How viable is a poison based assassin?

[Malik Gyan Daumantas]

I've been pondering this for a while

Serpent belt
Poison Sand Tube
Master Alchemist
Both Toxiclogical Timing Feats
And some way of getting Poison use

I was thinking something along the lines of a Lotus Geisha/Enchanting Courtesan build. Would that work well?

[Tacticslion]

Quote:

How viable is a poison based assassin?

"Not very."

You can make it more or less work, but your attack bonus is going to be (relatively) terrible, and most creatures have high fortitude saves, immunity or resistance to poison, or some combination thereof.

That said, if your GM is down with it, it entirely depends on how the campaign is structured. For most typical APs it's not going to work. For a tailored or altered AP it might just with the right style of GMing.

[avr]

Not for assassination. There's too many ways to stop poison starting with a good fort save. As a debuff in combat poison's slow to work and expensive, but not impossible if you pick your target well.

A vishkanya gets poison use from their race and some useful ability mods for a bard. It'd be a late blooming build though - the toxicological feats require levels 9 & 11 minimum.

[Tacticslion]

I you're interested in this, I'd suggest asking your GM if you could gestalt the Daggermark Poisoner class (maybe made generic?) and get a free bonus feat from level one. This will help a great deal (though won't necessarily make it totally viable).

Also, find a way to strike-and-fade: make sure you've got access to innocence and/or vanish (and similar magic) so that you can avoid detection; aura of the unremarkable is super-useful for this, as well.

avr wrote:

It'd be a late blooming build though - the toxicological feats require levels 9 & 11 minimum.

And this is the main problem: if you spend eight character levels hoping to be "decent" at a thing, you're not doing well with it before then. You've got to be fine with being "okay" (at best) in general while putting a looooooot of resources into (eventually) being "decent" at a thing, while everyone else can more or less solve most problems more easily.

I looooooooooooove assassins. I loooooooooove the idea of poisons (especially non-lethal for me).

Until my GM permitted me to make it more cheaply and easily than even 1/3 the price (and methods of increasing the DC), it simply never worked out. And the DCs are waaaayyyyy out of whack. Unless you've got specific tricks otherwise, you're going to be forced into ever-more-specific poisons as you level, due to DCs, until your poisons are mostly good for lower-level rubes.

Making them touch-attacks (via the Courtesan) is very helpful, but isn't really going to fix the other issues.

[Knight Magenta]

Actually, there are some worthwhile poisons now that inflict good status effects.

Check out this build/guide I put together.

Its viable from level 1 and at level 8 it can make 6 attacks that force a DC 22 save vs paralyzation for only 200 gp. It can instead make a single attack that paralyzes with a DC of 32.

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

Dragon bile and tears of death are, in my opinion, the best ones. If the target fails the first save they have to suffer the full effects of the poisons. That's 6+ rounds of 1d3 str damage a turn for the bile and 6+ minutes of 1d6 con damage and paralyze for a minute for the tears.

[Lady-J]

with standard raw poisons not viable in the slightest, if the dm is willing to do some house rules to make poisons better then it all depends how much they get improved

[Azothath]

Malik Gyan Daumantas wrote:

I've been pondering this for a while ...

the concept can work, its just not practical in a martial format or on the money/cost front so it falls into an NPC role (as the GM has DEEP pockets).

Martial:
a) you have to hit AND do some damage then
b) it is fort centered save. Big (HD, martial types) critters ARE going to make their saves against your VERY expensive poisons. Sadly these are the very targets you want to defeat easily. Arcane spellcasters are more likely to fail the Fort save, they are also the trickiest to hit (mirror image, blur, blink, mage armor, shield, displacement, invisibility, magic jar, project image, shadow projection, skin send...).
Assassins generally do a *gank!* attack and then they are done. If the target survives then they are in trouble (as the poison is now off the weapon).

Magic:
Poison is generally too slow and easily cured/delayed or saves made for no effect. Delay Poison spell makes poison take downs totally impractical. Antitoxin is only 50gp and lasts an hour. Bear's Endur +4 CON, Periapt...

so, if you get the poison for free that eliminates the cost factor.

You could try a stealth or disguise vector to get at the target. Again the issue is after the target is struck.

Alchemist
Spymaster
brownfur transmuter
druid (change shape into critter with poison)
magus (poison as/with spellstrike spell combat)
poisoner's gloves