Feat: Poisoner - What Spell Should You Choose? And Character Concept

Dec 16

Poison damage is the weakest of the damage types in 5e. It is weak because there are so many monsters in Dungeons & Dragons have resistance to poison damage. The Poisoner feat counteracts this by giving the possessor the ability to ignore the resistance with any poison damage they deal, which would include poison damage from spells.

The key features of the Poisoner feat are ignoring the resistance to poison damage and allowing the character to add poison to their weapon as a bonus action. The poison added to a weapon stays on the weapon for one minute or until the weapon strikes an opponent. I would generally avoid applying the poison to missile weapons so that it is not lost when there is a miss.

Another factor to consider is the poison condition. Someone suffering from the poisoned condition has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks, but not saving throws. It can be a powerful tactic to place your opponents into the poisoned condition, but it requires quite a bit of work to do so. Only one spell, which is Ray of Sickness, has the potential to put an opponent into the poisoned condition and that only lasts until the end of your next turn. The opponent also gets a saving throw against getting put into the condition. The poison that the Poisoner feat allows the character to create does a similar thing by only lasting until the end of your next turn and the target gets a saving throw. So, there are barriers to making this tactic work, but it doesn’t mean you should not try.

Spells available that have poison damage are:

Cantrips: Poison Spray and Infestation
1st level: Chromatic Orb, Ray of Sickness, and Chaos Bolt
2nd level: Dragon’s Breath
5th level: Cloudkill and Summon Draconic Spirit
7th level: Prismatic Spray
8th level: Illusory Dragon
9th level: Prismatic Wall

Here is how I would rank each of these spells if you have the Poisoner feat:

S Tier

Ray of Sickness – Causes poison damage and can even cause the poisoned condition, this spell was made for this feat.
Dragon Breath (XGtE) – A concentration spell that allows you to spew out damage that you can change to help in whatever situation the combat requires.
Summon Draconic Spirit – A very nice summoning spell that can also be tailored to the combat situation.
Prismatic Wall – So much damage and so many layers to cross. It may not be focused on poison damage but it covers all the damage bases.
Illusory Dragon (XGtE) – An illusion that can cause damage and the frightened condition go ahead and sign me up for this one.

A Tier

Chromatic Orb – A very good first-level attack spell that can be changed to match the situation.
Cloudkill – A moving cloud of death, what’s not to like?

B Tier

Prismatic Spray – Lots of damage for this high-level spell, but also the damage is randomly determined. A great spell, just not great for a Poisoner.

C Tier

Poison Spray – A nice damaging cantrip, but the range is a little too close for most spellcasters.
Infestation (XGtE) – I think this cantrip is kind of fun, but can be negated by a saving throw. Too bad the movement is random and does not trigger opportunity attacks.

D Tier

Chaos Bolt – Is fine, but there are many spells that allow you to choose the damage type instead of rolling on a randomized table. If random is your thing, then this is a B Tier spell.

Clerics and Rangers do not have access to any of these spells. For Paladins, only the Oath of Conquest Paladin has access to Cloudkill. Bards only get access to the higher-level spells and Warlocks only has access to one of the cantrips. The Alchemist Artificer and Circle of Spores Druid can get three of the spells (not the same three). From a spell standpoint, it makes no sense for any of these classes to pick up the Poisoner feat.

It only makes sense to either build a Sorcerer or Wizard. As far as class and subclass, I would lean toward a Bladesinger Wizard or a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer.

Now if you are also interested in how to use the Poisoner Feat on weapons, then Kobold Think Tank has a very good article about Poisoner Builds that focuses on that aspect of the feat. Combining both spells and weapons will make your poison damage dealing build all the better.

Character Concept

Unless you are creating a variant human, the Poisoner feat only becomes available at fourth level. It seems to be a good low to medium-level tactic to go for the poison damage and poisoned condition. This means a Yuan-ti and Green Dragonborn kind of miss out on some of the best opportunities to cash in on this tactic, but they feel completely right for this build. I prefer the Yuan-ti since they have access to the Poison Spray cantrip which is more available per day than a once-per-short/long rest dragon breath. The damage is comparable between the two but the dragon breath has a longer range. I will admit I’d prefer to roll a spell attack with the dragon breath rather than give someone else a saving throw against Poison Spray.

To take advantage of the Poisoner’s ability to apply poison to their weapons this character needs to be able to fight effectively with a weapon. The Bladesinger has the magic ability, the weapon, and the tactic to get up close and personal with their opponents.

I’m using the rolls I made for my last build for continuity across all these builds, which were 12, 10, 15, 16, 8, and 15. I am assigning them thusly:

Str 8 Dex 15 Con 12 Int 16 Wis 10 Chr 15

I would add the +2 to Intelligence and the +1 to Charisma making them 18 and 16 respectively.

I would start out as a Wizard. If you do not have a poisonous snake familiar then you are not playing this character right. Too bad that the poisonous snake cannot make attacks as a familiar since that would be on brand for this character build. The subclass I’d pick up at second level would be Bladesinger. I would keep moving through Wizard all the way to fourth level to get the Poisoner feat. At fifth level, I would change to Sorcerer Draconic Bloodline for one level. Is this for the dragon scales? Yes. This is to totally lean into the whole snake/reptile look and feel, but the armor class boost is nothing to sneeze at.

Between the two classes (Sorcerer and Wizard) and the race (Yuan-ti), this character would eventually have access to all poison damage spells except for the Prismatic Wall and Illusory Dragon depending on how many levels of each class the character takes. This character would also have several cantrips which can be useful as a Bladesinger.

I would then go back to Wizard for two more levels to get the extra attack and the ability to cast a cantrip in place of one of those attacks. The next two levels would be in Fighter to get a Fighting Style, Second Wind, and Action Surge. After that, I would go back to Wizard to finish out the character.

I would not blame anyone for picking up more levels in Sorcerer to get Metamagic, but this will eventually have the character losing access to some of the higher-level spells. If this is not a concern for you then by all means pick up the extra levels in Sorcerer and start doing Quicken Spell for some major damage in a short amount of time.

Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas for making the build better.

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