Poisoned Pickle

February 22, 2024

Wondrous item, common

dnd dnd-5e tier-1 tier-2 tier-3 tier-4 consumable food

Someone has sent you a wonderfully fresh jar of pickles, straight from the city! Look! The date is even stamped on the jar and they were only made available for sale yesterday! How wonderful. Only these aren't just any ordinary pickles! They're straight from Entellion the Master Pickler! Also, they're poisoned.

But who would poison pickles? Surely Entellion knows nothing of this dastardly business so who could it be? Was it the tavern keeper holding your gift for you? Was it the courier that rushed the jar from the city? Or was it an intermediary who purchased the jar from Entellion, added the insidious poison to the jar, and then paid the courier a handsome fee to rush the pickles to their destination?

The pickle jar contains 3d6 large poisoned pickles.

A creature’s passive perception may be enough to detect that the jar has been tampered with and is no longer “factory sealed”. A creature inspecting the jar can also roll a perception skill check to see if they spot the tampering.

Refer to the table below to determine the values for your level of play. These tiers are at the discretion of the GM. For example, and level 5 player close to leveling up may receive a tier 2 version of the item. Also, the DM can choose to have the magic items “level up” with the player, or maybe the player needs to upgrade the magic item.

Tier of Play	Perception Check
1	15
2	20
3	25
4	30

If consumed, a creature will suffer poison damage and other effects depending on the tier.

Tier of Play	Constitution DC	Poison Effect
1	DC 14	2d6 poison damage and 2 levels of exhaustion
2	DC 18	4d6 poison damage and 3 levels of exhaustion
3	DC 24	6d6 poison damage and 4 levels of exhaustion
4	DC 30	8d6 poison damage and 5 levels of exhaustion

DM Note

Technically the pickles are not a magic item, and are not magically poisoned, so detect magic will not find anything.

My original thought for this poisoned item was for it to be a straightforward trap. It would be sent to the adventurer’s as part of a package congratulating them for a deed they had just accomplished, meaning it was a bit too soon for news to have spread. The package would be signed with the name of a person the party did not know. The party did not have a direct way to detect poison, but a simple inspection might reveal that the item was a trap. I was considering making the check automatic if they realized that the situation was very suspect.

If the adventurers do become poisoned, feel free to flavor up the situation. Maybe the poison damage isn’t taken immediately, but will slowly deal damage if left untreated, or if they go to sleep feeling sickly they’ll wake up on death’s door. Give the players opportunities to remedy the situation (and the poison).

Attribution

This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.