Poison isn't even a killer anyway. I think the whole poison system needs to be revisited. Maybe rules for stealth poisoning or something...
Even without detecting Poison its still easy to purify food and drink(via zero level spell) and eat and drink safely.
Think about it... even a 9th level Wish spell worded specifically to poison a victim's Food with the worst poison ever conceived would be NEGATED by a Zero level Spell...
Purify Food and Drink is quite possibly, the most powerful spell in the game. (in terms of spell level vs spell power)
Bribe, charm, or dominate the person in charge of testing his food.
"Looks fine to me." *teleports*
Most people aren't hiring people to detect poison everytime they eat unless they're paranoid/insane and somehow insane. You sort of take for granted that most of the food you eat will not be evil, cursed, or poisoned 99% of the time.
Dropping it directly into their mouth may be taking to the exetreme. What if they sleep under the covers?(with gaurds!)
Classic ninja ploy. They do it by running down the poison on a piece of string from above after having drilled a small hole in the ceiling.
Most people aren't hiring people to detect poison everytime they eat unless they're paranoid/insane and somehow insane. You sort of take for granted that most of the food you eat will not be evil, cursed, or poisoned 99% of the time.
Powerful people in real life had less reliable food tasters testing for poison by putting their on life on the line. Only the insane would NOT have food testing.
besides, paying someone for the cantrip, would get expensive, relatively quickly...25 * caster level iirc... 3 meals a day... 7 days a week... 75*7=525 gp per week... not a bad haul for a 1st level, I think....
Im sure a paranoid king would spend 525gp to live longer, and it might even be a mage who can cast it him self.
Just get a bit creative, poison in the food is so last year.
Poison his fork.
Poison a door knob with contact poison.
To steal from a song of ice fire - Posion a gold coin if he has a habit of biting the to check if it real gold.
Posion his tobacco with inhaled poison.
A poisoned needle in his boot.
Sharpen his shaver and poison that.
Btw we play with the fact that listed poison is only the ones useable in combat and that instant death and sleep poison is available for assasinations and the like. That being said we are workng on revising the poison system in a way so it will give conditions instead of stat damage with, face it, is alot of work keep track of.
drow poison... knock em out for an hour, then... also... nice idears
Are you asking as a DM or a player?
If, as a DM... Detect Magic is also a cantrip. There is a 1st level spell (Magic Aura) that fools it. It's not inconceivable that professional assassins have a similar spell for poisons...
If as a player... You may want to check with your DM about how imaginative you can get with poisons. Done properly, a poison-focused character can be a lot of fun to play (one of my favs ever was a LE assassin known for the incredible varieties of “poisons”). Common ways around the “purify food and drink / detect poison SOPs" were finding substances that were harmless by themselves, but toxic when consumed together or close together (think they did something similar to this in one of the Batman movies) ; utilizing substances which are deadly, but technically not poison (I’m a fan of green slimes & oozes, especially suspended in ice) ; utilizing magical substances or devices which can rapidly induce death (one of my fav gnome kills in 1E involved an ingested bead of force).
Make sure that you have a way to detect poison yourself and experiment with it – find out if it will detect substances which are toxic over time, but initially show no effects (ie lead or heavy metals).
Hope that helps.
-TimD