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I'm playing a rogue archer in a Dragon Age RPG campaign, and I was looking at ways to improve my damage. One possibility that I discussed with my GM was to coat my arrowheads in some form of poison, but we've been unable to find rules or anything that hint as to how many arrows I can coat with one vial of poison.

We're guessing that I cannot coat my whole quiver (20 arrows) with one vial, but, at the same time, having to use one vial per arrow seems like a lot of poison on one arrow, not to mention extremely costly.

I'll take references to the official rules, forum posts on the subject by the creators of the game, or even homebrew rules as suggestion if none of the above exist.

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You can poison three arrows with a single dose of poison

As per page 92 of the Dragon Age RPG core rulebook, in the section Using Poisons:

You can coat a single melee weapon (from the Dueling, Light Blades, or Spears Groups) or three arrows/bolts with an activate action. This uses up one dose of poison and both the poison and the weapon must be readied.

If you're using the originally published sets, this particular clarification is absent; the rules for poisons featured in the Player's Guide in Set 2 don't mention ammunition at all and errata/updates were only published for Set 1. The later Core Rulebook compiled the existing sets and included some more corrections and bits of new material like the above clarification.

Keep in mind that applied poison is only potent for a minute once applied so you can't run around with poisoned arrowheads perpetually at the ready in your quiver, and also that you need to use the "Envenom" stunt (described in that section) in order to actually apply the poison to the target, so even if you hit with your attacks your target won't necessarily be poisoned. If you don't have the Poison-Making talent, you run the risk of poisoning yourself every time you try to apply the poison, too, so it's very unlikely to be worth doing unless you invest in the talent for it.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I wish there were at least 92 pages in the rulebooks that we use... Dramatic sigh. The rules we use are the sets published around 2010, I guess there has been a new version of the rules in the meantime? \$\endgroup\$
    – Sava
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 19:37
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Sava yes - though originally published as three sets of smaller books covering different level ranges/options over the early 2010s (1 2 3), the whole thing was compiled into a single core book in 2015. \$\endgroup\$
    – Carcer
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 20:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ Did they make changes or is it just a compilation of the three sets into one? \$\endgroup\$
    – Sava
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 20:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Sava As far as I know, it doesn't make any significant changes to the system - but it does include corrections and errata that don't seem to have ever been separately published for the Set 2 and Set 3 material, such as this addition to the rules about poisoning. \$\endgroup\$
    – Carcer
    Commented Jan 2, 2019 at 20:33

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