Man, I'm reading through the 1st edition AD&D manuals in my spare time and Gary Gygax seems obsessed with poison. As in, which character classes are allowed to use it and which are not. How there's a 10% per round chance someone will notice a poisoned weapon and "call for the city watch" because of the poisoned weapon but not because of the melee combat/assault? There seems to be a lot of mental energy dealing with how to penalize or disallow poison use permeating these rules.

But wasn't this Gygax's fault in the first place for introducing poison needle traps that make you drop dead if you fail a saving throw and having lots of monsters that are the same way when they hit?

I mean if he didn't want player characters to be able to do stuff like that maybe he shouldn't have loaded his dungeons with crap like that in the first place. Of all people to have a problem with players doing the same thing you'd think he was the guy who has the least of a basis to object.

All this poison which you see in 1st edition D&D is like curare or something. A single touch and your dead. In real life I don't think there's very many poisons that are that powerful.

You'd think the solution would just be to have poison do temporary attribute damage or something instead of being an insta-kill. Instead of all the references to poison and reasons why you shouldn't use it and cogitation about who is or who isn't allowed to use it a single revision making it less powerful could have both been more realistic and made all that stuff unnecessary.

E.G.G wasn't exactly the brightest of fellows when it came to things like that. See also: Tomb of Horrors.

Ridiculous save-or-die shit was the kind of stuff he felt it necessary to employ to challenge his players, and then they, naturally, began to use it against his NPCs. Rather than nerfing poison hard, he just smacked them with a club when they tried to use it in return.

Depends on the quantity delivered. Some poisons require only a few nanograms to reliably kill a full sized human, althouggh those can take a few days at the lowest dose. They aren't necessarily hard to come by either.

There's no denying that there are some deadly poisons in nature, for example in certain snakes, fish, or octopi. For me though the biggest problem I have with this in the context of D&D is the idea that someone could coat a needle in a trap with some kind of poison 50 years ago or more and today when the needle pricks someone the poison is still fresh enough and present in sufficient dose to cause instant death.

The other aspect of this is the time it takes to kill. Instant death being the norm rather than the exception isn't particularly realistic. We're not even talking death in a certain number of combat rounds. We're talking instant incapacitation and death the moment the saving throw is failed. Hell these poisons are deadlier than a handgun!

I just looked over in the garden and identified 6 different species that could be used for Injection, injection or contact poisons.
7 - Oleander can be used as an inhalant-type, I forget about that.

That being said, it's in my job description to be aware of these things and have had long training to identify problem species, but yes, Gary did have a raging rod on for poisons, I think mainly because it could be easily used to force players to roll Vs <adverse activity> without breaking too much of the illusion.

Problem was, crafty (and pragmatic, I admit) players think, "Huh, orcs are like weeds, better get the round-up on them" (insert what Glyphosate -based herbicide is appropriate for your country) and that means they start doing things like poisoning water supplies and wells and that really grates on the whole tolkenesque-medieval phantasy that was being sold.

Seriously, I think I've a 1st ed somewhere that uses hobbits and halflings indiscriminately. (Try running that past legal now, kids.)

So, it became a tool of evil (assassins, who had to be evil-aligned rogues first) and an ever-present plot device.
Kingdom in danger? Someone's poisoned the king, and it's magical, so time to saddleup quest-boy and get me the sage/dried dragon penis/mcguffin that'll cure Good King Fondlemuch the 2nd.

Oh hell no you're not going to take 10 on your herbalism/First Aid/Healing/Nature skill 20 and assorted kit as a situational modifier.
Get your over-paid ass into the local village tavern and start selecting some likely lads for a super-fun-time adventure.

And so, another afternoon is spent arguing over availability based on village-size

-Tir (I hit it with my broardsword, using 2 hands)

I'm not sure what, from a gameplay point of view is actually worse in this scenario. Mind you the essential save vs death is the first problem. Is it better that the trap outright kills you (or does so in a couple of rounds from CON loss) or over a couple of day from "flu like symptoms". I suppose the latter is preferable just because the 'antidote' spell is fairly low level and works on everything known (and not!) to man.

And nowadays we have almost unambiguously heroic characters who can poison their enemies basically indiscriminately, such as Ezio Auditore da Firenze.

I've never been fond of the "Poison is the exclusive domain of Evil" school of thought. Poison is a tool, like any other. Its Alignment depends upon how you use it; generally speaking, if what you're doing or hoping to accomplish would be Evil if you did it with your broadsword (slaughtering orc noncombatants,) it would be Evil to do it with poison. On the other hand, if you're using it for a combat advantage against foes whom it would be at worst morally neutral to kill, then go ahead, poison away!