I just wanted to hear what people thought about the poisoner feat? Specially if some of you have tried it in action.

I really love the idea of poisons.. And I've sort of tried to make it work in my head before the feat came out.. It just always felt incredibly weak and expensive... Now.. with the feat.. I still don't feel like it's very good. At low levels You probably wouldn't be able to afford making the poisons very often.. and 50g for 2/3 times 2d8+poisoned condition at a 14 dc sounds like a bad investment to me.

At high levels.. You can almost certainly afford it.. but the DC and damage doesn't scale at all..and It's con.. So it probably would barely ever work. I can't really picture the feat actually working. Can someone explain to me if I'm missing something here? I really want to like this feat.. but it just seems.. really weak.

Maybe comboing the ability to bypass ressistance with a subclass that specialises in poison damage?

The Poisoner feat is almost entirely for the bit about applying poisons via a bonus action.  A lot of the usefulness of this at later levels will depend on how much of these better poisons you can come across.  Things like Wyvern Poison or Purple Worm Poison.  Trouble is, they're expensive to buy and require an adventure just to go farm.  Maybe the DM could let you capture a wyvern and milk it for poison regularly?  

The poison you can make from it is ok at lower levels.  My major issue with it is that 50g and it's save or suck.  Hit but they passed the con save?  No extra damage and the gold is wasted.  I really wish they'd have made is save for half.  I also wish the damage scaled off proficiency bonus instead of the number you can make.  Making more of these per 50g is meaningless.  At higher levels,  50g is trivial in most cases.  Had I designed it, I'd have had the poison you make equal to 1d4 for every point of proficiency bonus a character has and have it save for half.  At lower levels, it's pretty good.  At higher levels, it's still not bad.  There would certainly be way better poisons out there.

I want to like this feat but I just don't know.  I love the thought but wish they'd have done more with it.  

See, I don't care about the rest of the Poisoner feat. I just wanted the first bullet which is: Any damage roll you make involving poison (be it an attack, or spell) ignores resistance. we finally have Elemental Adept (Poison)

The thing is, relatively few hostile creatures have poison resistance, unless you're in a campaign where you're fighting a lot of dwarves.  The feat doesn't do a darned thing about the sheer number of monsters that have poison immunity.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

The thing is, relatively few hostile creatures have poison resistance, unless you're in a campaign where you're fighting a lot of dwarves.  The feat doesn't do a darned thing about the sheer number of monsters that have poison immunity.

 Your point? I'm really just happy that we have it so now Green Dragon Sorcs have a feat to help.

My point is that it really doesn't do enough to fix poison's status as the weakest damage type.

It sounds like I didn't miss any obvious uses for the feat.. Honestly it seems a lil shortsighted that the feat doesn't scale at all with character levles... Imagine if you got a lust of 4-5 poisons you could make, most of them unlocking at certain character levels... That'd be really flavorful.

I also think the price is kinda crazy for the effect. 50 gold for 3 doses of a bonus action2d8+poisoned that probably won't even? Seems very underpowered to me.. considering what other feats d such as polearm master which gives you a infininite use 1d4+modifier bonus action attack for free which scales with your character.

Which doesn't really addres what I see to be the main problem with the feat. The fact that the price is at a point where you can't really use it more than onceor twice during the low levels, combined with the fact that the DC doesn't scale meaning it'll rarely ever work beyond low levels. leave with me with the impression that it's never actually a good idea to try and use the feat...

It's not even like the poison sticks around on a successful save.. You are paying 15 ish gold for a target to make a saving throw they'll succeed most of the time.. Maybe if your DM showers you with gold at early levels it'd e alright at the beginning of the campaign, but it'd still be a wasted ASI beyond lvl 8 or so.

Haha yea I remember finding that when I originally got interested in doing a poisoner character.. 100g for a dc 10 1d4 poison damage ^^ wuaw.. I cannot imagine an instance where that is remotely justifed...

I agree that in princicple.. the ability to apply a poison with a bonus action is a strong ability.. But that is assuming the availability of poisons worth using :/

Edit: Looking at the basic poison again.. It does seem like it atleast sticks around for the entire minute instead of being wasted on the first hit.. This is arguably stronger than the poisoner feat's poison.. Although 100g is very steep for a dc10

Remember the fact that most low CR NPCs would go down in one hit from a poisoned weapon. Also, I'm fairly sure the damage dice double on a crit, making this and Assassin rogues a powerful combo.

Problem is that when low CR npcs are a threat you wont be able to afford the poison.

Just for some perspective here.. Anyone with a free hand (which is often the case for a rogue fx.. Plus you probably also need a free hand to apply the poison anyway) can pick up a dagger/shortsword and gain a bonus action 1d4/1d6 which is far more likely to hit than the poison and at the a tenth of the cost of a basic poison and 1/5th of the poisoner poison.. Plus it'll last forever... With an arguably stronger damage type... And that's without investing in a feat.

This probably varies from table to table.. But I think I can count the number of times I've been certain of combat 1 min before it started on one hand ^^...  YOu're right about the price comparison though.. I but even with the adjusted price.. simply picking up / buying a shortsword seems far more powerful than the 2 poison options we've discussed in most cases.. And still way, way cheaper.

I actually don't know if I agree that's its far more powerful.. Given their low DC, I'd much rather having somehting that sticks around and hits once in a while than something that only has one chance to work.. since it probably wont work... BUt I guess that's a preference thing.

I assume you mean the poisoned bit? Nah didn't miss it.. I just don't think it's very relevant aslong as the DC doesn't scale ya know.

I know :) this is why I didn't include any stat increase to the damage in my comparison.

Anywho.. I just wanted to see if I was missing some obviously good uses of the feat... seems like I didn't :/.. Thank you for your thoughts though ! 

I can see how the money making scheme could work with a cooperative DM.. But I mean.. that's very open for variables :P.. But not gonna contest that aspect.

I must admit I'm a little confused about the shortsword bit... My point was that it's very easy to get a hold of an offhand weapon, which will be more viable than a basic or poisoner poison in most situations... YOu din't need to be an offhand build.. I was just pointing out that the the huge cost assigned to poisons contrasted with how easily you can achieve a similar buff for free makes me even more sad :P

I wasn't complaining about end game.. I was saying that I don't see poisons ever being a viable choice... But yea, as I said in the previous post.. Assuming you can access stronger poisons prequently.. then the bonus action ability can be useful..This doesn't convince me that the feat is at all worth it.

I wasn't looking for it to be "super-bestest" ..  I was hoping to be convinced that this feat wasn't gonna feel like wasted asi

Poisoner as a feat has to be roughly balanced with other feats. It's trying to do a lot of stuff so it ends up not doing anything well. As pointed out, poison immunity - not resistance - is the real problem that leaves poisoners useless against a large percentage of the monster manual. And the attempts to limit the poison effect with gold costs and a fixed DC gives it a pretty small window of relevancy. All feats need to scale. That should just be a given when they design them.

To have a real poisoner archetype you need to have a bigger framework. Something like a full subclass or maybe a themed set of magic items. If you want it to do something major, you need to give up something equally major. But I just don't see them committing to the theme enough to do that. Every bit of poison-related content in 5e just feels like an afterthought that they slapped together in a week.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

Poisoner as a feat has to be roughly balanced with other feats. It's trying to do a lot of stuff so it ends up not doing anything well. As pointed out, poison immunity - not resistance - is the real problem that leaves poisoners useless against a large percentage of the monster manual. And the attempts to limit the poison effect with gold costs and a fixed DC gives it a pretty small window of relevancy. All feats need to scale. That should just be a given when they design them.

To have a real poisoner archetype you need to have a bigger framework. Something like a full subclass or maybe a themed set of magic items. If you want it to do something major, you need to give up something equally major. But I just don't see them committing to the theme enough to do that. Every bit of poison-related content in 5e just feels like an afterthought that they slapped together in a week.

 
That's the thing.. I feel like it's fairly weak compared to many other feats. I agree with feats needing some mechanic to scale.. I guess the problem is that poisons start off so ineffective that the feat could only take them from beug very weak to very quite weak.

Honestly I'm okay dealing with all the poison immunities, if only the feat either gave access to weak but cheap poisions, or expensive and potent poisons.. Instead we have expensive and weak poison :P.. 

A poisoner subclass would be great.. but I doubt we'll ever see one.

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

Poisoner as a feat has to be roughly balanced with other feats. It's trying to do a lot of stuff so it ends up not doing anything well. As pointed out, poison immunity - not resistance - is the real problem that leaves poisoners useless against a large percentage of the monster manual. And the attempts to limit the poison effect with gold costs and a fixed DC gives it a pretty small window of relevancy. All feats need to scale. That should just be a given when they design them.

To have a real poisoner archetype you need to have a bigger framework. Something like a full subclass or maybe a themed set of magic items. If you want it to do something major, you need to give up something equally major. But I just don't see them committing to the theme enough to do that. Every bit of poison-related content in 5e just feels like an afterthought that they slapped together in a week.

 

That is where the DM comes in and where the DM has always come in, right from 0e. For all 5e is so 'easy and accessible' it also feels like the most rules-lawyered edition... 

 You never saw some of the 3rd E arguments I did.

And I'm saying that 2nd and 3rd Edition saw very widespread rules-lawyering.  Way more than I've seen in 5E.

As are mine.

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

Poisoner as a feat has to be roughly balanced with other feats. It's trying to do a lot of stuff so it ends up not doing anything well. As pointed out, poison immunity - not resistance - is the real problem that leaves poisoners useless against a large percentage of the monster manual. And the attempts to limit the poison effect with gold costs and a fixed DC gives it a pretty small window of relevancy. All feats need to scale. That should just be a given when they design them.

To have a real poisoner archetype you need to have a bigger framework. Something like a full subclass or maybe a themed set of magic items. If you want it to do something major, you need to give up something equally major. But I just don't see them committing to the theme enough to do that. Every bit of poison-related content in 5e just feels like an afterthought that they slapped together in a week.

 

That is where the DM comes in and where the DM has always come in, right from 0e. For all 5e is so 'easy and accessible' it also feels like the most rules-lawyered edition... 

 I'm not sure what you mean by rules lawyering here. Taking feats by their face value is rules lawyering?

I am fine with DM intervention. We have all kinds of houserules and homebrew at my table. But it doesn't excuse content that is poorly designed.