Drinking Bless Weapon Oil

Question

A player picked up a bottle of bless weapon oil and is wanting to know what happens if he drinks it, and I cannot find any specifications on this.

I would guess that nothing would happen but was wondering if anyone had any previous instances of this?

I am running a D&D 3.5 game.

Answer 1

Technically, nothing happens. The drinker's chugged what he should've applied, and claiming to have applied the magic oil on the inside doesn't count. (Unless maybe the drinker's a gully dwarf; those dudes can have weaponized innards.) Drinking oil of bless weapon wastes oil of bless weapon just as (in most cases) using oil of bless weapon as a lubricant or salad dressing would. It's a sad fact that oils are sometimes consumed (and, although rarer, potions sometimes applied) when adventurers can't properly identify a substance. However, a generous DM can rule that not all is lost if the hapless fighter accidentally (or purposefully) consumes a potion of bless weapon…

The drinker could have holy spit

The Wizards of the Coast Forgotten Realms Web column "Halflings in Chessenta" on Ursuma Pepper Powder says

This powder is ground from very hot peppers imported from Chondath and mixed with a secret alchemical substance. When put in a person's mouth, the user takes 1 point of subdual damage. One round later, the pepper powder can be spat into a foe's eyes. If the spitter hits with a ranged touch attack (10-foot range increment), the recipient must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 13) or take 1d6 points of subdual damage and be blinded for 1d6 rounds. "Spitting" is considered an exotic weapon. Unless proficient, spitters suffer the standard -4 penalty to spit attacks with Ursuma pepper powder. Ursuma pepper powder is not sold, and therefore has no price. Its weight is negligible.

Emphasis mine. Despite the above item's absurdity, squeeze that description hard enough and some rules can be inferred, or, at least, some house rules can be made using that description as a guide. That is, presumably, even without any ursuma pepper powder, any creature with a mouth can spit in another creature's eyes by making a successful ranged touch attack that suffers a −4 nonproficiency penalty if the spitter lacks the feat Exotic Weapon Proficiency (spitting) or the equivalent. But, like the damage dealt by a grig monk's shuriken, the DM will likely rule—as I do—that the typical creature's typical spitting deals no damage. (I also clarify that spitting does not even do 0 points of damage plus the spitter's Strength modifier; your six pack and big guns don't help here.) In other words, a typical creature's typical spitting doesn't do anything, but, even if it doesn't, sometimes it's reassuring to know you still have a ranged weapon when your hands are full. That, and spitting on someone as an attack can be deeply satisfying.

So this DM would allow a creature that consumed instead of applied *oil of bless weapon* to have for the oil's duration holy spit. The drinker's ability to bypass some creatures' damage reduction with its holy spit wouldn't matter, but if the drinker managed to hit an incorporeal evil creature with its spit, that creature will probably at least be freaked out. (Or as freaked out as an allip or ghost or phane or whatever can be.)

(Note that my house rules set the typical creature's spitting range increment to 5 ft. with a maximum of 5 increments like a thrown weapon, which is, I admit, still too far but remains significantly less than the what-seems-to-be-100-ft. maximum range of an ursuma pepper powder-sucking halfling.)

Answer 2

If a player does something unexpected that's not covered by the rules, just saying "there are no rules, so it does nothing" is the boring way out. That's one of the advantages of roleplaying games over other, more structured games.

In our games, the usual ruling for misusing a magic item - breaking/overusing a wand, ingesting a relic, whatever - is to give a powerful but uncontrolled effect, together with a meaningful drawback, and (to add in @Dave's tip in the comments), to only allow doing it once.

1. Powerful, because it encourages improvised out of the box thinking, follows rule-of-cool, makes sacrifice meaningful (e.g. breaking a wand) and is fun.
2. Uncontrolled because it works, thematically, with misusing magic in ways not planned by its creator. And because it's fun.
3. Meaningful drawback, because we don't want players to do it all the time because it's too effective. And because it's fun.
4. Only allow this trick once, because nothing takes the coolness factor out of a move faster than spamming it again and again. It's less fun.

Examples we've had include my character invoking several holy relics at once to defend a temple which resulted in several concurrent random effects, some of which were very useful and effective (and some totally random, like "detect animals, 3 mile radius"), alongside blindness for the invoker for several hours. It gave the party a serious boost for the fight, but left me having to improvise for the rest of the encounter, which was fun too.

Answer 3

Bless weapon has a target of "weapon touched". So the character is trying to target his body with a spell that wants to target a weapon.

PH 121 says that "an unarmed strike... may be a punch, kick, head butt, or other type of attack". An unarmed strike counts as a weapon, so the act of applying the oil to the character's mouth should cast the bless weapon spell on the character's headbutt (or bite?) unarmed strike. For the next minute, the character's headbutt counts as magic and good-aligned for purposes of piercing the damage reduction of evil creatures.

Answer 4

I think drinking oil of bless weapon should make any character without a blessed stomach sick. Have the player roll to prevent his character from puking for several turns and make the almost-puking impede his character's actions for the turn. If the character pukes during an attack, bless that projectile vomit and let it do whatever you think it should do.

Or maybe after the character drinks the oil, let the character have a better chance in eating or drinking contests. Although that may not sound impressive, consider Þórr's epic loss in the drinking contest rigged by Útgarða-Loki.