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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7179503" data-attributes="member: 12731">Okay, so my google-fu is failing me. Is poison still kinda undefined, in that it RAW is nearly useless and each alternate interpretation of the rules makes it horrendously overpowered?Or do we have functional rules for poison finally after three years of the game?(Where "functional" means that poison use is a viable character build choice - not overpowered, not useless)To reiterate the main points of contention:* first off, the only kind of poison usage we're interested in here is the combat application of poison. Poison that you apply to a sword or arrow head. Poison you need to inhale or eat belongs to the social and exploration pillars - please let's focus on poison as a means to increase your DPR and/or impose debuff conditions. * do a dose of poison (on a weapon here) last the full minute or one strike only? Are we still asking ourselves this question? It's a ridiculous choice. A single hit = poisons are horrendously overpriced and/or useless. A full minute's worth (easily forty attacks for a competent fighter) = poison is horrendously overpowered, and no martial character should ever leave home without poison kit proficiency.What did the designers end up with? All I could find was some sage advice comment where Crawford said he was still thinking about it.I am aware of the DMG errata, but not aware it changed anything. Pre-errata:Injury. A creature that takes slashing or piercing damage from a weapon or piece of ammunition coated with injury poison is exposed to its effects.Post-errata:Injury. Injury poison can be applied to weapons, ammunition, trap components, and other objects that deal piercing or slashing damage and remains potent until delivered through a wound or washed off. A creature that takes piercing or slashing damage from an object coated with the poison is exposed to its effects.So it appears that DMG poisons went from one kind of broken to the other. But PHB poison (Basic poison) wasn't errataed. Does this mean Basic poison works differently than other poisons, and can't be used as a model of general poison rules?!Where is all this discussed? Do you know of any well-regarded solutions? Have the designers said anything?To be clear: in order for poison to be viable there needs to be a definite cost (both in gold and in social complications, but mostly in the risk of accidentally poisoning yourself) that explains why everyone and their mother aren't using poison. In other words, there needs to be a charbuild cost that results in only specialized characters (that sacrifices other aspects of your class) attempting regular combat poison usage. The effects of poison needs to be non-trivial, yet not completely overpowering, meaning more than one impact per dose, but far fewer than "as many as you can cram into ten combat rounds".Ideally there would also be rules for harvesting poison from defeated monsters and rules that allow you to create (and not merely buy) poison yourself (and I don't mean one dose every blue moon, like the extremely slow crafting rules), but this I can accept falls outside the core rules.</blockquote>

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