Poison

"You're poison, running through my veins!"

– Alice Cooper

Poison is any substance inimical to life. This applies to obvious stuff like snake venom, also to overdoses of vital medicine (often designed to kill bad life, like parasites). The dose, as they say, makes the poison.

In Dungeons & Dragons, poison is often used in traps, causing damage or death - one more reason that Rogue you brought along isn't going to last through your first adventure. Plenty of monsters have poison too, from the lowly spider to the mightiest Nightshade. If some neckbeard insists you call this "venom" then you have all /tg/'s permission to deliver the wedgie.

Classically, the "Save Versus Poison" was one of the low-rollers, compared to (say) Versus Spells; so the Rogue does have a chance with the russian-roulette. Just not as high as his/her player would like. We recommend going a little easy on the type of poison for low-level adventurers because killing a character for doing That One Job is a cock move.

Much ink has been spilled over whether player characters get to use poison too. The consensus is: no, because when the goblins find out they'll be uninclined to mercy if they ever meet you afterward.

One interesting note about poison in D&D is how the mechanics have changed over editions. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, poison damage manifested as taking a certain amount of hit point damage per round for a specific duration, with the damage and duration determined by the poison's type. In Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, however, poison rarely if ever attacked hit points; instead, most poisons did Ability Scores damage instead. This changed yet again in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, where poison became an "elemental" damage type akin to fire, ice, acid and lightning, and this is the version that stuck around for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.