Delay poison: Delay or temporary Neutrilize?

[BigNorseWolf]

Delay Poison

Spoiler:

School conjuration (healing); Level bard 2, cleric 2, druid 2, paladin 2, ranger 1

Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S, DF

Range touch

Target creature touched

Duration 1 hour/level

Saving Throw Fortitude negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)

The subject becomes temporarily immune to poison. Any poison in its system or any poison to which it is exposed during the spell's duration does not affect the subject until the spell's duration has expired. Delay poison does not cure any damage that poison may have already done.

-The name of the spell would suggest that it simply suspends poison and the poison resumes working when the spell expires, but the spell description makes no mention of the poison's duration being put on hold. IE, the subject is immune to poison for X hours, poisons don't last longer than 6 minutes, so the character should be fine when the spells wears off.

I think this may be raw vs RAI... because this would make Delay poison far far better than neutralize poison.

[Sardaukar]

Quote:

Any poison in its system or any poison to which it is exposed during the spell's duration does not affect the subject until the spell's duration has expired

I believe this statement indicates that the poison begins taking effect again once the spell wears off, and the poison is basically placed in stasis until then. At least that's how I've always seen it done.

[reefwood]

I feel like if there was already poison affecting you, then delay poison would "pause" the poison until the spell ended. Maybe that would give you time to boost your Fort somehow. Or receive some healing that will help offset any additional damage from the poison once it resumes. Anyway, this spell definitely seems like it could be useful, even if the delay is only enough to let you finish your noble task, and then you get killed by the poison when the spells ends. That could sure make for some interesting roleplaying too.

The part wording of this spell that confuses me is "temporarily immune" because I feel like that could work how I outlined things above for an already active poison. But the wording also makes it sound like this spell could prevent you from being affected by any new poison since you are immune when it enters your system. Although, now that I am typing this out... it does make more sense for new poison to be treated the same as already active poison...so, you simply don't make the save for the new poison until the spell ends.

I guess the one thing I'm still wondering is how one would handle a scenario where you received the spell, got affected by multiple poisons at different times, and now the spells ends...what do you roll when? Do they all take affect on the first round after the spell ends and simply in the order they were injected?

If my character was hit with a poison that does Con damage, then 10 minutes later a poison that does hit point damage, and 20 minutes later a poison that does Str damage. Do all these poisons affect my character in the same round and in the order they were received? I guess that is a fair trade-off. You can delay the effects, but then you get hit with everything at once with no chance to remove any affects until they all have a chance to start their work.