Why POISON is Useless in D&D 5e

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The funny part about poison immunity is that in the real world there is basically no creature immune to more than a couple dozen natural poisons, there are so many different venoms/poisons no creature is immune to them all

Poison: It's neat when player's remember it exists. I remember one of the greatest back and forths I had was filling the cave of a quest-giver with poisonous shrooms just for bio-luminescent flair, and one of the characters sneakily stole a few to coat their armaments to fight the boss they had been tasked by the quest-giver to fight. (DMs love when you use the environment to your advantage like that.)

Separating the "poisoned" status effect from the actual poison's effects is a great idea! On harvesting the poison from a creature, maybe the maximum amount of doses should be equal to its con mod with the minimum possible value being 1?

In early editions of the game, using poison was often automatically considered an evil act. The alignment system of older D&D was this weird mish-mash of a late 20th century Western view of ethics combined with a pop history understanding of medieval chivalry apparently, because painlessly killing a monster instantly with poison was considered more evil than hacking it to pieces with a sword over the course of a few minutes.

Necrotic damage feels like it should be acquired from spiders. The brown recluse in particular just melts the flesh outwards from the site of the bite.

Making the check the harvest poison the same check to save against it is amazingly brilliant. It makes sense that harvesting from a snake is easier than ever seen from a semi-dragon. I think the biggest issue people have with poisons besides the resistance immunity is doesn't feel like a poison. Let's take Skyrim as an example, poison damage happens over time. And indeed you spend a hundred gold to do 2D4 points of poison damage once and that's it.

Could also aim for different saves too. Doesn't always have to be Con save. Mental poison could be Int save. Seems odd they need to be poisoned to gain the secondary effect. One doesn't necessarily have to do with the other.

The high number of resistances is mostly due to the high number of Undead, Construct, and Demon/Devil monsters. Messing with resistances is going to mess with the theme of the monsters.

During a game where we ended up fighting a lot of undead i brought my poison to a local priest and had it blessed as if it was holy water. DM laughed and then allowed it.

For harvesting poisons I just have it added to my usual carving rule, which is make a survival check and for every multiple of 5 you pass you get 1 thing, vault be poison or scales or something that's valuable for that monster. I think poison immunity is a massive problem, especially since high tier monsters basically always have it. Logically it seems dumb that a creature would be immune to all poisons. It would make more sense if they were immune to less powerful poisons but weaker to others, or had a resistance like magic resistance that makes them better but not impervious to poison. Another thing is no monster can be poisoned by things humans can't be, such as chocolate for dogs. It would make sense that carnivorous monsters aren't good at digesting other food groups, and so plant based poisons work extra well on them. Generally it seems like you need some other general rules before poison can be effective, including changing the general themes a lot of monsters have in terms of poison immunity. It sort of makes sense that you can't damage the cells of a zombies body, but I don't see how paralysing poisons shouldn't work or how a bone related poison wouldn't work on a Skeleton. The over simplification of poisons is honestly what makes them bad, for pcs it's just a case of get the one that has the most damage or best cc effect, and for monsters it's all or nothing. More minute cases makes more sense considering what poisons are, and Should be case specific. Maybe guidelines on how to make a poison effective on a creature make more sense, similar to the monster taming table in xanathars or tashas I forget which one. Maybe some monsters are immune to injury poisons or contact poisons but not ingested ones. I feel like with a bit of guidance dms could make reasonable assumptions on what a creature they're using would be immune to, and if they didn't have the pc roll an intelligence related check like nature to figure out if they know a kind of poison that would work on the creature.

I've always run the immunity to poisoned condition as "You don't feel sick." Any secondary effects still apply, assuming they have, y'know, a biological body. I've also never held to the "applied poison is dried and useless after a minute" bit. An hour, maybe, but how many poisons are suspended in a volatile liquid that evaporates in a scant 60 seconds? Not many, I bet.

One detail that has always felt weird is why some creatures are resistant/immune to Poison. Personally, If they have a functioning circulatory system, they shouldn't be immune. Yes, this includes Dragons. In quite a few stories, the dragon is defeated, at least in part, because they got poisoned. Would this make more resistant, possibly.

Maximum doses from one creature equal to proficiency bonus, maybe? Might be a nice way to scale up the value of rarer and stronger monsters without allowing people to cart around fifteen bottles of purple wurm venom

I think blowguns should give bonuses for poisoning. Maybe poison shot from a blowgun has +2 DC to the normal save. Also maybe you can apply poison to twice as much blowgun ammo, 6 instead of 3. So it's more efficient

Psychic poison would be cool. Have the arrow tip be a sharp crystal and have the psionisist in the group enchantment it so It does psychic damage immediately and every round and anyone who comes in psychic contact with them makes a save or contracts it.

Another option for trying to mitigate the fact that so many creatures have immunity to poison damage, is to have the poison cause a creature to simply lose hit points. No damage, just a hit point loss. I feel like this concept is very under used in 5e when it should be the norm for things like a Vampires bite, bleed effects, and potent poisons.

Another great video. I plan to use most of your suggestions. I am trying to get my players interested in harvesting more from creatures.

A conjuration wizard can conjure poison vials they have seen as an action since unlike creation bard they don't have a gold limit on the item. The conjured poison disappears when it deals damage, but if it's a one and done deal like Purple Worm Poison, that restriction doesn't matter. A conjurer with the poisoner feat can conjure purple worm poison as an action and coat an ally's weapon with it as a bonus action, effectively dealing the 12d6 (or half if they succeed on a DC 19 con save) damage on that round as a cantrip. You could argue that for the sake of power level the conjuration wizard would need to have seen the poison up close in order to conjure it, which means the party needs to either buy it or harvest it, so you can't just see it on the black market early on and be done with it. RAW the rampant immunity to poison damage is what makes this strategy not broken from the get go.

Although there is more fire, cold etc resistance there are ways to ignore those resistances. Elemental adept, and Death Clerics ignore Necrotic resistance eventually. There is the Poisoner feat, which ignores poison resistance but the Poisoned Condition is uneffected by this which allows you to make poison doses for 50gp per proficiency. I'd say just have the feat ignore poisoned condition immunity for non Elementals, Undead and constructs and then make a poison or two specifically for those creature types (most of the Poison condition immune ones).