In Xanathar's Guide to Everything near the bottom of the first column on page 82 is a table for Herbalism Kit Activities. One of the Activities is "Identify poison", but I suspect it may be a typo, and that the Activity was intended to be "Identify potion". Please forgive any oversight on my behalf if there exists an updated errata list that I was unable to find.
Question: In XGE on the table mentioned above on page 82, is the Activity "Identify poison" a typo?
There are few reasons for my suspicion:
- Under the Herbalism Kit description for Arcana it is stated that "Your knowledge of the nature and uses of herbs can add insight to your magical studies that deal with plants and your attempts to identify potions." (Bolding my emphasis)
- There is no reference to poison related knowledge in the Herbalism Kit description preceding the table on page 82.
- Under the Poisoner's Tools description for Nature, Survival it is stated that "Working with poisons enables you to acquire lore about which plants and animals are poisonous."
- The words "potion" and "poison" only differ by two letters, so the chance of a typo occurring and autocorrect replacing the input with the incorrect word would not be extremely unlikely.
- The Activity "Identify poison" has no context as to whether the poison you can identify is already prepared, from a plant, from an animal, or upon inspecting the discoloration of a wound.
Best Answer
It's likely that this is not a typo. The DMG says:
And while it's not clear if tasting a poison actually poisons you, the consensus on this site is that you might get poisoned. So there's clear utility in being able to detect if a random liquid in a flask is a poison without having to taste it, and there's little utility in making you perform a check to identify something you know is a potion since a little taste is enough to do the trick.