Pick Your Poison

Sometimes it's handy to have a list of poisons. 

When stocking a dungeon or a search-the-body table, it's nice to add something specific to the key rather than just "poison" and, if you're running someone else's key, what does "poison" actually do?

There's a page in my DM notebook for just this eventuality: 

Ignore the central diagram. It's an artifact of a recycled page.

The poisons I've pre-loaded on the page are mostly gestures toward real world toxins. They might not be medically accurate, but the profiles are recognizable. These seemed like a good starting basis for improvisation and cannibalized concoctions. Lots of space on the page to add new entries as they come up in play. Reproduced below, so that you don't have to suffer through my hand-writing.

If you have poisons that you like to use in your games, please put them in a comment. 

Nightmare Before Christmas

Ingestibles 

Oleander (Dogsbane): Toxic flower, grows wild & easily available. Extremely bitter. If ingested, 1 damage per hour and intense abdominal pain for d6 hours. Likely to kill a kobold or similar. 

Nightshade: Shiny black berries. If ingested, 2 damage per hour, dizziness and light-sensitivity for d6 hours.

Hemlock: An executioner's poison, professionally brewed. Favored tea for oligarchs and philosophers. If ingested, 3d6 damage all-at-once in d6 turns. 

Orpiment (Golden Ratsbane): Bright yellow powder. Typically sold under license by the Ratcatcher's Guild. Deadly to rodents and unwanted spouses. If ingested, leads to violent vomiting, diarrhea and garlic breath. Humans decline over days (d6 damage per day consumed) rather than drop dead. The symptoms are widely recognizable. 

Realgar (Red Ratsbane): Bright red powder. The high-power stuff the Ratcatcher's Guild reserves for their own use. Symptoms as Gold Ratsbane but faster and deadlier. If ingested, save vs. poison. On a success, the poison is thrown up immediately. On a failure take 2d6 damage over d6 hours. 

Iocane Powder: Odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in water and one of the more deadly poisons known to man. If ingested, save or die in d6 rounds.

Mandrake: If ingested, save vs. poison or go into an unshakeable sleep for d6 hours. Indistinguishable from death to the casual observer.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Contact / Bloodstream

Wolfsbane: Expertly distilled from a common plant, it can be used to coat arrows and dagger-tips. If absorbed through skin or wound, save vs. poison or d6 damage & nauseated for an hour. Double effective vs. canines and triply effective vs. lycanthropes. Cultivation of this plant is blasphemous to faiths that venerate wolves.

Curare: A thick black resin that can be used to coat arrows and blades. If it enters the bloodstream, save vs. poison or be paralyzed for d6 rounds. 

Toad Slime: If absorbed through the skin or a wound, takes d6 turns to take effect then causes d6 hours of intense hallucinations and ego displacement. Vision questers report visits to a remarkably consistent dream-realm and interactions with strange entities. 

Blue Frog: An exceedingly deadly contact poison. If touched save or die. Can be applied to missiles directly from the skin of a living blue frog and the efficacy lasts 1 hour. The frogs are expensive and extremely sensitive. Their combat application is typically managed by nervous, be-gloved specialists from the Assassins Guild.  

ABC & every karaoke night

Inhaled

Sulfur Smoke: Deployed in a fused, yellow-clay sphere, purchasable as a fumigant from some alchemists and the Ratcatcher's guild. Light the fuse and throw, ignites in d4 rounds and fills a 10' radius with choking yellow smoke for d6 rounds. Anyone in the cloud must save vs. poison or take d4 damage and be unable to act other than to flee the area.