| SeptusAeronius |
There's a pretty-much-official ruling on this: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lc12&page=1?I-Drank-What-An-F AQ-on-Poison#discuss
Delay poison simply stops the process in its tracks, but you should still track the order in which new poison is applied to the target. When delay poison ends, all of these initial saves happen in order, then then character must track rounds as outlined above.
Hope that helps
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I'm running a poison-focused alchemist right now, doing AOE gassing (Poisoner's Censer) and keeping my party safe with Antivenom. As I use nastier and higher-DC poisons, that's not going to cut it, even with a +8 and the gas masks we've gotten. Delay poison looks like a solid bet for dealing with it later.
So, here's how it would pan out: my 5th-level Alchemist puts Delay Poison on the squishy healer with the low fort save, and later on lights up a poisoner's censer in combat, making a 20' radius cloud of inhaled poison that'll last five minutes. It's made from the venom of an Emperor Cobra he bought (3.5 K to get one with a training collar, great investment, milk for 4 doses of free poison a day). Through feats is a base of DC 20, 1d3 Con, 6 rounds, 2 saves to cure.
Most of the party is getting +12 to their saves (+8 for Antivenom, +4 from a custom gas mask item) on top of their normal fort saves, so we only fail on 1, and Antivenom negates the first failure.
Party healer would still fail on a 4 or lower, which is why delay poison is on. Say she spends 12 rounds total in my poison cloud during the fight. After the fight is over, she would would need to save against 12 doses of the poison, but all consecutively within the same round. The DC is 20, but only goes up *after* she fails a save.
So for example, she could succeed saves 1-4 at DC 20, fail save 5 at DC 20 (taking 1d3 Con damage), then saves 6-9 are at a DC 22 and the duration is 9 rounds. She fails save 9, taking 1d3 Con again, and it's DC 24 for 10, 11, and 12; duration is 12 rounds. Say that she fails 12: now the DC is 26, and the duration 15 rounds.
So after that all happens, she's got 15 rounds of poison dosage in her system, DC 26, 1d3 Con damage. If she succeeds any two of these ongoing saves, the poison stops and it's out of her system, resetting the DC to 20 and duration to 6 for any future exposures.
But, the important thing is that the DC and duration don't increase until she actually fails those sequential saves. You have an hour to prep; between Antivenom and Heal and spells like Neutralize Poison or any number of buffs for saving throws, you should be able to bring the Fort save up to a number where she'll only fail on a 1, and even then Antivenom will negate the first failure, so she needs 2 natural 1's before she starts to take damage.