Context: My Drow wizard gets poison use as a racial trait and as an enchanter I don't really contribute much to DPS with my spells (It doesn't help that my GM has failed a grand total of 1 save against my sleep spells out of 9 that I've called upon him to make over about 4 sessions. The DC is up at a healthy 16 but he just rolls really good against sleep. On the flip side he's yet to make a save against any of my charm effects so I can't complain too much...)
The problem is that due to real life getting in the way the game is temporarily down to a party consisting of myself and the cleric, and half of my prepared spells generally consists of "Keep Watch" because our GM loves night-time ambushes and "Endure Elements" because having the horse freeze to death as we're travelling in winter is just embarrassing. Therefore I want to increase my combat contribution in other ways and I'm leaning towards a crossbow/rapier combo and flanking for the cleric which is working just fine at the moment. However, with a strength of 10 I'm not exactly a powerhouse of damage and I want to add some nasty poison into the mix.
The problem is that for a low level character poison is very expensive and when you make it yourself (Craft alchemy FTW) that is still a factor in that it gives a rather excessive crafting time, which sucks if you're on, say, an urgent mission and don't have a few months of crafting time to brew up poisons (Yes I am getting the Master Alchemist feat as soon as I meet the prerequisites, but that's a fair way away yet) and at this point I'm better off using that crafting time to scribe scrolls.
So, when I do get my hands on a couple of doses of poison, does anyone have any suggestions on how to make them really count?