Poison Hilt Dagger – 5e Homebrew

This item has been updated, you can find the original version here.

You can find this on DNDBeyond here.

A clever artificer has added a mechanism to a dagger that allows for a vial of poison to be stored in the hilt and delivered through the blade when the mechanism is activated, helping ensure that the poison works is always used on the intended target.

– Dagger holds a vial of poison in the hilt.

– On a turn where you hit with the weapon, you can use your bonus action to drain the vial into the creature you hit. 

– Note, this does not work if the dagger was thrown

– Entire vial is drained at once, giving the creature disadvantage on their saving throw against the poison

Discussion: This is one of my weaker homebrew items. Does not give any special advantage to hit, and still consumes part of the action economy to use, might make poison slightly more valuable, and can be used in clever ways by some classes with ways to vastly increase their damage (like assassin rogues). Would also keep an eye out for Drow Poison, because this will help increase their chances of knocking someone instantly unconscious. Though do consider if giving them this potentially non-lethal option might actually add some variation to your combats, before trying to hide all Drow poison from your world. I think a party with both an alchemist and a rogue with a weapon like this could end up creating a variety of interesting concoctions that could be used at different times and towards different ends. Alternatively, the artificer who created it might be interested in helping in that endeavor, for a price.

Thoughts on refilling: After feedback I have started to think about how long it takes to refill it. I am not fully set on the mechanics, but am leaning towards:

• Can always safely refill it if you spend one uninterrupted minute doing it.
• Can attempt to refill by using an action to make a DC20 sleight of hand check, while doing so you are consider incapacitated until the start of your next turn.
  • If you fail the check you are still incapacitated until the next round, and the mechanism is broken and will require a DC 12 tinker tools check to repair over an hour.
    • If the repair check fails then the mechanism is more severely broken and will require a DC 20 tinker tools check and 20 gp in new material to repair over 6 hours.

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