Please fix poisons in 2e

[N N 959]

After the Investigator class was introduced, I played a couple and explored poison use. My determination is that it's completely broken from the PC side of the equation. Why?

1) Asymmetrical impact on PCs vs NPCs. Like several mechanics in PF, the effectiveness of poisons when used against PC's is not commensurate with the benefit of poisons used on NPCs. A lot of this has to do with how most natural poisons work in nature against humans, i.e. the effect is not usually instantaneous death, but some debilitating outcome which may or may not lead to death. So it's natural for PF to make poisons work in a similar fashion. But it's also obvious that this mechanic, while arguably plausible and useful against PCs, it is not fun and essentially eliminates poisons from PC use.

2) The cost is ridiculously prohibitive, even if you craft them. This is fairly obvious if you look at costs and the perishable nature of poison use in combat.

3) Serviceable poison use is feat intensive. If we set aside cost, anyone who seriously wants to use poisons, has to spend a significant amount of feats to try and extend the duration, uses, DC's, or effectiveness of poison.

4) Poison DCs do not scale with level and work against Fortitude, usually the best Save for NPC/Monsters. Again, this is obvious.

5) No benefit to using poisons vs straight damage Against an NPC, poison use is largely pointless. Time it takes to kill the vast majority of NPCs/Monsters with straight up damage is too short. In addition, there are no ancillary benefits to using poison when the objective is to simply kill the NPCs. While this is a fundamental problem with this genre of RPGs (killing a combatant is the most efficient option), it contributes to the pointlessness of poisons.

6) Many commonly used NPCs are immune Constructs, Oozes, Plants, Undead. Not to a mention a host of popular subtypes, Daemons, Demons, Devils, Elemental, and probably a dozen other Subtypes.

Again, a lot of this was made disappointingly clear to me when I tried to play an Investigator in PFS scenarios. In or out of PFS, I've never had another player identify poison use as means to an end. Yes, yes...I'm sure there are tons of anecdotes of people using poisons and how wonderful that was. But I'll wager Bitcoins to donuts that if we compare the number of times someone successfully used poisons (in the context of a class ability) compare to say Sneak Attack, or Bard's Song, or a spell spontaneous conversion, or even a Samurai's challenge ability, it's like 1 divided by a Google Plex.

Poisons in 1e are completely broken as a mechanic for a class ability. Yes, it adds flavor...like painting the underside of a garbage truck adds flavor to trash collection. Don't get me wrong. I welcome a legitimate poison use ability.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

How about numerous enemies commonly encountered made poisons worthless due to immunities?

[Dasrak]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

How about numerous enemies commonly encountered made poisons worthless due to immunities?

I think a lesson could be learned from the Enchanter on how to deal with that. "Oh, it looks like we're fighting undead today. I guess my enchantment spells aren't going to be very useful. Good thing I'm still a wizard". So long as poison use doesn't dominate your entire build and you can just do other things in those situations, it shouldn't be a dealbreaker.

[N N 959]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

How about numerous enemies commonly encountered made poisons worthless due to immunities?

That was on my list and I totally forgot to add it. I'll do it now.

[Deadmanwalking]

They have said they're revising poison rules pretty much completely. We have no real idea what the new ones will be like.

[N N 959]

Dasrak wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

How about numerous enemies commonly encountered made poisons worthless due to immunities?

I think a lesson could be learned from the Enchanter on how to deal with that. "Oh, it looks like we're fighting undead today. I guess my enchantment spells aren't going to be very useful. Good thing I'm still a wizard". So long as poison use doesn't dominate your entire build and you can just do other things in those situations, it shouldn't be a dealbreaker.

I think you're missing the point. Against the the things that poison should work, it's not worth it. I've been playing PFS for almost five years and played at with maybe 150+ different players. never seen anyone use poison.

I've carried some around on my Investigators, never saw an opportunity to use it such that it wasn't completely gratuitous. It doesn't work for PCs by and large, even when it should. Paizo is starting over...so fix poisons. If you're going to make it a class ability, it should serve a useful purpose beyond justifying a +x save modifier vs Poison.

[QuidEst]

Alchemists can make free poisons with no feats and increase the DCs with one feat. With unchained poisons as a likely base (no more ability damage), it looks like you should be able to get a lot of what you want. You may be limited by onset times, though.

[N N 959]

QuidEst wrote:

Alchemists can make free poisons with no feats and increase the DCs with one feat. With unchained poisons as a likely base (no more ability damage), it looks like you should be able to get a lot of what you want. You may be limited by onset times, though.

I am skeptical. For poisons to really be viable, they have to offer something that straight damage doesn't. If you're asking a player to choose between blowing stuff up and slow acting poisons, pretty sure the player is going to choose the bomb. And if you're making me choose between a feat that makes me more bombs or makes them burn hotter, poison use is going to be largely ignored.

I think the problem may just be the inherent bias a time delayed outcome has against PCs vs NPCs. Touch attack options that blind or incapacitate for short durations might be the way to go, but if you're giving Alchemist great bombs, then what's the point of using poison?

[Crayon]

All of the above points are fine with me.

[Dasrak]

N N 959 wrote:

I think you're missing the point.

Oh, I completely agree with the other reasons why poison are terrible in PF1. Too expensive, don't scale well, abilities that synergy with them are few and far between and not particularly good. My point there is that the large number of immunities really isn't the primary reason for their troubles.

[QuidEst]

N N 959 wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

Alchemists can make free poisons with no feats and increase the DCs with one feat. With unchained poisons as a likely base (no more ability damage), it looks like you should be able to get a lot of what you want. You may be limited by onset times, though.

I am skeptical. For poisons to really be viable, they have to offer something that straight damage doesn't. If you're asking a player to choose between blowing stuff up and slow acting poisons, pretty sure the player is going to choose the bomb. And if you're making me choose between a feat that makes me more bombs or makes them burn hotter, poison use is going to be largely ignored.

I think the problem may just be the inherent bias a time delayed outcome has against PCs vs NPCs. Touch attack options that blind or incapacitate for short durations might be the way to go, but if you're giving Alchemist great bombs, then what's the point of using poison?

Why did anybody use poison rather than a sword? Those cases should probably still hold, with some additional fantasy things, like some poisons penalizing will saves for your enchanter buddy to get your team a new friend. Or locking down casting top-level spells, that’s another thing unchained poisons can do.

[ChibiNyan]

N N 959 wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

Alchemists can make free poisons with no feats and increase the DCs with one feat. With unchained poisons as a likely base (no more ability damage), it looks like you should be able to get a lot of what you want. You may be limited by onset times, though.

I am skeptical. For poisons to really be viable, they have to offer something that straight damage doesn't. If you're asking a player to choose between blowing stuff up and slow acting poisons, pretty sure the player is going to choose the bomb. And if you're making me choose between a feat that makes me more bombs or makes them burn hotter, poison use is going to be largely ignored.

I think the problem may just be the inherent bias a time delayed outcome has against PCs vs NPCs. Touch attack options that blind or incapacitate for short durations might be the way to go, but if you're giving Alchemist great bombs, then what's the point of using poison?

Unchained Poisons went a long way in helping. It made all of them deal some damage + instant debuff. Now if only there was a way to improve the DCs, they would already be pretty solid! I believe they said the new Poison system is gonna be similar to the Unchained one.

Other than that, I agree with all point sin the OP. Poison Use ability is totally worthless on PCs because Poison is both prohibitive to get/craft, easy to save/immune and takes ages to do anything. UW did let you harvest it from monsters, though, which is super cool.

[Knight Magenta]

There are poisons that are worthwhile to use. You just need to find ones that have debilitating effects. The Chellish Deathapple (I think its called) causes "a death like state" that is technically not sleep. I made a pfs legal build that boosts the DC up to 32 and overcomes the apple's onset time and ingested nature.

[Fuzzypaws]

Every single one of the OP's points is correct. In particular, the single biggest limiting factor is that poisons take too long to work to do anything. You could fix literally everything else, but if they take too long to work, people still won't use them because whacking the enemy with a stick is a more productive use of your time.

So there need to be a wide selection of poisons with fairly immediate and dramatic effects, in addition to all the other changes.

[Crayon]

To expound upon my comment above, I feel that changing any of the above points the OP highlighted would cause the resultant compounds to behave so differently from how poisons work in the real world that calling them poison would be confusing.

If it's that important that poison be useful to PCs, I'd recommend reflavouring Sneak Attack or maybe Feat that increases damage.

[Ilina Aniri]

there was a Nasty Poison in Second Edition called "Spider's Kiss" that was a potent hallucinogen from the Drow Sourcebook. it worked on poison immune creatures because it counted as a Recreational Narcotic (like Alcohol) rather than a proper poison. it gave the Target Temporary Damage resistance of 2/- but penalized both their ability to land hits and avoid hits quite heavily. 50% chance to turn a miss against the target into a hit, and a 50% chance to turn the target's hits into misses and a 50% chance to turn the target's successful saving throws into failures. it lasted a handful of hours, but was a white powder that could be used in place of sugar, or blanched onto a dagger or arrow head.