So I'm developing my thief/assassin character and I went up the pickpocket tree to get the extra carrying capacity. Then there's this little perk off to the side that caught my attention of putting poisons on people to have them ingest it. Thinking it would be boring, I let it go for a couple of levels but then it finally got the better of me so I picked it up.

Holy cow was it fun. I had a db quest to kill some dude in Whiterun, but I was supposed to wait until he got out of town to do it (or something like that). Instead, I just got behind him and dropped a frenzy potion into his pockets. Dude went nuts and was killed by the guards, plus I got the credit for it. It was quite awesome.

My next step is to find an essential NPC who won't die and do it to them to see if I can start an eternal guard fight

This idea sounds amazing. I had no idea since I haven't played that class yet but I will most definitely pick this perk up.

Thank you for the info. Let us know how the eternal fight goes... Maybe try it on Ulfric or a Jarl?

Place a frenzy potion into a Thalmor pocket...?

Reverse pickpocketing poison is great fun. My mage especially enjoys poisoning those who challenge him to a fistfight. He can't use magic when brawling, and his strength is, well, zilch, but he can sneak, poison to near-death, and then finish with a final knockout blow.

Does anyone know what kind of damage you can do with reverse pickpocketing poisons? I know there are other ways such as frenzy I'm just curious what kind of damage output you can do with maxed skills and perks

Is there anything that explodes in Skyrim? I loved putting that grenade in that slave trader's pocket in Fallout 3.

I really wanted to invest this perk early on. I might do it if I have any left over perk points after enchanting, alchemy, and smithing.

Would not mind that at all.

are any of the poisons strong enough to kill?

they look weak? and thats why i never tried to do this thing

^^^^^^^^
this is what I am also curious about.

Never played FO3, but I loved doing that with dynamite/plastic explosives in the first two.

I'm playing a dual wielding fighter/mage, so not really invested in pickpocketing.

just googled and found this:

"After investing in the Poisoned perk you can reverse-pickpocket poisons onto targets to damage them. Giving multiple poisons to a target will make them "take" the poisons until they are either all gone or the target dies. Remaining poisons will be left on the corpse and are retrievable."

so might need a few potions

Most powerful non-exploit potions you can make reliably are around 200 points of damage, give or take a little. You'll need max enchanting and some enchanting perks in addition to the alchemy perks. The wiki tells you which damage health ingredients do the most damage. The damage over time poisons will do about 370 damage over time. Paralysis poisons are fun as are frenzy.

It's difficult to tell, but some NPCs seem to resist the poison and take far less damage than others. Also, planting poisons does not increase the pickpocket skill.

^ this.

The problem with this perk is the strength of the poisons. Going to all the trouble to plant some poisons to kill someone, while I could easily sneak to a position overlooking the target and shoot an arrow with an applied poison to kill them, makes this seem very redundant.

how many perks in the sneak tree do you need? and what level im playing a pure mage so have been ignoring basicaly 90% of the perk trees

Not sneak tree, It's the pickpocket tree. It's like three or four points in I think.

Also the Perfect Touch perk is equally awesome. Half the npcs in my game are now naked.

Depends on the person's HP of course, but you might be curious to know crafted poisons can get significantly stronger than generic ones you can buy from vendor.

I think the base poison does somewhere around 50-60 damage with 100 skill and all relevant perks. Crafting gear can also help. Certain ingredients also boost the potency:
Deathbell = 150% strength
River Betty = 250%
Crimson Ninroot = 300%

Also note that you can stack the Ravage Health OR Lingering Damage Health effect to these poisons as well for better results.

In my experience this is not true. Only one poison was consumed, though I had planted ten. I was using Frostbite Venom; maybe it works differently for "real" poisons.

You need 40 skill and 3 perks. Two of those perks are on the way to Perfect Touch.

I found most of the direct damage poisons too weak to be effective, so I just used the frenzy potions to get other people to kill the target. I was wondering how good of a poison you could make so I looked at the alchemy tree, but it doesn't look like that will be all that effective if 200 points is about as good as it gets. I did drop 6 weak poisons onto an elf in Riften and she only drank one of them, so that was disappointing. I could steal the rest back if I wanted.

I did get around to poisoning an essential NPC I dropped a frenzy potion onto the Riften Jarl and she went nuts, but as soon as they got her down to where she was kneeling it ended combat and everyone went back to normal. I was hoping they would keep trying but alas, it was not to be.

Indeed that's a fun perk and the closest thing to a 'poisonous needle' ability which is sadly missing.

I guess it's in the investment to the personal player... in his original post the point was that rather than wait for the npc to leave the city and actually get to a "safe spot" to be killed the player pickpocketed a good effect potion on the npc and let the guards kill him.

besides, then the RP applications become limitless... maybe it's just madness but Nazeem seems to have picked a fight with the Whiterun guards out of nowhere the last time he headed up to consult with the Jarl... heh