Ok in an effort to find a good use for the alchemists poisoning abilites I offer this.
First recap of poison basis. alchemists can craft poison very easily, they do so a 1/3 cost
multiple doses of the same poison in a single round increase the save DC by +2 cumulative and increase the duration 50%
Basic poison black adder venom DC11 6 rds 1d2 CON/rd cost 40gp to make
An average alchemist with sticky poison discovery will see poison lasting 4-5 strikes.
Now the grey area exists where how long does poison last after being applied.
For the purposes of this example the swift poison alchemist has enough time to poison multiple weapons before a fight starts and would only need less than 1 minute to do so.
Say your adventuring group includes a 2h Fighter, TWF rogue, TWF ranger, Cleric and the Alchemist.
all up the group not including alchemist use 6 weapons in total, 5 will most likely aim hit every round. (clerics are gonna cast somthin ;) )
To poison 5 weapons the alchemist would need 5 swift actions arguably 2 full rounds to apply posion to each weapon. at a cost of 5 x 40gp = 200gp
At 6th level
Fighter has 2 attacks base +6/+1
Rogue has 2 attacks base +2/+2
Ranger has 3 attacks base +4/+4/+1
for a grand total of 7 attacks
lets say for arguments sake over half connect each round
4 hits
if all those weapons are poionsed DC11 becomes DC19 for 9 rounds
if the creature being attacked fails its save and another 4 hits the next round DC19 goes to DC27 at which point CR6 monsters are not going to make thier saves
and thats with a cheap and nasty poison let try a higher level
At 12th Level
Fighter has 3 attacks +12/+7/+2
Rogue has 4 attacks +7/+7/+2/+2
Ranger has 5 attacks +10/+10/+5/+5/+2
we're up to 12 attacks a round
again lets say half hit = 6
That DC11 starts at DC23 and goes to DC35 next round
If you went with a more expensive posion e.g.purple worm poison DC24 base 1d3STR 233gp craft would cost 1100gp to do the group
the start DC would be DC38 !!! and at that point you could move to the next crature and poison it too.
saved for fight you know could be tough an invable tool when used by the entire group to deliver poison at impossibly high DC's to severly weaken creatures.
Things to note, anyone who rolls a 1 poisons themsleves as they wont have poison use. BUT
a delay poison extract supplied by the alchy or a potion 1hr/level prevent this from being a problem.
Periapt of Proof against Poison is also a more pricy but jsut as effective option.
Thoughts ?
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Poison doesn't work that way. Jason explains poison in a thread posting which I REALLY REALLY WISH they would add to the FAQ since questions like this come up all the time.
You have a group with an alchemist, a ranger, a fighter and a barbarian poisoning someone, poison is DC 11 that does 1d2 con damage:
Fighter hits: Creature makes DC 11 fort save or takes 1d2 CON
Barbarian hits: Creature makes DC 11 fort save or takes 1d2 CON
Rogue hits: Creature makes DC 11 fort save or takes 1d2 CON
Alchemist hits: Creature makes DC 11 fort save or takes 1d2 CON
On the creatures turn if it failed any of the initial saves the poison is in it's system so it makes another fort save, the DC is equal to 11. For each failed save past the first the DC increases by 2. So if the creature failed against the fighter and the rangers hits the DC is 13.
That's the tricky bit, the DC to be affected by any single dose is always the same, the secondary saves are the only ones that increase and they increase how many doses the creature was affected by (failed initial saves).
It's confusing, I'll see if I can help dig up Jason's post also.
ah that's a differn't story
the end result is the monster saves against all the DC11 poison and thats the end of it ;)
so basically , its a case of don't bother unless you using a poison with a high base DC so there a chance they fail the inital onsets and then the cumulative DC the next round would be monsterous
so either go expensive on poison or go home ;)
I wish there were some rules for creating generic poisons similair to item creation rules giving a cost value based on DC ability type ability damge onset time etc etc into a nice neat equation so you can tailor poisons to suit differn't threats
and generate poisons with sufficent high inital DC's that monsters are actually are at risk of failing them.
Hmm, I thought concentrate poison and some of the higher DC poisons would work well but maybe not? I haven't really been able to put this to the test because my highest level alchemist is in PFS and the poisons they allow are terrible (no CON poisons at all).
yeah the concentrate ability is a bit meh +2 DC and it becomes time sentive material plus it cost double so your value for money starts looking even more sick than usual.
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Hmm, I thought concentrate poison and some of the higher DC poisons would work well but maybe not? I haven't really been able to put this to the test because my highest level alchemist is in PFS and the poisons they allow are terrible (no CON poisons at all).yeah the concentrate ability is a bit meh +2 DC and it becomes time sentive material plus it cost double so your value for money starts looking even more sick than usual.
Yeah usually you have a better chance that someone will fail one of two saves than a single higher DC.
I think concentrate is best for when you really want to ensure the target fails his initial or if you have a limited number of hits.
In general much like any attack, you use them against creatures that are more vulnerable to them. So the enemy wizard gets hit with a poison arrow not the enemy Hill Giant.
Hmm, I thought concentrate poison and some of the higher DC poisons would work well but maybe not? I haven't really been able to put this to the test because my highest level alchemist is in PFS and the poisons they allow are terrible (no CON poisons at all).yeah the concentrate ability is a bit meh +2 DC and it becomes time sentive material plus it cost double so your value for money starts looking even more sick than usual.Yeah usually you have a better chance that someone will fail one of two saves than a single higher DC.
I think concentrate is best for when you really want to ensure the target fails his initial or if you have a limited number of hits.
In general much like any attack, you use them against creatures that are more vulnerable to them. So the enemy wizard gets hit with a poison arrow not the enemy Hill Giant.
even the transmute potion to poison spell extract is a bit meh topping out at DC14 although the 2 saves helps , not that it will stack with any of your poison abilites
Yeah, I didn't bother to pick that one up. DC 14? Eh. Maybe if I find a cache of third level potions I won't use otherwise.
with alchemical allocation you'd only need 1 if you were feeling really stingy
however I've had a second thought
in the example of contact poisons with an onset of 1 minute
if I'm not mistaken you don't roll the save until the onset which is 10 rounds later
in that time if you were to hit the same creature another 8 times then once the onset is complete and they have to make a save the inital DC starts +16 high becuase you've already applied mutiple doses
or would you need to track each hit and roll for save 10 rounds later or if a failed save have those other hits add to the DC later
in which case an even more useless application hehehe
acutally on a bit of a segway are there any rules for mixing an inhaled posion in with a smoke/stink/posion bomb which creates a gas cloud and should in theory contain the inhaled poison as well.
thus with fast bombs you could in theory throw 3 smoke bombs laced with an inhaled poison and deliver 3 doses at the same time to multiple creatures in the AOE increasing the initial DC by 4 since it says you can apply multiple does of an inhaled or ingested poison at the same time
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acutally on a bit of a segway are there any rules for mixing an inhaled posion in with a smoke/stink/posion bomb which creates a gas cloud and should in theory contain the inhaled poison as well.
thus with fast bombs you could in theory throw 3 smoke bombs laced with an inhaled poison and deliver 3 doses at the same time to multiple creatures in the AOE increasing the initial DC by 4 since it says you can apply multiple does of an inhaled or ingested poison at the same time
Yeah I wasn't sure how inhaled poisons and bombs would work so I made my own discovery just in case.
Dispersant Bomb (link)*: An alchemist with this discovery can spend a move action to mix an inhaled poison with the bomb reagents. When the bomb explodes everyone in the splash radius is exposed to the inhaled poison and must make a saving throw versus the poison as normal. Bombs prepared in this fashion are less deadly than normal bombs and inflict 2d6 less damage than a normal bomb. An alchemist must be at least 6th level before selecting this discovery.
acutally on a bit of a segway are there any rules for mixing an inhaled posion in with a smoke/stink/posion bomb which creates a gas cloud and should in theory contain the inhaled poison as well.
thus with fast bombs you could in theory throw 3 smoke bombs laced with an inhaled poison and deliver 3 doses at the same time to multiple creatures in the AOE increasing the initial DC by 4 since it says you can apply multiple does of an inhaled or ingested poison at the same time
Yeah I wasn't sure how inhaled poisons and bombs would work so I made my own discovery just in case.
Dispersant Bomb (link)*: An alchemist with this discovery can spend a move action to mix an inhaled poison with the bomb reagents. When the bomb explodes everyone in the splash radius is exposed to the inhaled poison and must make a saving throw versus the poison as normal. Bombs prepared in this fashion are less deadly than normal bombs and inflict 2d6 less damage than a normal bomb. An alchemist must be at least 6th level before selecting this discovery.
the move action cost is I assume to prevent its combination with fast bombs ?