Everyone seems to think it's awesome, but I don't like it or see its usefulness when you could use a poisoned arrow to do base damage as well as poison them, and from a safe distance.
Sorry, but I need someone to explain to me how putting poison in someone's pocket causes them any harm. Either the bottle is open and the poison soaks into their clothes/skin or everyone is dumb enough to drink strange, noxious smelling liquids that appear in their pockets.
The first would take too long and the second is just unlikely, unless you switch it with a health potion so they drink it in battle when their health is low, finishing themselves off, but thats still not a very good option when you can just poison an arrow or blade and do stealth damage as well.

You could always do the old switcheroo with one of their health potions, or put a drop on their food. Also, many poisons can go through your skin very easily and kill you, so that isn't an entirely unrealistic way of killing someone.

The way I look at it is rather than sticking a bottle of poison in their pocket for them to drink, you're applying it to a small patch of skin to be absorbed into the bloodstream. If it's done right, it can be an additional way to take out a target, but without the side effects that an outright attack such an arrow or a dagger would elicit from other enemies (ie, poison one guard and take him out of combat/kill him without the guy sitting next to him realizing what's going on).

Dude, I don't know what planet you're from, but I always eat or drink the stuff I find in my pockets. That's just common sense.

It's much stealthier. Someone dropping dead from poison takes a lot more work to figure out that some with an arrow wound in their skull. Besides poisons rarely have a horrible smell, especially if they are intended for people to unwittingly drink. Cyanide for example, smells of almonds.

Not having played the game, I don't know how exactly it would work. Is it simply putting a bottle of poison into their inventory? Or is it applying a poison to one of their items?

One benefit of this over applying it with an attack is if it worked like the poison apple/cursed item. It does them harm without tracing it back to you. With the attack, if it doesn't kill them, then they are now aware and if they were an npc then you will probably incur a bounty.

Don't talk while my mouth is fu... :dead:



One possibility is they may be carrying food and the poison would somehow spill out onto their food.

Seriously - it makes common sense that sometimes you want to kill someone without it being traced back to you. If you want to kill someone in town, fine, do so without being caught - I am almost 100% sure it will take me less time to poison them as I bump into them in a busy street - oh what happened - heart attack? Seems like.

In all seriousness, it really doesn't make much sense. Very few poisons are toxic enough to kill just from skin contact. Most have to enter the blood stream, either through an open wound, ingestion, or contact with a mucus membrane such as inside the nose, mouth, or anus.

It would make more sense if you could poison a knife, and just randomly stab someone on the street, knowing that as soon as you strike them you can turn around and run. You don't have to stick around to make sure you make a mortal wound, thus increasing the chances of being caught.

What upsets me is that I imagine that's how "pickpocketing" poison works. You do it, and the person turns up dead later. What makes me mad is that I bet if you apply that same poison to a knife and stab someone, you'll get a damage increase, but you'll still have to stand there and stab them 10 more times. Why is a bottle of poison in someones pocket 10x deadlier than a knife wound with poison drizzled in it?

Obviously, we can't know if this is how the system works, but that's the impression I get.

Just pretend you have a needle handy. It's a gameplay abstraction. Like, you know, hit points are. And being able to carry 500 pounds of stuff without so much as a backpack.

And you also forgot.

Our world /= Nir (is it?) . The plant life and toxicity could be different and varying degrees. Plus a master alchemist could potentially mix something nasty

Who knows if such poison to absorb through the skin is possible... I just assume with some magic and extreme toxic plants it works. Heck, you can even roleplay you "nicked" them with a knife. That is what I plan to do.

But yes.. I thought the "Oh look, free food and potion!" NOM NOM NOM is dumb. I will just have to have a little more of a creative mind I guess.

Or maybe they will come up with some lore behind it.

But it's abstraction that has no real world equivalent. Hitpoints stand in for blood loss and organ trauma. And by most people's guess, the weight units are equal to 1/4 of a pound, meaning that carrying 500 is actually 125 pounds, and that's only for Strength 100 chars. Of course, 125lbs is still a lot without physical representation, but the reason for that is aesthetics.

But if you want to poison someone the traditional, stealthy way, you put it in their food. Even in Oblivion this would have been possible as NPCs had eating schedules, although I they usually just pulled food from their inventory, only sometimes from the environment)

But now that we have cooking, it seems like it would be easier than ever to just click on someone's pan of salmon and drop the poison in there.

I just don't think putting a bottle of poison on someones pocket, or even spilling it all over them seems like a very good strategy. Either you have to assume that all people are dumb enough to ingest random liquids they find on themselves, or that the poison is so toxic as to work through the skin. But if it's really that deadly, you should have a pretty good chance of killing yourself. Unless you've built up an immunity. While that would be a cool feature in and of itself, it's another thing that should not have to be assumed in order to suspend disbelief.

Ya I mean if you can't trust your own goddxxxx pockets who can you really trust?

Magic is okay. Nirnroot can exist. But that dang poison that does not exist in our world, powerful enough to be absorbed through the skin - how dare they introduce it into a fantasy game?

Poison dart frogs would like a word with you.

Go read about the golden poison frog.

Yeah, this was sarcasm towards another user that said very few poisons could be absorbed through the skin. Thus I was not saying there are not poisons that can be absorbed through the skin in our world, just his frustration that there might exist a greater number of said potions that can be absorbed through the skin in the TES world.

Sarcasm does not translate well through text, and the internet just assumes everyone is a mouth-breathing idiot unless proven otherwise.

It makes perfect sense in the TES universe where potions(bottle and contents) are absorbed into the skin. Potion drinking animations ftw

Lol. Click. I have already stated that point. But thanks for agreeing with me

really didn't think i was. if i understood correctly, your point was that it could be because earth=/Nirn (a reasoning wc i never use because then anything goes, e.g. fire freezes target). mine was to lament the absence of potion drinking animation by poking fun at its absence

Yeah - it was a response to my post, originally, 'tis why I responded - before looking further.

I agree, always imagined you sneaking up and injecting poison undetected. Even though the game is just using pickpocketing to make it work within the engine.

" I hold at your neck a Gom Jabbar. "

But...but......it says pick pocket, nothing about needles. Yep. Taking a ring from someone's finger while distracting them has nothing whatsoever to do with pockets either.

Or stealing the clothes/armor right off their backs. Yes, the idea of "pickpocketing" is indeed an abstraction, think of it more as "going into the mode by which I will now be doing illegal things to this NPC" (and try not to read into any dirty subtext there)