+1
I could even see Poison stuff being subset of Feats for Chirurgeon,
poison being "dark" side of healing, which also covers antidotes etc.
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By the description of the Alchemist-Rogue subclass, it seems like they moved all the "use injury poisons in combat" feats to Rogue. This change doesn't necessarily upset me that much, but I hope the poison rules themselves change enough that the Alchemist can have some use for them.
Actually, I really, REALLY expect that they change from the Playtest, because they were absurdly restrictive in so many ways. 3 actions to apply a poison to a weapon (without a feat or class feature), poisons being lost on a miss, you (by RAW) not being able to throw a vial of contact poison at someone's face, or an inhaled poison at an area that's further away than adjacent to you, which is... Weird, to say the least, and many other things.
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By the description of the Alchemist-Rogue subclass, it seems like they moved all the "use injury poisons in combat" feats to Rogue. This change doesn't necessarily upset me that much, but I hope the poison rules themselves change enough that the Alchemist can have some use for them.
Actually, I really, REALLY expect that they change from the Playtest, because they were absurdly restrictive in so many ways. 3 actions to apply a poison to a weapon (without a feat or class feature), poisons being lost on a miss, you (by RAW) not being able to throw a vial of contact poison at someone's face, or an inhaled poison at an area that's further away than adjacent to you, which is... Weird, to say the least, and many other things.
Yeah, poison use in the playtest was pretty bad, hopefully it's been improved a lot. That losing poison on a miss was particularly annoying, but the action taxes were pretty nasty as well. Also don't forget the long onset times for non-injury poisons, so contact poisons being useless in combat, even though there are feats to let you apply them with attacks. At least the issue of monsters almost always making their save and negating the whole thing should be fixed by the math adjustments. I'm also thinking that maybe poisons shouldn't have to be only one category, being able to eat injury poison seems weird. Some might not do anything, stomach acid breaking down the compound, but others would still be nasty.
I just got a radical thought. How about getting rid of the initial save for poisons? Just skip that step and start with the onset period and then Stage 1 saves to deal with the effects. It will make poisons much more feared. When an initial save negates everything, there isn't really a lot of drama. It's those later saves that reflect the whole trope of someone starting to feel the effects of the poison or drug but toughing it out and managing to fight it off. This might make poisons too powerful though. So it'd probably need some playtesting to see how it works out.
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By the description of the Alchemist-Rogue subclass, it seems like they moved all the "use injury poisons in combat" feats to Rogue. This change doesn't necessarily upset me that much, but I hope the poison rules themselves change enough that the Alchemist can have some use for them.
Actually, I really, REALLY expect that they change from the Playtest, because they were absurdly restrictive in so many ways. 3 actions to apply a poison to a weapon (without a feat or class feature), poisons being lost on a miss, you (by RAW) not being able to throw a vial of contact poison at someone's face, or an inhaled poison at an area that's further away than adjacent to you, which is... Weird, to say the least, and many other things.
Yeah, poison use in the playtest was pretty bad, hopefully it's been improved a lot. That losing poison on a miss was particularly annoying, but the action taxes were pretty nasty as well. Also don't forget the long onset times for non-injury poisons, so contact poisons being useless in combat, even though there are feats to let you apply them with attacks. At least the issue of monsters almost always making their save and negating the whole thing should be fixed by the math adjustments. I'm also thinking that maybe poisons shouldn't have to be only one category, being able to eat injury poison seems weird. Some might not do anything, stomach acid breaking down the compound, but others would still be nasty.
I just got a radical thought. How about getting rid of the initial save for poisons? Just skip that step and start with the onset period and then Stage 1 saves to deal with the effects. It will make poisons much more feared. When an initial save negates everything, there isn't really a lot of drama. It's those later saves that reflect the whole trope of someone starting to feel the effects of the poison or drug but toughing it out and managing to fight it off. This might make poisons too powerful though. So it'd probably need some playtesting to see how...
Something like that could be in order. It is weird that their initial saving throws don't really explore the 4 tiers of success like spells do. Something like:
Success The creature starts at stage 1 of the poison.
Critical Success Unaffected.
Failure The creature starts at stage 2 of the poison.
Critical Failure The creature starts at stage 3 of the poison.
That would require balancing the poisons around this paradigm though. Everything would need at least 3 stages and stage 1 would be very light. That means on a failure you are guaranteed to suffer stage 1 and stage 2. This would also make monsters with venom suuuuuper deadly, so I'd be careful about doing this unless antidote options are also amped up. An antivenom an alchemist could make to treat saves as one step better, for example.
As for tossing poisons, I let people do that in my own game. I also let the alchemist toss their teammates Elixirs, with the teammates being able to catch them as a reaction. I think that's pretty elegant and I'd like if we got something like that codified.
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The main problem with alchemist and poison was this:
Quick Alchemy:
Turn1
(A) create a poison
(A) ?
(A) ?
poison expires.
With a feat:
Turn1
(A) create a poison
(A) ?
(A) ?
Turn2
(AAA) apply the poison
poison expires
Advanced Alchemy:
Turn1
(A) draw the poison
(A) ?
(A) ?
Turn2
(AAA) apply the poison
Turn3
(A) Strike, miss, lose the poison
(AA) cry
The lesson being that while poison was absolutely mechanically unusable on Quick Alchemy, it was also barely plausible to use in combat in any other way, unless one had the rogue feat to lower action cost for applying it - and even then, normally a miss wasted the poison.
Unless one or both of these factors have been changed, poison is going to stay as a very expensive pre-combat buff or a rogue exclusive. Regardless of any save buff or DC.
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I'd like to see poison from the alchemist act like bombs but with key differences to set them apart.
Essentially you can create a number of poisons per day equal to your half your level + intelligence mod or however the number of bombs you can use is created.
Ideally poisons would be less immediate damage then bombs but would have debuff effects or damage over time that would make them a viable choice.
Class feats based around poison I can think of off the top of my head.
1. Whenever you create a poison you can choose an ability score that the poison damages or you can choose for it to deal normal damage. If you choose an ability score maybe it takes up 2 uses of create poison.
2. You can apply poison to a weapon in a way that the poison will remain active for 24 hours. It takes 1 minute to apply the poison in this way.
3. Enemies immune to poison can still be affected by your poison but only if they critically fail a fortitude save against it.
4. Your poison is so toxic that you merely need to hit the enemies touch AC to affect them with the poison.
5. You become immune to poison
6. You can create your poison to act in various ways, ingested poison does way more damage will kill someone on a crit failed save, a gaseous poison that is weaker/easier to save against but affects a large area. Maybe make #4 fit here as a contact poison ability that is weaker than an injury poison but obviously is easier to affect people with?
7. If you miss you don't lose the poison (that would be like level 2)
8. You can create a poison that slows opponents, paralyze opponents, makes them susceptible to other poisons etc (each would probably be it's own feat you choose)
Something like that could be in order. It is weird that their initial saving throws don't really explore the 4 tiers of success like spells do. Something like:
Success The creature starts at stage 1 of the poison.
Critical Success Unaffected.
Failure The creature starts at stage 2 of the poison.
Critical Failure The creature starts at stage 3 of the poison.That would require balancing the poisons around this paradigm though. Everything would need at least 3 stages and stage 1 would be very light. That means on a failure you are guaranteed to suffer stage 1 and stage 2. This would also make monsters with venom suuuuuper deadly, so I'd be careful about doing this unless antidote options are also amped up. An antivenom an alchemist could make to treat saves as one step better, for example.
I like this. Probably a better solution than mine of ditching the initial save entirely. So a really tough character can still shrug off poisons like they're nothing, but everyone else has to worry about at least a minor effect. And the risk of going right to stage 3 makes a crit failed save really terrible. I'd probably leave the saves at each stage interval alone. So a single success after the first interval will still cure it. I'm not sure the effects really need to be toned down much. Poison should be unpleasant. We've got monsters that automatically trip and grapple and such on a successful attack, why not almost guaranteed poison effects for a round. On round two the characters who'd normally succeed on an initial save will be able to remove the effect. I doubt we'll see either of these as the core treatment of poisons, but could be an interesting house-rule, or optional rule for the GMG.
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Something like that could be in order. It is weird that their initial saving throws don't really explore the 4 tiers of success like spells do. Something like:
Success The creature starts at stage 1 of the poison.
Critical Success Unaffected.
Failure The creature starts at stage 2 of the poison.
Critical Failure The creature starts at stage 3 of the poison.That would require balancing the poisons around this paradigm though. Everything would need at least 3 stages and stage 1 would be very light. That means on a failure you are guaranteed to suffer stage 1 and stage 2. This would also make monsters with venom suuuuuper deadly, so I'd be careful about doing this unless antidote options are also amped up. An antivenom an alchemist could make to treat saves as one step better, for example.
I like this. Probably a better solution than mine of ditching the initial save entirely. So a really tough character can still shrug off poisons like they're nothing, but everyone else has to worry about at least a minor effect. And the risk of going right to stage 3 makes a crit failed save really terrible. I'd probably leave the saves at each stage interval alone. So a single success after the first interval will still cure it. I'm not sure the effects really need to be toned down much. Poison should be unpleasant. We've got monsters that automatically trip and grapple and such on a successful attack, why not almost guaranteed poison effects for a round. On round two the characters who'd normally succeed on an initial save will be able to remove the effect. I doubt we'll see either of these as the core treatment of poisons, but could be an interesting house-rule, or optional rule for the GMG.
There are also diseases to consider, of course. Having everyone who doesn't crit succeed when bit by a ghoul get ghoul fever would be extremely debilitating.
I suppose with diseases and other things that are longer lasting and can kill you over time you could always adjust the DCs to lower the chance of contraction. But I like how easy to map the DCs are in the bestiary and this would take away from that.
I suppose with diseases and other things that are longer lasting and can kill you over time you could always adjust the DCs to lower the chance of contraction. But I like how easy to map the DCs are in the bestiary and this would take away from that.
Not to mention the duration between saves. Poisons should operate on the "rounds to minutes" scales while diseases are "days to months."
There are also diseases to consider, of course. Having everyone who doesn't crit succeed when bit by a ghoul get ghoul fever would be extremely debilitating.Something like that could be in order. It is weird that their initial saving throws don't really explore the 4 tiers of success like spells do. Something like:
Success The creature starts at stage 1 of the poison.
Critical Success Unaffected.
Failure The creature starts at stage 2 of the poison.
Critical Failure The creature starts at stage 3 of the poison.That would require balancing the poisons around this paradigm though. Everything would need at least 3 stages and stage 1 would be very light. That means on a failure you are guaranteed to suffer stage 1 and stage 2. This would also make monsters with venom suuuuuper deadly, so I'd be careful about doing this unless antidote options are also amped up. An antivenom an alchemist could make to treat saves as one step better, for example.
I like this. Probably a better solution than mine of ditching the initial save entirely. So a really tough character can still shrug off poisons like they're nothing, but everyone else has to worry about at least a minor effect. And the risk of going right to stage 3 makes a crit failed save really terrible. I'd probably leave the saves at each stage interval alone. So a single success after the first interval will still cure it. I'm not sure the effects really need to be toned down much. Poison should be unpleasant. We've got monsters that automatically trip and grapple and such on a successful attack, why not almost guaranteed poison effects for a round. On round two the characters who'd normally succeed on an initial save will be able to remove the effect. I doubt we'll see either of these as the core treatment of poisons, but could be an interesting house-rule, or optional rule for the GMG.
Yeah, this would make diseases extra nasty too. Unless diseases were exempt, but that starts to get into special cases for everything territory. You could adjust the DCs, but that starts to make diseases insignificant if the DCs are low enough for crit successes become more likely. This is a major kink in the plan to amp up poisons. Diseases tend to have nasty enough effects to be much worse, and for verisimilitude, it's easier to avoid contracting a disease than poison. Hrm. I don't have a satisfactory solution to this off the top of my head.
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Either disease doesn't have have the same exposure rules as poison, or all diseases start out with "exposed" as a no-effect first stage. A regular success against a disease means you've been exposed, and need to make another save to avoid contracting effects, while a crit success means the disease never got a foothold at all.
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Either disease doesn't have have the same exposure rules as poison, or all diseases start out with "exposed" as a no-effect first stage. A regular success against a disease means you've been exposed, and need to make another save to avoid contracting effects, while a crit success means the disease never got a foothold at all.
Having different rules is a bit problematic for creating more and more exceptions instead of general rules. But I really like that second idea about the Exposed first stage. It's a very elegant solution. I even like the verisimilitude of it being like the incubation period where someone has a disease but doesn't show symptoms yet (and my still be contagious). Some of that is done by the onset time currently, but that can be reduced or eliminated while the Expoded stage takes over that role. Maybe expand diseases to four stages to compensate for the re-purposing of stage one.