Should poisons finally cost one action ?

[Zergor]

I am playing a toxicologist and having a blast even if it was a bit on the weak side for a long time. The last errata allowing to create and use a poison (or draw and use in the same action mirroring the rogue feat) does wonder and I think now the subclass feels a bit more on par with others.

But that makes me think that the rogue and alchemist have now both an option that change what is a 3 action activity (draw a poison then apply it) into a one action activity. It is basically unseen for any other class to have so much action economy compared to the baseline.

And yet it doesn't feel that powerful. The reason is simple : The base cost is way too high. Applying an injury poison as a 2 actions activity is way to stiff of a cost compared to the efficency of said poison. Applying an injury poison has the same cost as casting a spell even if it has two major downsides : It requires a weapon hit and will be lost on a critical miss (and no extra upside on a crit to compensate) and it will be wasted on a successful save (where most spells will still have a minor effect).

It's even harder to understand when inhaled poisons are used as a 1 action activity which bypass the requirement of a hit.

If injury poisons costed 1 action to use that would still not invalidate the rogue poisoner feat and toxiciologist that transform 2 action ito one (plus rogue can use contact poisons as injury) and that would make other characters that find injury poisons not sell them immediately or blindly apply them between fights just for the next encounter to be undeads.

Yes a strength of injury poisons is that you can technically use them between fights but an interesting part of pf2e is adapting to situations and if you have an anti-mage poisons it would feel much better to be able to use it reactively mid-fight as you realize one enemy is a caster than just having it randomly on your weapon.

[MadamReshi]

I've often wondered this about potions and consumables in general - how much they are worth two actions in combat versus one.

My players wanted a 'one action to pull a consumable out and use it' rule for alchemical items, etc. It doesn't *seem* to break things, but they haven't heavily used it.

I definitely understand why Paizo limited the application of poisons to be a longer activity - they are more than likely afraid of people using them constantly and consistently for every attack. I don't know if that would be that strong compared to the expense, however.

Anyone have more experience to chime in here on the balance?

[shroudb]

For the potions part, while at lower levels a 1 action drink+draw is naturally limited by your funds, after some levels that is not a real consideration.

I do think that by the time potions of quickness become cheap enough, it would be too strong. It is the same level range that decent resistance potions, temp hp elixirs, potions of flying, and etc all become available and 1 action to use all of them seems a bit too strong to me.

Even with retrieval belts, you're still limited to 1 such potion per battle which seems fair to me.

Edit:
For poisons... I don't think that change will have any impact on the game. Poisons are either useless if you're not built for them, or marginally useful if you are. If you are built for them, you're already applying them for 1 action, if you're not the change won't make them useful.

[Zergor]

For potions, my group like using retrival prisms for the quickness potion specifically and it's rare to need more than that.

For the question of "would poisons we too powerful if the interact costed only one action ?" I may be wrong but even when my alchemist was doing double poisons that can spread to the next enemy and have my class dc instead of the normal one I didn't feel they were too powerful. I had an impact on the fight but clearly not on the level of our ranger for instance.

Poisons can be powerful if the opponent low roll their save as there are poisons that are very crippling at stage 2. But that is the perfect case and many times the enemy will save. Other alchemical items have an easier time debuffing an enemy. A dread ampoule will only cost 1 action to use and frighten 1 on a hit (2 on a crit) which is a very powerful debuff.

Poisons have the specificity of having very high ceiling. If the enemy suffers the full 6 rounds of a poison while reaching stage 3 early, the effect is ridiculous. But the chance of it happening is abysmal even against a low level monster with low con. Most of the time a poison will last 0, 1 or 2 rounds (from my experience I had only one enemy unlucky enough to suffer more than 3 rounds of poison).

In general I feel that the power level of a poison is roughly the power level of a bomb but the bomb cost 1 less action to use.

[Teridax]

I definitely agree that the base action cost of drawing a poison, applying it, and then Striking for a chance of applying the poison is too great. One could argue that you're meant to pre-apply the poison, but that doesn't work well for builds that want to keep reapplying poisons, especially since injury poisons wear off pretty quickly in combat. Earlier in 2e's history, poisons and alchemical items were also generally stronger, but the remaster nerfed them altogether when rebalancing the Alchemist, which had the net result of making poisons even less desirable to most characters.

With this in mind, I not only agree with the OP, but would perhaps even push further: injury poisons ought to require a single action to activate, and the injury trait could include a bit of rules text stating you can use a free hand to Interact to draw an injury poison and apply it as part of the action used to Activate it. This means applying an injury poison to a weapon and then Striking with would go from requiring four actions to two, still a significant cost but more in line with the benefits of the poison. From there, Poison Weapon and the Toxicologist's benefits could let you Activate an injury poison and then Strike with the same action, with the Tox benefit letting you use Quick Alchemy to make the poison instead of Interacting to draw it, much like how Quick Bomber lets Bombers Quick Alch and Strike in one action.

I also think that even with these benefits in mind, poisons would still be unlikely to be viable in 2e: part of the problem is that a huge number of monsters are immune to poison, which is why the Toxicologist needs to bypass that immunity in their features (the Poisoner archetype and Rogue, by contrast, don't gain this benefit), but the other large part of the problem is that poisons pretty much only go up against Fort saves and do nothing if the target succeeds. Whereas casters can generally switch to at least one other defense if an enemy's got a high save, poison builds have no such option. It would help significantly, in my opinion, if injury poisons automatically applied their affliction at stage 1 on a hit, and stage 2 on a critical hit.

[Ascalaphus]

I don't expect the majority of monsters to have true poison immunity, but you do have broad classes of monsters that are (undead, constructs). And add to that any monster of higher level than you with fortitude as primary save (which is really quite common) and poisons clearly aren't that good for PCs.

I think we can compare poisons to Spellstrike; it's something that you deliver on a strike, and takes actions to recharge after making an attempt. They're not the same, but comparable enough to draw some conclusions about poison use.

Compared to spellstrike:
* Both of them require a Strike
* Spellstrike requires either a hit (for spell attacks) or a not-crit-miss plus save (save spells). There might be partial effect even if the enemy gets a regular success on a save. Poison requires a hit AND a failed save, but isn't discharged on a regular miss.
* Poison only targets a single save which is often high, and is blocked by a frequent immunity.
* Both take actions to recharge, both have some ways to make that more efficient.

Overall I think poison doesn't have a great cost/benefit ratio here. I think it should be either cheaper or more rewarding. However, you have to be careful how to tweak that;
* You don't want non-poison classes to just start adding poison to everything because it's so cheap.
* You don't want poisons used against PCs to suddenly become a lot stronger too just because you were trying to make a PC playstyle work better.

[Teridax]

I agree with the above. I'll point out, however, that NPCs already bypass the PC restrictions on poisons in various ways: for starters, NPCs tend to have a much easier time inflicting poison, as they either have poison as an always-on Strike rider, as with the wereant poisoner or Scarlet Triad poisoner, or have a bespoke ability for applying poison at a reduced action cost, as with the assassin NPC. Because PCs don't have the save distributions nor the same access to immunities as NPCs, poisons also already work far more consistently against PCs in a way that I don't think would be hugely changed by things like switching the defense from Fort to AC on the initial effects of an injury poison.

I also think poison is inherently going to be niche at best when used from purchased consumables by non-Alchemists, because on top of all of the above their poison damage and DCs tend to fall off quite quickly. If you have the alchemy benefits in some form or another, then you get to make a few poisoned Strikes for free in a day, but otherwise using at-level poisons with any kind of consistency is a costly affair.

[Finoan]

shroudb wrote:

Poisons are either useless if you're not built for them, or marginally useful if you are. If you are built for them, you're already applying them for 1 action, if you're not the change won't make them useful.

Yeah, that seems accurate to me.

So to address OPs concern, perhaps it is best to give a general way of getting the one-action weapon poisoning ability onto characters that are using poisons regardless of their base class.

So something like adding Poison Weapon as an additional Feat to the Poisoner archetype.

Edit: Oh, its already there.

[Zergor]

Ascalaphus wrote:

* You don't want non-poison classes to just start adding poison to everything because it's so cheap.

I don't think that is a concern, aside from the alchemist that can craft them, poisons are far from cheap. Their DC is level dependent and they do nothing on a save so you have to buy poisons of your level which is very costly. There is more chance that adventurer will use the one they find than buying some. I think I never have seen anyone buy poison. If you mean "the alchimist would give poison to everyone",I am ok with it. They can also give bombs or elixirs to everyone. At the end of the day what they give is a resourse they don't have for themselves and they usually make better use of their own stuff than their party (knowing what to give and what to keep to be the most efficient is what I find great about the class).

Crafted poisons compete with all the other alchemical items. And as I said before, bombs have roughly the same power level and are way easier to use.

I don't fully agree with Teriax that poison should be drawn and applied with the same action without feat / toxicologist. Poisons can still debilitate a monster and are powerful items in the right situation. Yes they require an extra action to hit but it is not a wasted action as the hit still does all the normal hit effects.

[ScooterScoots]

shroudb wrote:

For the potions part, while at lower levels a 1 action drink+draw is naturally limited by your funds, after some levels that is not a real consideration.

I do think that by the time potions of quickness become cheap enough, it would be too strong. It is the same level range that decent resistance potions, temp hp elixirs, potions of flying, and etc all become available and 1 action to use all of them seems a bit too strong to me.

Even with retrieval belts, you're still limited to 1 such potion per battle which seems fair to me.

Edit:
For poisons... I don't think that change will have any impact on the game. Poisons are either useless if you're not built for them, or marginally useful if you are. If you are built for them, you're already applying them for 1 action, if you're not the change won't make them useful.

Potions of quickness effectively already are 1 action if you pay a little more for potion patches. Sure you only get one potion patch but not like there’s better options for them than quickness potions.

[shroudb]

ScooterScoots wrote:

shroudb wrote:

For the potions part, while at lower levels a 1 action drink+draw is naturally limited by your funds, after some levels that is not a real consideration.

I do think that by the time potions of quickness become cheap enough, it would be too strong. It is the same level range that decent resistance potions, temp hp elixirs, potions of flying, and etc all become available and 1 action to use all of them seems a bit too strong to me.

Even with retrieval belts, you're still limited to 1 such potion per battle which seems fair to me.

Edit:
For poisons... I don't think that change will have any impact on the game. Poisons are either useless if you're not built for them, or marginally useful if you are. If you are built for them, you're already applying them for 1 action, if you're not the change won't make them useful.

Potions of quickness effectively already are 1 action if you pay a little more for potion patches. Sure you only get one potion patch but not like there’s better options for them than quickness potions.

That really depends on the build. If my build lacks self healing and an empty hand (like a two hander fighter as an example) I prefer to have a healing option in the patch.

[Trip.H]

While there are lots of shenanigans to get a few effectively 1A consumables for most fights, we can now kinda ignore them thanks to Paizo's ~power creep.

A single class feat can add Exemplar's Horn of Plenty to just about any PC. Which really does add 1A drinkables in the generic sense.

Can fill it with both buff options and healing potions, no issues. A few freebies, but the main game changer is holding 10 drinkables, all available at 1A as an Immanence passive.

And the Horn of Plenty is not considered to be the top tier must-get Ikon, neither for either Exemplars nor for those dipping into it as an archetype.

[StarlingSweeter]

While action cost is a big factor that affects poison design I think an even bigger one is duration. A lot of poisons are underwhelming because their effects are balanced around lasting for 1+ minutes and going through several stages.

I can count on 2 hands the amount of times an enemy has failed against a player poison, on 1 hand the amount of times they've gotten to stage 2+. This is because combat length rarely goes beyond 4-5 rounds and the chances of an enemy sticking around that long if they have a low enough save to fail multiple rounds is low.

I think poison damage numbers and effects should be rebalanced to put out their damage in 4 rounds or less. In addition to the action cost discussion mentioned in this thread.

[Squiggit]

I've never encountered a single poison centric build that didn't involve picking up a feat to apply poisons faster, and I've never run into a player without those options even engaging with poisons at all in combat (outside pre-poisoning).

Which suggests that such feats are taxes that effectively wall off those mechanics.

[ScooterScoots]

shroudb wrote:

ScooterScoots wrote:

shroudb wrote:

For the potions part, while at lower levels a 1 action drink+draw is naturally limited by your funds, after some levels that is not a real consideration.

I do think that by the time potions of quickness become cheap enough, it would be too strong. It is the same level range that decent resistance potions, temp hp elixirs, potions of flying, and etc all become available and 1 action to use all of them seems a bit too strong to me.

Even with retrieval belts, you're still limited to 1 such potion per battle which seems fair to me.

Edit:
For poisons... I don't think that change will have any impact on the game. Poisons are either useless if you're not built for them, or marginally useful if you are. If you are built for them, you're already applying them for 1 action, if you're not the change won't make them useful.

Potions of quickness effectively already are 1 action if you pay a little more for potion patches. Sure you only get one potion patch but not like there’s better options for them than quickness potions.

That really depends on the build. If my build lacks self healing and an empty hand (like a two hander fighter as an example) I prefer to have a healing option in the patch.

The best in combat healing options are alchemical though, soothing tonics and numbing tonics. I guess you could have a health potion in there but heath potions cost way too much for the value they bring.

[exequiel759]

I feel the pre-Errata action cost of poisons is in part a consequence of the tree action systems and how Paizo initially overvalued the power of certain actions. The good thing is that Paizo has recognized 3 actions for a poison was insane, and while for non-alchemists it isn't worth the action cost even after post-Errata, if PF3e is an evolution of PF2e we can expect this, among other things, to be reflected there.

[ottdmk]

I've been doing some theorycrafting around Toxicologists lately. I put together a list of Injury Poisons, and compared it to Alchemist Class DC. Turns out that most of the time, the at-level Poison will either have the same DC or better.

There are a few occasions when you need to use a lower-level Injury Poison. If Nethys can be believed, there is no Level 9 Injury Poison. At Level 17, the only commonly available Injury Poison is False Hope, and while a clever idea, it really sucks in play.

Finally, you may not be able to get access to Achaekek's Kiss for various reasons, but it turns out that Pale Fade at least has the same DC (42.)

Still, what's really harsh is that Poisons only have two degrees of success. Which is why I'm grateful Paizo introduced Pernicious Poison

The modal (most common) Fort Save per level generally is around the High Save point (there are exceptions. Levels 11 & 15 have weird dips.) Which means that those creatures get a Save or better around 70%-75% of the time.

At least Pernicious flips it so you get some result 75%-80% of the time. Heck, since it doesn't have a Save, you can now look at Poisoning a weapon with a Quick Vial as a weird kind of Vicious Swing adding in Poison or Acid.