Poison weapons

[sector24]

A lot of the high tech examples you have used (while totally awesome) are not poisons. Bullets with pepper spray or noxious fumes at just the modern day "stinkpots" of old. Ancient cultures used hollow clay balls instead of stones in their slings. You could fill the clay ball with somthing like lime, or sulfur (brimstone). This is represented in Dominions with the poison slingers from C'tis.

Poisoned arrows are a whole different ballgame. The easiest way to poison your arrow was to find a poisonous plant or an animal like a snake, milk it, and apply some of the venom to the tip of your arrow. Obviously this requires the poison to enter the bloodstream in some way, so you have to hit the target (dealing at least 1 point of damage).

I would think there would be very few contact poisons available, even in the fantasy world. Even if they were available, something like cinnabar smeared on an arrowhead wouldn't necessarily envenom the target if the arrow glanced off his shield or armor. It certainly wouldn't have any effect in the middle of the fight.

The whole realism vs. fantasy argument aside, poison arrows are supposed to be different from slings. It would make sense that they need to deal at least 1 damage to inflict the poison. Or maybe a wizard did it, in which case arrows should cast Foul Vapors or Poison Cloud when they strike the ground.