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My group doesn't play adventure paths or modules, and we don't use monsters straight out of the bestiaries.
My GM optimizes the bad guys similarly to the way the players optimize their characters (which, frankly, is how I like it).
One thing that's come up in our latest campaign is the use of a jungle setting called the Verdant Shore, with lots and lots of poisonous critters.
Under Pathfinder, the neutralize poison spell requires the caster to make a caster level check against the DC of the poison.
The problem is that it's fairly easy to pump up the save DC on a monster's poison (add racial HD, increase Con score, Ability Focus). If you're a fan of templates, it gets even worse.
It's not very easy to increase your effective caster level, though. That means there's plenty of instances where neutralize poison just doesn't work. For example, we have a 9th level Oracle who can cast neutralize poison, and we're encountering poisons with a DC 26 Fort save. She basically has a 20% chance of successfully countering the poison. It's usually just as effective to take three rounds to cast Lesser Restoration on the victim to give him a couple of ability points back, and hope the poison doesn't kill him.
It gets worse with items like potions, wands, and scrolls that have minimum caster level. At CL 7, a wand would only have a 10% chance of eliminating the poison. Frankly, the victim is reasonably likely to simply die while you're repeatedly casting neutralize poison on him.
I realize that encounters that take creatures straight out of the Bestiaries, or used published adventures, are unlikely to see this happen as much, however...
Even a real-world poison like hemlock has a DC 18 Fort save. A minimum CL caster or item would have a 50% chance of neutralizing the effect of the poison. Unless, of course, the victim ingested several doses (yet another way to increase poison DC), in which case it could be significantly less.
In our game, we've actually gone back to the 3.5 version of neutralize poison. Our GM especially doesn't want items like wands, scrolls, and potions to be useless.
Anyone else encounter problems with the changes to the way poisons work?
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It's usually more economical to try to neutralize the poison while it's still in the monster (then it's just a Will save for the monster vs. your spell DC). Your chance of success is higher and the monster will be unable to use poison for quite some time. See the last paragraph of the spell description.
I'm not so certain of that.
My reading of the spell is that the creature gets a Will save, but that you still need to succeed on a caster level check versus the DC of the poison in order to affect it.
The wording is vague, though.
If your interpretation is right, then I would agree that would be the way to go (assuming you have the chance).
It actually sounds like your GM both created the problem, and solved it. Your GM artificially raised the DCs of the poisons to make them exceptionally challenging to your group. DC 26 for a 9th level Fighter requires a roll of 20 minus con mod and item bonuses, that's rough, and higher than the CR 12 Purple Worm's poison. Since that bends the spell to counter it out of whack, a correction was made.
If you're looking for an in-game/in-system solution, Delay Poison works wonders to prevent death while you attempt to neutralize the poison. But your GM's solution works fine for an artificially created issue. Also sounds like Great Fortitude would be a good idea for the whole group, and if anyone has a strong Heal skill, that can give a +4 bonus to the save.
It's hard to optimize caster level, but it's not hard to optimize vs. poison. Lots of delay poison, great fortitude (& improved), heroes feast ASAP, and perhaps a wand of lesser restoration. It's honestly much *better* in Pathfinder, even with the non-auto neutralize poison, because the poison damage is spread over several rounds, rather than a huge hit right up front, then a minute later.
Also remember, you pretty much can't take poison damage more than once per round (from the same poison), since additional hits simply increase the duration and DC.
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Thanks for your observations, Majuba.
We do make use of delay poison, however our Oracle isn't high enough level for heroes' feast.
My Sorcerer has a wand of lesser restoration which I can auto-cast off of with UMD, and the Oracle also has the spell.
As to the setting, two of the problems from a poison DC standpoint are...
Everything grows bigger on the Verdant Shore, so we're fighting lots of Gargantuan and Colossal creatures, with corresponding increases to Hit Dice and size bonus to Con, and...
The big bad is a Gargantuan Green Dragon named Calamitus, who ruts with just about anything, meaning there's lots of stuff with the Half-Dragon template out there, as well (which includes a +6 Con).
I'm really enjoying the campaign, and it does seem to work out alright with our change to neutralize poison.