Is it just me or do poisons seem... kinda weak?
Like, poisons that have a remotely decent DC are expensive as all heck, and the poisons that you can reasonably afford have such a low save that they rarely work.
I mean, I love the trope of the guy who moves quietly from shadow to shadow and simply shoots a poison dart to incapacite the enemy before he can strike. I mean, heck I would love to be able to use the Feat Pin-point Poisoner with some effect...
Only time I've really thought about using poisons heavily was when I used a Vishkanya. Came with a poison use and could apply one as a swift action without paying up any coin and that scaled with you. What mostly killed it for me was how inconvenient it was and how ineffective the poisons were.
Yeah.. especially since monsters tend to have high Fort, and alot of the classes also have a high fort save. What I had initially built was a Rogue/Alchemist/Guild Poisoner to try and pump up my poisons as high as I can but it still started hurting trying to pay for SO MANY doses of poison so I can concentrate them to make the DC even remotely useable...
The only time I did a "poisoner" type character (I was a Fetchling ninja), it was exceedingly expensive... and we ran a game that focused around undead and haunts.
WELP.
That said, I really like the idea of a poison-based character, but there are several problems with it as implemented.
First, it's, as noted, weak in the Save department against a kind of save that many creatures are resistant to.
This is actually a double-edged sword.
The reason poison exists the way it does is for many reasons.
1) First, because it's typically thought of as a "villain's weapon" - something that the BIG HEROES (tm) of Pathfinder wouldn't normally resort to. And, in fact, this is true - most of the time it wouldn't be prudent to resort to using poison in the midst of combat for heroes... or at least, there wouldn't have been back in 3.5 when poison was either slower or more immediate, but limited (two nearly instant ability damage effects). But villains? Ah, poison and revenge, that's the ticket. Or Assassins... who were evil anyway. And Paladins can't use poison. And so on. While I don't personally agree with this premise, I do think that poison is difficult to "do right" and thus tends to lend itself more toward villainous use.
2) Second, the heroes have to be able resist it (especially since it's a villain's weapon). It needs to be surmountable by PCs. Here's a funny factoid: almost no one likes their ability scores damaged. It's usually one of the most frustrating least enjoyable parts of the game. (Though I get frustrated at times when games don't have it.) That said, that's what poison does. Sure, there are a few (exceedingly awesome) types of poison that do not. I love those kinds, when I'm using them; I hate being on the receiving end as a player, though, because it takes away my sense of agency. So what to do? Well... make it surmountable. Sure that arcanist might not be able to resist it, but everyone knows they're crazy over-powered as it is. That just leaves the rogue and bard. The rogue is good at traps (so they can often avoid having it used on them in one of the most common formats) while the bard... well, it has it's own suite of issues (good and bad). NPC classes still find it very threatening, however, so it's excellent to use on them.
3) Third, since it's a villain's weapon, and it's able to be negated or overcome by the heroes, and it's useful on NPCs, that leaves monsters. And... well, they kind of just get inured to it because of their basic design. Monsters tend toward high fortitude saves (generally because they're "tough but dumb" after a fashion) or outright immunity to stuff... much of which "the heroes" aren't "supposed" to be using anyway.
All that said, to me it's always felt like Poison is needlessly different from other crafted materials. Why isn't it possible to just make masterwork poison (increasing the DC by 2)? Why are so many restrictions placed on it? Why is it so high-priced? Vindictive GMs, prevention of Player Abuse, and so on, I suppose, but ultimately I agree - playing a poisoner often sucks.
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Another thing is how expendable NPCs tend to be. If your poison does land, it might not do that much damage before the guy you just stabbed hits the floor. Strength damage won't matter if the guy gets full attacked and falls over before he actually tried to hurt someone. PCs on the other hand have to live with the damage for a while.
The poison save DCs in Pathfinder are pathetically weak. Pathetically.
The trick is to apply multiple doses.
Injury poisons might only be able to do 1 dose at a time but Inhaled or Ingested poisons specifically state that you can apply multiple doses in a single exposure.
So you can load a trap up with 6 doses of Insanity Mist if you want making the save DC: 25
or poison someone's drink with 3 doses of Taggit for DC: 19
The problem is that, that gets VERY expensive very fast.
The problem is that, that gets VERY expensive very fast.
Could imagine the party's faces when you drop 60 doses of drow poison on them though?
Anyways, possible solutions to consider are allowing players to get an allowance of money for poison per day, giving x+stat for free each day by some means, using an encounter based poison use(they usually are anyway) with lengthier times to place poison on an object but unlimited poison, and/or a scaling DC determined by the crafter(think scrolls/magic items). Personally I like the last two best.
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The best I was able to come up with when I tried to built a poison-focused character involved improved familiars. My idea was an alchemist who takes tumor familiar and then improved familiar to get a nycar. Milking the tumor nycar on off-days provides an unlimited source of free poison which does 1 Con damage. Familiars' effective HD increases with yours, so the DC would scale. I never played this character (because, spoiler alert, it turns out to not be effective), but the idea was to beg the DM to allow me to replace the nycar's Skill Focus feat with Ability Focus (Poison) for another +2 and buy it a belt of Con. Then, spending all my feats on TWF and ranged combat feats, the idea was to use thrown weapons to deliver the poison.
The problem with this idea is the rules for how poisons stack. Since successive doses of the same poison just increase the DC and duration, there's a cap on how much Con damage can be done per round. Throwing a bunch of daggers then hiding while everyone slowly succumbs to Con poison isn't a teamplayer strategy.
I think the stacking rules represent a major obstacle to a viable poisoner-build. It sets a strict limit on how much ability damage a single poison can do per turn. No poison does enough ability damage to keep pace with other strategies to disable or kill enemies. Even if you can find a way to cheaply get poison with a high DC, you're still limited in how quickly it can take effect.
Is it just me or do poisons seem... kinda weak?
Like, poisons that have a remotely decent DC are expensive as all heck, and the poisons that you can reasonably afford have such a low save that they rarely work.
I mean, I love the trope of the guy who moves quietly from shadow to shadow and simply shoots a poison dart to incapacite the enemy before he can strike. I mean, heck I would love to be able to use the Feat Pin-point Poisoner with some effect...
So our group just uses the description in the CRB to make up our poison rules. SO this may be house rules but here is how we run it.
Poisons tick on the targets turn (like bleed damage and fast healing). So if you stab someone with 5 injury poisons the target rolls against their combined effect at the start of their turn.
Each 5ft square has 1 dose of inhaled poison. To stack the effect you have to run through multiple squares.
Our group thinks this is what the CRB says and makes injury and contact poisons better while limiting the abuse that came from inhaled poisons (make 1000 fort saves!).
The thing about poisons is they are not really a pc thing. Th3 saves may be easy t make but 8 drow all firing a hand crossbow with sleep poison is still 8 chances at a 1.
I've always thought poisons were kind of weak too.
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I'm of two minds on poisons.
First, I feel the Pathfinder poison system is incredible genius. The scalability and combinations made dealing with the poison have potential for drama (instead of - oh yeah, 1 minute after that battle 2 hours ago you needed to make a save... ah, nevermind).
Second, while there needed to be some pullback on the damage inflicted, the Core Rulebook and Bestiary I poisons were mostly too weak, particularly the ones that require only 1 save. It feels like the damage was balanced for the round-by-round saves, before the '# of saves to cure' effect was added. E.g., the poison spell dealt an average of 11 con damage over 2 saves (both required) in 3.5. Now it would deal an average of 12 con damage over 6 saves, but you only need to make a single save to end it - even with a 20% chance to make the save you only have a 51% chance to take more than 4 points of damage.
I think the low dcs/damage has been overcompensated for in future releases, along with feats and abilities that increase the DCs. Often over-compensated for.
Poison that deals 1d2 dex damage for 6 rounds, but only 1 save? Too weak after very low levels (when enough misses and failed saves happen that things might start to build up). Poison that deals 1d6 con damage, with 2 saves needed? That's a bit too strong IMO, for most poisons.
Perhaps someday we'll see an alchemist archetype who loses bombs and mixes poisons on the fly.