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Hi, first post here. I got some questions/criticism/venting to do about the toxicologist and how poisons behave with the new Quick Alchemy (QA) action compared to the old one.
There used to be some debate about the perpetual infusion feature and how it allowed toxicologist to poison everything in sight between encounters. The logic was that poisons are activated as they are applied, not as you strike with a coated weapon. QA states that created items lose potency at the start of your next turn, which can be interpreted to mean that poisons persist on weapons/ammo beyond that, as it only needs to be “activated” before potency loss. After all, items with ongoing effects (such as elixirs, persistent damage bombs, etc.) produce their full effects and durations even when created with QA, as long as they are used/activated immediately; why should things be different for poisons?
A poison applied to a weapon sits in an undefined in-between. There is no limit to how long a poison can stay on a weapon before a strike is made with it (barring infused trait limitations). Poisons do have a duration though, which limits how long a target can be afflicted by it. Things that interact with a poison's duration usually refer to this (ie the old tenacious toxin feat).
The new QA doesn't address this grey area. Its stated limitations are that a) a QA item loses its potency at the start of your next turn and b) any duration longer than 10 minutes is shortened to that amount.
Poisons live or die on how game masters rule on that grey zone. Is an applied poison limited to 10 minutes of coating said weapon? Even though there is no duration to applied poisons? Do applied poisons lose their effect at the start of your next turn even if they are technically activated? What counts as a poison's duration?
The most permissive interpretation of the rules, in line with the old ruling on perpetual infusions, would allow replenishing vials to be used outside of combat to pre-poison stuff. Reading trough the nerfed poisons and whatnot, this doesn't even seem that strong, at least until higher levels where poisons start to deal real damage and feats like double poisons come online.
On the more restrictive end of rulings, an alchemist would need to create, apply and strike on the same turn. This is simultaneously the most intuitive ruling and the least playable. The action economy is bad enough that I don't see anyone enjoying playing this.
Am I just missing something? How would you rule on this at your table?