Toxic Powders

Toxic powders are noxious dusts that can be stirred into food or drink, thrown in vials, scattered by hand or puffed from a blow tube (5-foot range, 2 1/2-foot radius). Unless they swallow the stuff, victims normally save vs Constitution to escape it, and durations vary by type. The maker needs a mortar and pestle and a small bowl or pan for heating; each powder takes a day, and the skill can be learned from a tutor for 2,000 XP with no prerequisite.

The work is volatile. Every attempt calls for a save vs Dexterity at +1 per level, and a failure means a roll on the Alchemical Mishap Table. Powders are outlawed in most places, but underworld contacts sometimes sell them for 200-300 GP a dose.

Recipes include false death (a 48-hour coma that fools all but trained healers), temporary amnesia, ill fortune (-1 on all saves for a day), terrifying hallucination with a 5% chance per minute of lasting madness, nausea, paralysis, sleep, slowness, vertigo and maddening itching. Three grades of poison powder deal 1-6, 1-8 or 1-10 damage a minute for 5-10 minutes. The same section covers narcotics: black lotus, said to grant ESP and clairvoyance but carrying a cumulative addiction risk with almost always fatal withdrawal; darnell, a stupefying sleep drug; poppy, which halves saves for 1-4 hours; and yage, whose visions can drive a user mad or show a future event.