Poisons: Revisited

[jupistar]

The Rogue archetype Poisoner has a vested interest in poisoning, however I'm having a hard time understanding how things are supposed to work and why other things work as they do.

Starting with confusion

There is a Swift Poison rogue talent in the APG that allows the Rogue to poison a weapon as a move action. At 6th level, the alchemist automatically gets the Swift Poisoning feature that allows him to do it as a swift action. Admittedly, one is 6th level and the other would occur sometime after the 3rd level. But there's no way for the rogue to upgrade this. Why must the specialist poisoner be slower in combat than the generalist in combat?

How are the costs of poisons determined?

This is very important, because all we have to work with are the "sample poison" list available in the CRB. If we want to craft a new poison, we have no way to determine costs and there doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern in the sample list (e.g. the Insanity Mist poison is just as difficult to resist as the Oil of Taggit, but seems much less powerful [in most cases], yet is also a great deal more expensive [by a factor of 15]).

This is important because the crafting of poisons seems off and confusing, both.

One of the cheapest poisons (Oil of Taggit) in the sample list is 90gp to buy. This is for one application of a single poison. Without doing the math right here, my initial estimate is that for an average 4th level poisoner rogue with access to an alchemical lab, crafting this poison is going to take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a full month - for one dose for one attack for one of the cheapest poisons. And it doesn't get much faster very quickly as the rogue increases in level, either.

And if the rogue doesn't make the poisons themselves, they are generally cost prohibitive, with the exception of just a few.

This means that the 4th level rogue can spend a couple of weeks to make a single dose of a poison that has a 50% chance of resistance, but can knock someone out (after a minute) for 1 to 3 hours. Or can spend several months making a poison that is likely to do no more than 2d3 wisdom damage to any opponent of note (6 consecutive save opportunities).

Quick math here using sample poisons list:

Oil of Taggit (900sp) - Assuming DC 10 (typical item) and average Craft: Alchemy roll of 25. This is equivalent to almost 4 weeks worth of work.

Oil of Taggit (900sp) - Assuming DC 15 (high quality item) and average Craft: Alchemy roll of 25. This is equivalent to almost 2 weeks worth of work.

So, it's quicker for the Poisoner Rogue to create a high quality item than a typical item of equivalent coin value.

Finally, if the Rogue takes the challenge to "work fast", the DC increases by 10, for the following results.

Oil of Taggit (900sp) - Assuming DC 20 (typical item) and average Craft: Alchemy roll of 25. This is equivalent to almost 2 weeks worth of work, but will fail a quarter of the time, increasing the overall time to completion.

Oil of Taggit (900sp) - Assuming DC 25 (high quality item) and average Craft: Alchemy roll of 25. This is equivalent to just over 1 week worth of work, but is going to fail half the time, thus doubling the time to completion.

So, I think it's clear that I have no idea how to properly institute poison crafting correctly. But all of the options above fairly stink for a single dose of poison to be used for a single attack somewhere far into the future for a very cheap type of poison.

Does poison application work like weapon blanches?

In other words, do you get 1 application to a weapon and 10 applications to ammunition? If so, that makes the ammunition mighty powerful, but if not... 1 dose? for 1 month's worth of work? for 1 attack? for a cheap poison? Ouch.

[Joesi]

1 dose of poison gets applied to 1 attack, regardless of projectile or melee.

It seems to be that poisons do remain indefinitely applied though (nothing in the rules that says otherwise as far as I know even if it might not be RAI), making them good for projectiles since you'll never need to re-apply in combat.

That said, the only viable way to use poison frequently that I know of would be to use an alchemist (or something similar; I think there's a poisoner in 3.5e or something? not sure about PF).

Alchemists are prime because a) they'll have higher craft alchemy than pretty much anyone else (gain double the ranks put into it), b) they can craft faster (twice as fast), and c) they have the sticky poison discovery.

To use poison as an alchemist, I'd say you'll need to invest in at least 2 feats: Master Alchemist (craft items 10x faster, create [int modifier] doses of poison in the time it takes to make one), and Sticky Poison ([int modifier] uses of poison per dose).

When you combine Swift Alchemy and Master alchemist, At 18 Int you'll be crafting poisons 80 times faster than normally; with sticky poison, you'll need to make poison 4x less often, so you'd be spending 320 times less time on crafting than normal. Sticky poison makes poisons more efficient, from 1/3 market price to essentially 1/12 market price, making poison finally reasonable (since otherwise it's prohibitively expensive for anything other than Blue Whinnis, Dhabba spittle, or Frostspore)

Two other useful, but perhaps not-so-great discoveries are Concentrate Poison (make 2 poisons into one with +2DC and +50% duration), and Poison Conversion. The reason I say concentrate poison isn't great is because the concentrated poison only lasts for 1 hour (unless you house-rule something else). The reason Poison conversion isn't great is because it doesn't do much unless the onset/frequency changes too (the description doesn't specify, which is annoying; I guess it's a DM's call). Normally ingested poisons have 10 minutes onset, contact 1 minute onset, and injury/inhaled instant; if converting the poison changed this, then it'd be worthwhile, but otherwise you'll mostly be converting poisons into inhaled, which doesn't seem that great IMO (even though inhaled is worth a lot of gold, I don't see why).

Oh and lastly... there's an alchemist archetype that can do sneak attacks; It's not a rogue, but you at least have sneak attacks, if that's something you want.

[Ascalaphus]

Alternatively you could try to harvest poison from venomous animals.

There's also a trick with the spell Minor Creation which turns a tiny sample of vegetable poison into a large amount for a few hours. Maybe you can Eschew Materials that, too.

[jupistar]

Ok, so far:

1) The Alchemist class is better at crafting poisons and applying poisons in combat than a Rogue Poisoner simply because it is.
2) The determination of poison costs for determining crafting requirements is not yet answered.
3) The crafting of poisons is, by extension, uncertain, but on the surface does look to be this complicated and time-consuming.
4) Poisons don't work like weapon blanches. That is the cost for one dose and one dose is treated exactly the same for a weapon or ammunition (source?).

So, this makes it sound very much like the Rogue Poisoner archetype is a rather broken archetype (no real good reason to choose the archetype) - would anyone disagree?

Edit: This is frustrating to find out for a player after 5 levels have passed and the hope that things are going to get better for the player in terms of poisons. Can't make it easily? Fine. How about buying it? Can't do that easily, either (prices are wildly variant).

Even so, as an alchemist, one should still find a way of determining cost and rarity of poisons (probably somehow that concept is combined). Why is drow poison cheaper than belladonna? Why is, by a factor of 10, belladonna cheaper than hemlock?

[Joesi]

Yeah I'd probably agree with the statement that rogue poisoner isn't very good; Seems like something A GM/DM could/would use as an enemy though, since poisons are the kind of thing that are really strong vs PCs but not-so-much FOR PCs unless they're buffed. Nonetheless, there are some poisons that I mentioned previously that may even be worth it at 1 dose per use and regular cost (or at least have long crafting time if crafting).

Making up poisons is something a GM does at their own will, hence there's no rule regarding costs. I would agree with you though that some guidelines would be nice. That said, there is a guy that interpreted a formula to use for calculation the cost of a poison based off PF's core poisons.
http://davidvs.net/games/pathfinder-poisons.shtml
In my opinion he exploits this formula to make poisons which are certainly too cheap/powerful though, even for someone paying full price [nor using sticky poison]. That said, it's still all up to GM's discretion. I also don't think he took into account any of the later poisons Paizo added that aren't in the core, such as Dhabba Spittle or Frostspore (I mention those only because I remember them since they're powerful for combat at least at low level. They're maybe not the most pertinent example to use because of that reason though), nor did he probably consider the pricing of any of the non-core 3.5e poisons, which there is maybe 30-80 of (converted PF poisons are all the same price as the were in 3.5 I think).

Also, regarding the pricing of Oil of Taggit vs Insanity Mist, Oil of taggit has an onset time of 1 minute, which makes it useless in combat; Insanity Mist has no onset, can seemingly have multiple doses in one use (this is something I didn't realize until now when re-reading poison rules; contact and injury can only have one dose per attack), and can affect up to 4 targets at once since it's 10 ft square AoE. That said, while each of those are pretty huge bonuses, I would agree that it still seems too pricey.
Why is Belladonna more than Drow poison? Aside form saying that maybe drow poison is just really common/popular (prices aren't balanced on combat power, but rather just fluff/RP like supply/demand), Belladonna lets you make many saves to cure lycanthropy (or at least one, its not too clear).
For Hemlock, that's probably the best example of bad pricing, but that said, it kills a target on 0 dex, when normally a target would just be paralyzed, which I guess is actually pretty huge since if nobody can save the person in the 0-6 minutes (after onset) it takes for the poison to get a person to 0 dex, they're screwed and they have to be resurrected instead of just restored (which is a HUGE deal for an ingested poison, since they're probably in a safe place to begin with like king's palace/castle and hence unable to assassinate normally). Aside from that thing, it deals 2.3–3 times more dex damage, requires 2 saves in a row to cure (pretty big deal), and has +4DC (You'd need to buy 3 Belladonnas to get the same effect, ignoring the possibility that one could maybe taste the fact that 3 belladonna doses is in one's food)

Overall though regarding costs of poisons; in games like these, there's always feats stronger than others, and items stronger than others for the same price; I'm sure someone could give you 100 examples of items that are flat-out crap compared to another item, so it makes sense that poisons are no exception to this rule. If a GM allows crafting custom wondrous items and only follows the crafting rules (no overruling pricing, or vetoing the ability to craft a specific item), things can potentially get really powerful really fast.

Quote:

The crafting of poisons is, by extension, uncertain, but on the surface does look to be this complicated and time-consuming.

I don't know what you mean by this. It's time-consuming for the character if they don't have the skills, yes very much so; however a specialized character can do a years work of poison crafting in just one day. Poison crafting isn't complicated though, at least not any more than many other rules in pathfinder.

With regards to a source for dosage, I'd say you don't need a source and that it's only common sense/logic; one would need the same amount of poison to poison someone regardless of it's delivery method (arrows don't magically have more poison-power than spears). Nonetheless, the rule would have to be one inherited from 3.5e, since the explicit mention of that fact might be missing from the core.

Quote:

One dose of poison smeared on a weapon or some other object affects just a single target

Aside from that, the PF core also talks about how applying poison to a single piece of ammunition or a weapon is a standard action (in the poison section).

Lastly, you shouldn't have to worry about a character being less useful than another. The GM should easily be able to make some sort of arrangement to make your character balanced with the rest. An example would be to either change the crafting rules, or give a feat for free (like master alchemist), or make a more affordable poison without overdoing things.
I think it even says the following in the pathfinder book(s): Rules are just guidelines. (unless you're playing PFS)

[jupistar]

I have no idea where to find Dhabba Spittle or Frostspore or any other non-CRB poisons (I never worked with poisons in 3.5). I've pulled everything I could find from the d20pfsrd where they've combined many of the rules. I found a blog post about poisons here on paizo and pulled a lot of information from that post and comments subsequent to that post. In the end, I synthesized all of this into a single set of rules for the use of poison and still found I couldn't answer the questions I initially posted.

Pricing belladonna and hemlock as high as it is based on it's usefulness is not very sensible to me, except in broad terms associated with game mechanics. Under those rules, a druid/ranger should be able to pick up the materials for the making of hemlock with ease and bring it to an alchemist to fashion--the alchemist says, "Well, belladonna I can do, but turning that hemlock plant into a poison - phew! That'll take awhile! Several weeks, in fact. But here, give me that belladonna plant, I can whip you up something in an hour."

Making drow poison cheap because of it's availability makes a lot more sense, because supply and demand makes sense, except that I can't see how drow poison would be highly available. Is Golarion such a world that drow trading is a common practice?

That link you provided is a gold mine. Thank you. It specifically addresses my concerns here. For one thing, it fixed a huge problem in my mind: the Master Alchemist feat is available to all classes, not just the Alchemist class (no class-specific requirements, which I assumed it had). But secondly, it provides guidelines for the crafting of new poisons. Unfortunately, you say that some of these end up being exploitive. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to judge exploitiveness. I've tried houseruling things before thinking I was making something more "workable" and not realizing that it could lead to breakage of the rules down the road. Do you have a better set of guidelines to suggest on how to determine pricing or suggestions on how to modify his approach to work better? I sense that you've studied the issue of poisons far more than I.

You say that "Oil of Taggit" is useless in combat due to the slow 1 minute onset time. I agree that in round-to-round combat time with a lot of give and take, such poisons can be useless, but not all combats need to be that way. Knowing how poisons work, characters can work to delay the onset of direct combat action with RP and tactics, to allow poisons to be effective. I think the "effectiveness" of most poisons are directly tied to how they are to be used and while I know that we tend to see things from a direct combat-only, round-to-round effectiveness POV, that's really only an appropriate POV for *some* groups.

Joesi wrote:

Lastly, you shouldn't have to worry about a character being less useful than another. The GM should easily be able to make some sort of arrangement to make your character balanced with the rest. An example would be to either change the crafting rules, or give a feat for free (like master alchemist), or make a more affordable poison without overdoing things.

I think it even says the following in the pathfinder book(s): Rules are just guidelines. (unless you're playing PFS)

This is an easy thing to say, but not always an easy thing to do. It's very easy to break things when you don't know what you're doing. By way of example, I mentioned above that things don't make sense when they're priced for game mechanics and not for a "supply/demand" economy. I broke things in a game when I house-ruled that shurikans didn't break on impact/miss. It seemed silly. But now I read a thread about holy returning +1 shurikans in the hands of a ninja throwing 8 at a time and I realize, "Ok, well, that makes sense, then. They should lose their component value somehow."

Further, some players come from a "rules are rules - even the DM *has* to follow the rules" mentality. Which makes sense. If the DM doesn't follow the rules, then things can easily get out of control. Keeping these types of players happy requires that DMs maintain as strict of an adherence to the rules as possible.

For example, I was playing around with the idea that poisons should work like weapon blanches (you're right, I think, to say that they don't by the rules). But then it occurred to me how crazy powerful that could be: all party members set an ambush with 10 poisoned arrows from a single dose of poison. Could be crazy powerful for the price.

Joesi wrote:

I don't know what you mean by this. It's time-consuming for the character if they don't have the skills, yes very much so; however a specialized character can do a years work of poison crafting in just one day. Poison crafting isn't complicated though, at least not any more than many other rules in pathfinder.

It is my opinion that it is time-consuming to make simple poisons like Hemlock even if you're a 5th level Alchemist with the Master Alchemist feat. And even then, you only get a certain number of doses for the time you spend. It is my opinion that my job as a GM getting at all of the rules for the crafting of poisons is complicated. The fact that I don't have a clear set of official guidelines on how to adjudicate the cost and power aspect of poisons is what creates the greatest complication to the crafting of poisons in general and the crafting of poisons not listed in the sample list in particular.

Either way, this is a reasonable and subjective opinion, I believe. What is your goal with arguing this specific point?

In the end, I appreciate that link greatly and would love to hear your views on what should be changed in his method to prevent exploitation of poison crafting.

[Joesi]

Dammit, I made a huge post and it didn't post when I pressed submit (probably took too long), and lost the whole damn thing.

Essentially What I was saying was that I don't have any experience with custom poisons, and that people should post their own experience with them, such as balance issues an stuff.

I also talked about how the guy in the website made some huge mistakes:
1. poison DC cost modifiers were terribly done
2. Poison types weren't factored in; poison types are directly linked to onset times and frequency
3. Decided that 1 minute frequency was more expensive than round frequency (even though he knew that makes no sense); this is probably just a coincidence due to all the expensive contact/ingest poisons, and is a result of not factoring in #2.
4. didn't distinguish between 1 round onset and 1 minute onset

So because of this, I decided to make my own formula:

DC:
(DC/12)^3 = cost multiplier (or base cost, whatever)

Poison type:
— Ingested or contact with 1|10 minute onset and minutes frequency cost 1x multiplier
— contact with 1 minute onset and rounds frequency, or 0|1 rounds onset and minutes frequency cost 1.5x multiplier
— injury or contact with no onset and rounds frequency cost 2x multiplier
— inhaled (no onset, rounds frequency) cost 3x multiplier

Consecutive saves:
1 save = 1x multiplier
2 saves = 3x multiplier (maybe 2.5x)

Damage:
For quantifiable damage, multiply the duration by the maximum possible damage.

Damage type:
1.5x for Dex & Str; 3x for Con, 1x for Int and Wis (?), 0.75x for Cha (?), 1x for HP (?)

Conditions:
Currently incomplete. As an example, unconscious for a long period of time would be +40

So that leaves the formula:

(DC/12)^3 * [1..3] * [1..3] * ([max damage] * [0.5..3] + [conditions])

The thing gives some interesting results. Many/Most poisons are a lot cheaper (2-3x I think), but some like purple worm poison really suffers and is nearly twice as much.

Rat poison can be dirt cheap (lets say 1 Cha damage DC 10), at 4 sp, which makes good sense.

This is just something I threw together now, so if others have recommendations to improve it (such as bringing it closer to PF poisons normal prices if you think it's necessary), feel free to mention it.

I'm maybe a bit worried about ability damage being too cheap. particularly Charisma. Thing about ability damage is that it's not useful at lower levels, but much more powerful at higher levels, so it's hard to balance (I balanced more for lower level)

[garabbott]

I'm currently playing a Rogue (Poisoner) archetype in a PbP. Well, actually, he's a Rogue (Poisoner) 3/Ranger (Trapper) 2/Assassin 1. Certainly not an optimized character choice, but he's a lot of fun. My GM also seems to bend the rules for me a bit in my favor to make poisons a more viable source of damage for me. Knowledge (nature) and Survival skill checks allow me to harvest resources to create my poisons without paying such absurd item creation prices.

I haven't had the opportunity to use poisons too often in combat, but I mostly have them around as emergency back up plans... an extremely powerful dose of Hemlock poison in someone's glass of wine will likely put them to a very easy coup de grac, if not kill them outright. Then again, that's just my character's style...

Here is the build, if you're curious: Kirk Spearborn

I'm curious about how people handle custom poisons as well. Not something I've experimented with yet, but my character just took a decently long hiatus from the game thread (a few months in game), wandering off to apparently perfect his poisoning technique, and if I could bring a wicked poison to the table that'd be sweet :P

[jupistar]

Joesi:

Thanks a lot.

Tell me what you think of the conflict of the necessity of game mechanic costs (cost associated with the power of poison) and the common sense cost of supply and demand. "Why exactly does hemlock cost so frakkin' much!?!? I can harvest it from the woods fairly freely!"

So even if the cost reflects a black market cost, it shouldn't really reflect on the length of time to craft. In essence, what we're saying is: poisons are too powerful and useful of an item, so we're not going to not allow it in our games, but we're just going to make you jump through a lot of hoops (cost/time) to make it or buy it. Unfortunately, this flies directly in the face of any attempt at versimillitude (as far as I can see).

[Yebng]

Rogue Poisoner can still work, it takes a slightly different path than the alchemist but can still be effective.

1: Master Alchemist as your 5th level feat, I'm guessing as a poisoner you've been putting ranks in every level so you easily have the prerequisite 5 ranks, this means you craft poisons 10x faster, and can create multiple doses at once so technically a rogue with a 16 int crafts poisons 30x faster just based off your intelligence and that 1 feat.

2: Whereas the alchemist has discoveries you have talents, namely Swift Poison-Move action to apply, and lasting poison-applied poisons last for 2 successful hits, you can also grab the advanced talent deadly cocktail allowing you to put two poisons on the same weapon at the same time, assuming you have the lasting poisons talent that equals 4 saves if you can hit someone twice, put similar effect poisons and you can easily drop someone right there.

3: Master poisoner class ability, with 1 hour of work you can turn that injury poison into an inhalant, which if you throw at the intersection of squares means you can dose 4 enemies with that 1 poison. Also you are getting a bonus on your craft alchemy equal to 1/2 your rogue level.

4: Skill Focus, use it

5: play human, take heart of the fields alternate racial trait-+1/2 character level on particular craft check

6: Take feat Prodigy-+2 more craft poison

So 5th level master poisoner with int 16 should be pulling 5 ranks +3 class skill +3 ability modifier +2 class ability +3 skill focus +2 heart +2 prodigy= 20 base so average roll of 30

Now pick high save, low cost poisons, don't worry too much about their effects, I like purple worm at 700gp personally, base save of 24, requires 2 consecutive saves to cure

24*30=720, so one week of work (normal quality) nets you 3 doses each of which lasts for 2 successful attacks when placed on a weapon so lets call that the equivalent of 6 doses in one week at a cost to you of just 1 dose had you purchased it, assuming you can find someone who sells it in the first place.

I call that viable, especially since shy of a natural 1 its impossible to fail that craft check by 5 or more which would mean destroying half your raw materials, so its virtually risk free

[Yebng]

Oh and I forgot to mention that on your next level you qualify for the daggermark poisoner prestige class, 1 level of that cuts your craft time in half, so you could then easily be making the equivalent of 12 to 18 doses per week.

3 levels in this class will net you something closer to the equivalent of 348 doses with a weeks worth of work assuming you have the money to support a habit like that

Now granted if i run an alchemist I can do even better but at this point what does it matter?

[jupistar]

Poisons and traps really do act as a non-magical person's magic. I'm curious if there aren't some ways to create magical poisons like there are ways to make magical traps.

Edit: I just noticed the Green Prismatic Poison. So how do the crafting rules account for this?

[Yebng]

Since pathfinder treats poisons as an affliction, like a disease or a curse, instead of the alchemical item it is, rules/a system is not in place to accommodate the creative crafting of poisons. I've looked into a logical system for increasing cost based off of DC or type or type of damage but so far despite all of my playing with poisons I just haven't found a rough formula i liked

Green prismatic poison is a spell, it's effect functions as a poison so it's included in the list but it can not be crafted, only called into being via the prismatic spells.

[Yebng]

Oh and answering a question posted way earlier, Hemlock is expensive because it takes a stat other than con and makes it so that when it's reduced to 0 the opponent dies instead of just going unconscious or being helpless.

[jupistar]

You're missing the larger point of the question concerning hemlock. Hemlock poison is relatively easy to make if you know what plant to look for. The price is ridiculous for the real-world analogue it claims to represent. Clearly the price is reflective of game mechanics, but that's tough to explain to a player who wants to craft poisons.

[Michael Sayre]

jupistar wrote:

You're missing the larger point of the question concerning hemlock. Hemlock poison is relatively easy to make if you know what plant to look for. The price is ridiculous for the real-world analogue it claims to represent. Clearly the price is reflective of game mechanics, but that's tough to explain to a player who wants to craft poisons.

The price could also be reflective of hemlock being a controlled substance known to have nefarious purposes. Herbalists probably aren't inclined to be the first person people come looking for when someone dies of hemlock poisoning without being appropriately compensated for their risk.

[jupistar]

If I have in my group either a ranger or a druid, I would expect either of them to be able to acquire a plant like hemlock with relative ease. But it still costs me 2500 gp in *crafting time* to craft it.

This is the inherent problem. Taking a game mechanic cost loses any association with reality--that is to say, we lose verisimilitude. If you say the cost of the item is based on it's black market value, how do you then use that as the basis for the cost to *craft* it.

[Joesi]

jupistar wrote:

Tell me what you think of the conflict of the necessity of game mechanic costs (cost associated with the power of poison) and the common sense cost of supply and demand. "Why exactly does hemlock cost so frakkin' much!?!? I can harvest it from the woods fairly freely!"

So even if the cost reflects a black market cost, it shouldn't really reflect on the length of time to craft. In essence, what we're saying is: poisons are too powerful and useful of an item, so we're not going to not allow it in our games, but we're just going to make you jump through a lot of hoops (cost/time) to make it or buy it. Unfortunately, this flies directly in the face of any attempt at versimillitude (as far as I can see).

Well there are at least two potential excuses for it:

1. to turn the thing into poison it requires lots of fancy reagents and time, kinda like it does for making some real-life drugs (although I think the majority of the cost is in advanced/precise instruments)

2. The herbs that have the same name as real-life ones may not actually be the same thing even though it has the same name; some things might be a lot harder or easier to get. Drow poison might have been discovered and originally made by drows but maybe it's become so popular other people could make it from all around.

Those two things said, those are just excuses I made up playing "devil's advocate". I do think the poison system is quite silly, just like lots of other people.
To me it makes no sense that powerful poisons with high DCs take less time to craft (assuming the same cost) as one with a lower DC. For some crazy reason Cockatrice Spit would far more than twice as long to make than Purple Worm Poison.

Aside from that, the fact that poison crafting (along wit special materials weapon/armor crafting like Adamantine, Mithril, Wyroot, etc.) uses the standard crafting system instead of some alternate one (like for magic items) is a big flaw with the game/crafting-system. It takes way too long for players to craft poisons or custom/expensive material items. That said, the poison crafting issue isn't as bad since it has a feat to speed things up 20-50+ fold.

Poison shouldn't be something that a player could always rely on though (although that's kinda already the case with many monsters being immune to poison), hence why it should cost a fair bit. The issue is that there seems to be a lot of imbalance when comparing poisons with each other, and in general a bit too high of a cost for them.

jupistar wrote:

Poisons and traps really do act as a non-magical person's magic. I'm curious if there aren't some ways to create magical poisons like there are ways to make magical traps.

Edit: I just noticed the Green Prismatic Poison. So how do the crafting rules account for this?

Green prismatic Poison shouldn't have been included on the list — it's stupid. There's other poison spells too (that aren't included on the list), such as "Poison" (similar to deathblade but without 2 saves IIRC).

In 3.5e there is a list of a few magic poisons in "the book of vile darkness", as well as a few very cool types of poisons called positoxins. Positoxins are poisons that only work vs undead, and need a divine cast [at least to aid] to channel energy to craft them. Magic poisons are nasty because they ignore poison resistance (and spell resistance, not that SR works on normal poisons), and may also apply somewhat special effects (spider swarm, reduced movement). They need a particular spell cast to craft them. Some of these poisons from 3.5e are hard to convert though, since 3.5e poisons generally work on a instant—1-minute-later pair of effects instead of a stream of 4-6 rounds or minutes. Some of them don't even follow that 2-duration system and may make things even more complicated. Lastly, because poisons only had 2 duration, there was little point in having a 2-consecutive-save mechanism to cure some poisons, and pathfinder's conversion guide says nothing about how to decide which poisons should require 2 saves to cure and which shouldn't. It boils down to GM's discretion. In my opinion anything above 1000 gp and at lasts least 6 rounds/minutes is an easy pick for a 2-save poison.