Blight Ichor 5e
by Prince Phantom
Found in Explorer’s Guide to Wildmount, I’d wager that of all the mundane substances in 5e, none are as interesting as Blight Ichor. This stuff has wildly different effects depending on what type of creature it is used on, so we’ll divide this guide accordingly.
When used on anything other than Undead and Constructs:
Taking a dose of Blight Ichor has both upsides and downsides, but mostly downsides. For one hour, we get advantage on all Wisdom and Intelligence checks, but vulnerability to psychic damage. That last part might not seem like a big deal, but as shown in our guide to psychic damage, it’s a damage type that actually comes up surprisingly often. The downsides don’t stop there though, we also have to pass a DC 15 Constitution save or be poisoned for a number of hours and be under the effect of the Confusion spell for one minute. The poisoned condition could be easily removed by spells or Wildroot, but that confusion effect is a bit more tricky. It could potentially cause us to attack our friends, so if you do choose to partake in this, do it alone.
When used by Undead:
Undead however, suffer no ill effects from this substance, instead gaining advantage on all Dexterity checks and immunity to the frightened condition. So the question is, how do we take advantage of this? There are no undead playable races, so we need to look to spells. Animate Dead, Summon Undead, and Create Undead can all provide us with servants who would love to have this buff, especially because one of the easiest ways to deal with a horde of skeletons is to make them all afraid so they can’t effectively move or attack. You’d probably need a Conjuration Wizard and use Minor Conjuration to take full advantage of this and buff an entire undead army, so maybe consider that subclass for your next necromancer build.
Is this stuff worth using on non-undead creatures? If you can reliably negate the poisoned condition and can use this away from the party so no one gets hurt, I think you can make decent use of this assuming you are certain you won’t be facing psychic damage. Do be careful in making that last assumption however, as psychic damage is far more common than you might initially think.
For DMs, this definitely would qualify as an illegal drug and should probably be treated as such in your campaign. Have this be only available for sale in black markets and thieves’ guilds, and probably for a pretty high price too. The standard price for a dose is 200gp.
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