What poisons would be good, if they had scaling save DC?

[SangoProduction]

You know how some poisons have really nice effects, but the save's like DC 11, so it's useless?

Well, what if you had a way to make those DCs scale like a spell would. (Definitely not asking in a round about way. What are you talking about?)

[PraxisVetli]

More hindering than the fort dc is the amount of creatures immune to poison.
Devastation Spider poison is dc 84 and 2d12 Con, but by then so many creatures aren't affected. Constructs, Elementals, Oozes, Plants, and Undead are all immune right off.

[Arcane_Secrets]

More hindering than the fort dc is the amount of creatures immune to poison.
Devastation Spider poison is dc 84 and 2d12 Con, but by then so many creatures aren't affected. Constructs, Elementals, Oozes, Plants, and Undead are all immune right off.

Libris Mortis had positoxins, though. I'd probably also houserule if I was running a game where it came up that plants aren't immune to poison because you can definitely poison plants irl.

That being said, I always wanted to come up with a system for extending poison DC's like the OP wanted. I just never got around to it yet.

[liquidformat]

Libris Mortis had positoxins, though. I'd probably also houserule if I was running a game where it came up that plants aren't immune to poison because you can definitely poison plants irl.

That being said, I always wanted to come up with a system for extending poison DC's like the OP wanted. I just never got around to it yet.

I actually have pulled a lot of the epic feats down into pre-epic levels, I leveraged Augmented Alchemy (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#augmentedAlchemy) and created an Augmented Poison. I changed the int req to 17 and craft poison to 9 ranks but you could adjust that as you choose. You could also tweak it so for Every say 10 you increase the craft DC by and the # you increase the cost by you increase the DC by some amount.
For example say for every 10 you increase craft DC by and 2.5 increase to cost you increase the save DC by 1/2 its original amount.

As far as what are good ones I tend to like one like Eyeblast, and goodbye kiss that give status adjustments. They tend to be good investments when you look at price/save DC and effect.

If you are looking at expanding poisons due to immunities making poisons that focus on specific creature types seems to make sense and there is some like the ones from BoVD that only effect outsiders.

[Arcane_Secrets]

I actually have pulled a lot of the epic feats down into pre-epic levels, I leveraged Augmented Alchemy (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#augmentedAlchemy) and created an Augmented Poison. I changed the int req to 17 and craft poison to 9 ranks but you could adjust that as you choose. You could also tweak it so for Every say 10 you increase the craft DC by and the # you increase the cost by you increase the DC by some amount.
For example say for every 10 you increase craft DC by and 2.5 increase to cost you increase the save DC by 1/2 its original amount.

That's a really good idea. Did you do this on this board, so I could read it if there's more of your work like this? Did you also make augmenting items, like, say a poisonmaker's kit, or a room augmentation like in Stronghold Builder's Guide (iirc) so if you had a laboratory you could do it faster or make better quality poisons?

[liquidformat]

That's a really good idea. Did you do this on this board, so I could read it if there's more of your work like this? Did you also make augmenting items, like, say a poisonmaker's kit, or a room augmentation like in Stronghold Builder's Guide (iirc) so if you had a laboratory you could do it faster or make better quality poisons?

You can probably find links to my adjusted feats list (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pFwSVo331SLpKZRV_1utDb_IBKt4lwNtXlPgEgpjX8w/edit?usp=sharing) on here, I have shared it quite a few times. I don't dm that much but update the list as I tweak things from play testing or come up with new ideas. I haven't actually had anyone play with augmented alchemy or Augmented Apothecary so haven't been able to really see how different tweaks effect it. I am not as great at making magic items or designing strongholds I more play around with feats, classes, and game mechanics. I generally try to bring all the lower tier classes up to tier 3 ish.

[Gruftzwerg]

You know how some poisons have really nice effects, but the save's like DC 11, so it's useless?

Well, what if you had a way to make those DCs scale like a spell would. (Definitely not asking in a round about way. What are you talking about?)

I see it as problematic. At first glance a DC 11 roll seems to become useless at higher levels. But if you consider that a rolled 1 is always an auto-fail things change. A minimum 5% chance for each attack on higher levels is still okish imho. Some builds can easily pull out 8 or more attacks per round, each with the 5% chance.

If you would let poisons scale, you could possible kill enemies of any HD/lvl with enough poison dmg in a single turn. This is imho not a really good idea. Dunno if that is your intend. It's on a similar game breaking lvl as an optimized shivering touch build (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?528541-Shivering-Tornado-of-Death-Arcane-Channeling-optimization). The difference is that poisons don't require you to invest much resources (build wise) into it. This leaves enough room to focus on max amount of attacks (imagine a shadow pounce poison user or similar builds with high attack rate..^^).

I would suggest to think about the power level of any changes you intent to make and compare it with the optimization level at your table (if it breaks that lvl or not).

[Dalmosh]

Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Guide (2nd Party supplement), allows poisonmakers to increase the potency of poisons by increasing the DC of craft check. Its quite a good system for making poisons a bit more user friendly to players.

[sleepyphoenixx]

You can already increase poison DC's by a decent amount if you focus on it.

Assassination weapon enhancement (CS WE) adds the weapons enhancement bonus.
Venomous Strike (DotU) increases DC by 2 in exchange for 2d6 sneak attack dice
Poison Expert (CS) increases DC of one type of poison by 1
Breath of the Jungle (SpC, Drd 1) increases poison DC's by 2

Also if you use the DotU milking poison animal trick you can increase the DC by increasing the vermins Con or adding the Ability Focus and Virulent Poison (SaSp) feats (both +2 DC).

[Falontani]

I like poisons. I wish poisons were more useful. I have tried various systems to make poisons better, but overall it is the blanket immunity to poison that so many creatures have that kill poisons more than the DC. The other problem is that to use poisons effectively you either need to use way more money than you possess, or abuse abilities like Minor Creation, Fabricate, and similar.

Milking Poison is something from Drow of the Underdark, which allows you to boost the DC of poisons by improving the HD or con score of a venomous creature.

So it looks like, either you focus on using poisons, and you are effective against a handful of creatures, or you occasionally use a poison, more rarely than you would use a potion, and that is if you happened to get Poison Use for free.

Ravages, Positoxins, and Poisons are all effectively poison, but only Poison gets boosted by the abilities to increase poison DCs. There isn't a price or craft DC for most of the creature poisons in the game. There isn't a way to harvest poison from dead or hostile creatures. The poisons for sale either have too high of a price, or too low of a DC. The balancing point on poisons were the DC, so things like Drow Sleep Venom which are essentially save or suck are generally low DC or extremely expensive, so fixing that doesn't seem plausible without overhauling almost all the poisons.

Ideas to fix the problems.

1. Every creature poison should be harvestable from dead or helpless creatures, probably 1 dose/day from helpless and 1-3 doses from a dead creature. They should all have a craft DC to go along with it that is to make the poison stay potent, and there should be a cost for turning a harvested poison into a poison that is still potent 3 years from now.
2. There should be specific poisons that bypass certain creature poison immunities, or perhaps specific alchemical ingredients that can be added to a poison to allow it to penetrate certain type immunities. Arsenic may not work on a tree, but trees should be able to be poisoned.
3. Scalable poison DCs probably don't work very well due to poisons like Drow Sleep Venom. However if you could scale the DCs of certain poisons based on what they normally do (such as increasing the DC of poisons that do stat damage) that would probably be better. Otherwise something like the Augmented Alchemy feat for poisons.
4. Ravages and Positoxins need to be rolled into the poison category completely, and there needs to be a serious consideration on the alignment ramifications on poisons (currently BoED states that any poison that does stat damage, HP damage, or stat drain is evil)
5. I believe that the Magic Infused poisons were a great idea, but there are only a tiny number and all drow themed.
6. Less important, and less a suggestion, but I like what Pathfinder did with poisons, where instead of initial/secondary there were effects by round and the DCs scale as more doses are added. Because 1 bee sting most healthy adults will be fine, 85 bee stings and most healthy adults will not be quite as fine, 1 dose of purple worm venom may not make the dwarf barbarian too scared, but 4 doses of purple worm venom should make even the dwarf barbarian think to seek treatment.

[Doctor Despair]

You can already increase poison DC's by a decent amount if you focus on it.

Assassination weapon enhancement (CS WE) adds the weapons enhancement bonus.
Venomous Strike (DotU) increases DC by 2 in exchange for 2d6 sneak attack dice
Poison Expert (CS) increases DC of one type of poison by 1
Breath of the Jungle (SpC, Drd 1) increases poison DC's by 2

Also if you use the DotU milking poison animal trick you can increase the DC by increasing the vermins Con or adding the Ability Focus and Virulent Poison (SaSp) feats (both +2 DC).

Now consider a X 4 / Fiend of Possession 6 / Legacy Champion 10. That's a +19 weapon enhancement (if the weapon is already a +5), so stacking all of these results in a +28 to the DC. Adding a Greater Bloodline would help, too. Granted, the FoP would have to be in the weapon, so this requires two characters (or one character with Leadership) to function.