My suggestion would be that you make venoms like that so rare that if someone does use a blade venom a ref could be on hand to deal inform the target of the damage?

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RL: Mr Sofar

Curved core weaponry and bespoke stuff.

ShelfordFX

I'll put it in on the list of "things to discuss"

If poisons on arrows were rare/expensive/hard to make AND if such poisons were limited to "obvious" effects, e.g. effects that could be described within the call system, e.g. "Global vital" say, then one could phys rep the fact that one was using a poisoned arrow by tying a (ref provided luminescent/fluorescent ribbon to the shaft).  Said ribbons being either acquired from God after the tricky and time consuming process of poisoning an arrow.

I will note that "potion lore" has never made much sense to me, but "poison lore" has always made a great deal.

re tagging arrows - nice idea but I think it would fall over with large numbers of players, particularly when you can't tell where a blow is coming from.

to give some more clarity, to make a blade venom it would have to be a salve. (as a potion/infusion would just drip off very quickly) So any salve can be smeared on a weapon but I think we'll exclude arrows.

I think its unlikely to have instant-death effects as we're likely to give a blanket statement to all herbalism concoctions that they take a minute to take effect (or possibly longer)

re potion lore and poison lore - these do not exist as skills in Typhum. The knowledge inferred by these names is gathered purely IC from your knowledge of ingredients and potions. In other words they can be built up without any knowledge of herbalism - just learning effects and what potions/salves/infusions look like

Obviously you still need herbalism skill to make them.

One point I'd like to make is to do with character generation -

we've deliberately differentiated between the number of skills you need to play certain character types eg:

Apothecary - the base skill you need is herbalism. You might want some foraging as well but this one skill is all you need.

If you wanted to play a healer, you'd probably take Healing, Herbalism and maybe something else

Warrior - you can be lots of different types of warrior eg militiaman, duellist, barbarian based on the skills you pick

Crafter - the intention is to that you can pick a crafting skill but also round yourself out with other areas

Magic - without revealing too much its intended that magic is an area you have to focus on at the expense of other skills.

Scout/Thief type - a jack of all trades, where you mix and match skills to suit your character but probably only focus on one in detail

any feedback around this and the balancing of it is appreciated

What on earth are "Totemics"?

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Totem

Yeah, cheers. ERm, I guess they're just beastmen then or similiar in your game world?

your opinion of them depends on what culture you are from.