercenary cleric with a secret mission — to poison a key enemy.

There’s tons of quest hooks and content you can drop into your games and lots of other cool products over there like the ones I’ve been using to develop a 5E D&D bounty hunter campaign inspired by The Mandalorian. In addition to our promo code, Nord Games has another promotion going on at the moment. New customers who use the code DECKTHEHALLS get a free deck and free shipping on their whole order. There’s no minimum. Check out the Nord Games store here.

[NERDITOR’S NOTE: For those of you who get a kick out of the specialty tea cup photo at the top of this post, you can find it over on Etsy here. We don’t have any affiliation with the shop but that image is just too good to pass up and it’s only fair to show respect to the creator. Stay nerdy!]