As a long time player, since OG 3rd edition, my favorite classes are Rogue and Alchemist. These two have always seemed to be real big on poison use, for flavor reasons of the Rogue and mechanical support for the Alchemist. But for years I have never picked up Poison Use for the Rogue, and it’s always one of the first abilities I am willing to trade out for an archetype with the Alchemist. Reason being? Poisons kinda suck. They are too expensive, take tooo much of your turn to apply unless you invest feats or class abilities, they target the highest save of most monsters, and they take too long to kick in with too little effect. I have never been a fan of this and really wish poison was good for something other than putting in the food of NPCs. II get that poisons can’t be too good, otherwise it becomes a necessity for all PCs wanting to hit with weapons to get the most out of their attacks. But for the people who do choose to invest in poison use or choose a class that does they should be rewarded. So what can P2 do to make poisons more viable?
I think a good start is using the Unchained rules for poison. There each poison affects one attribute, and goes on a track that the higher it goes the worse a status effect is incurred, with the final track being death. So a poison that targets strength puts a penalty on the victim’s strength based attack, damage and ability rolls at it’s first stage, then worsens that penalty before also making the character immobile and then dead. While a Charisma based poison gives them a penalty on CHA based checks before also making them basically mind-controllable them dead. Poisons start at different tracks and can end earlier than death, so not all are fatal. With the removal of ability damage this seems the most likely to me, but also hopefully some poisons that deal direct damage as well.
With the new action economy is seems like poison use will be simpler, one action to apply poison, then two more actions to move or attack. Or would it be one action to pull out a poison, one to apply, then one to attack? With class feats for Rogue or Alchemist to draw and apply poison with one action? Seems cool to me.
So as well poisons should maybe be more cost effective and haarder to make saves against, thus more consistent I feel. If that doesn’t make them too powerful, or maybe have a larger amount of poison to choose from, or each poison have different levels they can be made at that will have higher saves needed.
Anything else my fellow toxologists would like to see introduced for poisons in 2nd edition?
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For sure I would like to see an absolute lethal dose for all poisons; say con score; if you been given this number of doses of poison you just die, not even fort saves. I think poisons need something like this that will make them more palatable, something that goes "after so much poison in your system you just die"
If its anything like Starfinder, all poisons given enough terrible rolls have a chance to kill you. Really amps up the danger and usefullness of poisons from missing maybe a point or two of strength because a dog sized spider bit you to the idea that you are *poisoned*.
Considering that Starfinder already uses the Unchained poisons, I think it's safe to say we'll get those in PF2. Which is very good. Now we just have to address the other two aspects of the problem: make poisons affordable and make them easy to use.