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While creating my new Guide to Teamwork Feats and Animal Companions, I realized I never made a forum thread to discuss my now-classic house rules for Finishing the Poison Rules.
Please share your constructive criticism!
There must be some, because so many more classes and archetypes are designed to use poisons than when I first wrote that essay.
Thanks!
This is great stuff.
However the frequency should surely be swapped or at least price the minute one to be .7 or something. From a pure mechanical point of view having it go off every round is significantly better than once a minute.
I also think your straight dmg poisons are way off. The modifier should be much higher. Probably around 4 for 2d12. Lower it for lower damage values.
Your guide is kind of hard to follow. It took my looking over it twice to have an idea of what was going on.
Poison Crafting Times
This isn't really so much a "fix" as it is listing the ways to get the highest possible craft bonus, so perhaps changing the name of this section would be smart. The "fix" is lowering the price of poisons, which is what actual focus of this guide is. Rather than begining the guide with this, I would move it to section 2, and make Examples section 3.
Ingested/Injected/Inhaled
The difference between these is very important. Each must be used to different ways, which I could go on about for paragraphs. In my mind at least, injested poisons should have a higher DC at the normal cost, while inhaled poisons should have a higher cost for the same DC. So perhaps calulating the costs with another factor would take care of that, such as +2 for inhaled or -2 for ingested.
Damage Amount
"Effect" would be a better heading. You undervalue unconsciousness. It makes it possible to take out a target in one simple step. In a way, unconsciousness is reducing one of the target's ability scores to zero. Another creature could coup-de-grace it. According to your guide, more expensive poisons hurt the target but it can continue to act. Your pricing is easy to abuse by creating high DC sleep poisons. If you want to keep it cheap, there will have to be some kind of mitigating factor, such as becomes staggered on the first failed save, stunned or prone on the second, unconscioius on the third (just as an example). I would also modify the pricing for hp damage poisons. Breaking it down to 1d6 increments might be better.
Finally
Your example of a group of criminals keeping poison on their weapons "forever, or until used several times" is unrealistic to me. Owning a weapons and being ready to use it at any moment requires handling it from time to time. These criminals would run the risk of poisoning themselves on a regular basis. Also, it seems realistic to me that a poison not stored correctly could go inert after a certain amount of time.
@Ciaran Barnes
Good points, but adopting them moves away from compatibility with the published poisons.
I merely interpolated what the math was, not what it should be.
Adopting what? This is the homebrew forum, so it is assumed that you are changing something or creating something new.
Have you conceived a mechanic, extrapolated or not, for extracting a venom from a poisonous predator using Craft (alchemy) to subsidize the cost of creating or refining and existing or new poison recipe?
Not for Pathfinder.
For Nine Powers, my own diceless, two-player RPG, I have designed an entire set of economy and magic rules. Perhaps you can find something to steal from there, to do the job in Pathfinder.
Personally, if I were a Pathfinder GM and a Player wanted his or her PC to try that, I would make the challenge completely different. Putting the animal's venom glads or poisonous skin into boiling water and distilling the poison should be a trivial task--but also a dangerous one. How will the PC contain the steamy vapors? Adjust the final concentration? Clean up the equipment? To my mind the expense in gold would be very small, but a failed skill check could mean poisoning everyone in the room, a product with unknown potency, and/or equipment unsafe to touch that must be swept into a sack and probably buried.
it is assumed that you are changing something or creating something new.
Not trying to thread cap, but I decided to use this system to create a homebrew system that is more balanced than RAW poisons.
See http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rn1z?Poison-Crafting-Calculator-Create-your-ow n