Source Player Core pg. 201
The alarm screams. Your crewmate stumbles through the airlock, clutching their arm where something—claws, stinger, barbed weapon—broke the skin. You can already see the discoloration spreading from the wound, veins darkening under the skin. The ship's medical database is still querying what kind of toxin this is. You don't have time to wait for an answer.
This is Treat Poison in Starfall Galaxy.
It's jamming an auto-injector loaded with broad-spectrum antitoxin into their thigh and hoping it buys enough time for their body to fight back. It's applying a dermal patch that draws toxins toward the surface before they reach vital organs. It's talking them through controlled breathing while monitoring their vitals, watching for the moment their system starts to stabilize—or crashes entirely.
Treat Poison is the single-action Medicine activity that allows trained practitioners to help poisoned creatures fight off toxins before they progress to more dangerous stages. Unlike Treat Disease (which takes 8+ hours) or Administer First Aid (which stabilizes dying creatures), Treat Poison is designed for rapid intervention—attempting to grant bonuses to a victim's saving throw before the poison advances.
In Starfall Galaxy, where venomous xeno-fauna, bio-engineered toxins, and Rift-mutated poisons threaten every expedition beyond secured zones, the ability to treat poison quickly can mean the difference between minor injury and catastrophic organ failure. This is emergency toxicology performed in hostile environments, often with incomplete knowledge of what's actually killing the patient.
Medic administering antitoxin to poison victim in Starfall medical facility.
Who Treats Poison in Starfall?
Poison treatment is a critical survival skill across the galaxy:
Xenobiologists: Scientists studying alien life forms who prepare antitoxins before field expeditions
Combat Medics: Soldiers trained to counter bio-weapon attacks and battlefield toxins
Frontier Scouts: Explorers who've learned to recognize and counter local venoms through hard experience
Guild Toxicologists: Specialists who maintain databases of known poisons and their treatments
Street Docs: Underground practitioners who treat poisonings no questions asked—whether from criminal activity or corporate sabotage
Ship Medics: Isolated practitioners who maintain emergency antitoxin supplies for crew safety
Treat Poison Trained
One Actions
Requirements You’re wearing or holding a medkit.
You treat a patient to prevent the spread of poison. Attempt a Medicine check against the poison's DC. After you attempt to Treat a Poison for a creature, you can't try again until after the next time that creature attempts a save against the poison.
Critical Success You grant the creature a +4 circumstance bonus to its next saving throw against the poison.
Success You grant the creature a +2 circumstance bonus to its next saving throw against the poison.
Critical Failure Your efforts cause the creature to take a –2 circumstance penalty to its next save against the poison.
Timing and Action Economy
Treat Poison's one-action cost makes it viable mid-combat, but timing matters:
Key Considerations:
Poison saves occur at the end of the poisoned creature's turn
Treat Poison must be used before that save to apply its bonus
If the medic acts after the poisoned creature, the bonus applies to the following round's save
You cannot treat the same creature again until after their next poison save
Tactical Positioning:
Ideally, the medic acts immediately before the poisoned creature in initiative order, maximizing the benefit of the bonus before the next save.
Non-Combat Applications and Narrative Uses
Treat Poison creates tension beyond combat:
Investigation Scenarios:
Analyze poison type from symptoms—what does this toxin tell you about the attacker?
Treat assassination victims in real-time while gathering evidence
Determine if death was accident, suicide, or murder based on poison characteristics
Social Encounters:
Publicly treat a poisoned dignitary, proving your competence (or incompetence)
Negotiate for antitoxins from rival factions who control supply
Refuse to treat criminals or political enemies—and face the consequences
Resource Management:
Antitoxins are consumable and expensive
Black market alternatives may be counterfeit
Do you use your last dose on this victim or save it for the next?
Training and Competition:
Guild certification exams testing rapid poison identification and treatment
Medical competitions where speed and accuracy determine winners
Street doc rivalries over who can save more overdose victims
Societal Impact in Starfall Galaxy
Poison as Weapon: In a galaxy where lethal force is common, poison offers deniability. Corporate assassinations, political murders, and criminal vendettas often involve toxins. Medical examiners who can identify synthetic poisons face professional risk—and sometimes become targets themselves.
Antitoxin Markets: Broad-spectrum antitoxins are sold openly on Commission worlds. Specific counter-agents for rare or illegal toxins are controlled substances, traded on black markets. Possession of certain antitoxins can implicate you in crimes—why would you need an antidote unless you expected exposure?
Occupational Hazards: Miners, salvagers, and explorers routinely face toxic exposure. Employers vary wildly in safety standards—guild operations provide antitoxin kits, wildcatter outfits expect workers to bring their own. Labor disputes often center on poison-related injuries and compensation.
Bio-Weapon Paranoia: After multiple corporate bio-weapon incidents, Commission authorities monitor disease and poison outbreaks for signs of engineered agents. This creates tension between public health surveillance and privacy rights. Underground movements resist mandatory health scans, fearing data collection and control.
Xenobiological Research: Understanding alien toxins drives scientific advancement—and ethical debate. Live testing on subjects (willing or otherwise) accelerates research but raises moral questions. Some researchers argue that saving lives justifies extreme methods; others call them monsters.
Adventure Hooks
The Exotic Assassin: An NPC is poisoned with a xeno-venom unknown to Commission databases. The only expert who can identify it is a reclusive xenobiologist on a Frontier world who refuses visitors. PCs have 72 hours before the poison reaches its fatal stage. Do they negotiate, threaten, or find another solution? And when they reach the expert, why is someone else already there trying to silence them?
The Poisoned Water: A settlement's water supply is contaminated with an industrial toxin. The corporation responsible offers treatment in exchange for signing away rights to future health claims. The community is divided: accept corporate terms or risk widespread death. PCs must find an alternative source of antitoxins, expose the sabotage, or broker a better deal before the first fatalities force the settlement's hand.
The Black Market Antidote: A virulent poison sweeps through the underlevels. The only effective antitoxin is controlled by a criminal syndicate who is using it as leverage to expand territory. Guild authorities refuse to negotiate with criminals. PCs can steal the antitoxin formula, trade for it with dangerous favors, or synthesize their own from limited samples—while victims die by the hour.
The Competition: A medical tournament tests participants' ability to identify and treat poisons under timed conditions. The grand prize is a legendary medkit and guild certification. But one competitor is sabotaging others' patients, turning a professional challenge into a deadly game. Can PCs expose the saboteur before someone dies on stage—possibly them?
The Rift-Touched Venom: A crew member is bitten by a creature that shouldn't exist—one altered by Rift exposure until its venom operates on principles that violate known biology. Standard treatment makes things worse. The victim phases in and out of normal time, their body aging and de-aging in cycles. Only a Chronologist healer might save them—if the PCs can reach one before the victim's timeline fractures completely.
Six Seconds Against Entropy
Treat Poison represents the desperate gamble of countering toxins with incomplete information and limited resources. One action. One check. A +2 or +4 bonus to the next save—a slight edge that might mean the difference between recovery and death.
You don't always know what poisoned them. You don't always have the right antitoxin. But you act anyway, because hesitation guarantees loss.
Whether you're a guild toxicologist with a database of known venoms, a street doc improvising with expired antitoxins, or a xenobiologist who learned by surviving what killed your colleagues, you understand the fundamental truth: poison doesn't wait. It spreads, it progresses, it kills.
And you have one action to slow it down.
The galaxy is full of things that want you dead. Sometimes, six seconds and a steady hand are all that stand between a crew member and the void.
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