Lets say I'm making a 4 voice polyphonic synth with chorus.
I know I can put the chorus in a voice subpatch with all the oscillators and whatnot, but does this mean there will be 4 instances of the chorus running?
If so, I think it be more efficient to just have one instance of the chorus object in the main axoti patch and all the oscillators and mixers and whatnot in the voice patch. Is this possible to do?
sure, just take the output of the polyphonic subpatch and run it into the chorus and then to the output.
generally speaking fx like reverb, delay, chorus, flanger etc. go into the main patch, while a filter is more suited on a per voice basis. not to say the other way is not possible though 
If you are interested in the polyphonic part, you can try this 6 voice polyphonic karplus strong "synth" that I've made here:
It shows how you can make polyphonic patches.
This looks pretty simple and exactly what I was looking for! I'll try it out today. Super curious as to what the DSP load will look like now
hmm, I added a patch/patcher object but it doesnt have the poly or midi dropdown menus. The edit and update buttons are there though so I clicked edit, pasted my voice objects into the new window then hit update...I got a red outlet and connected it to an audio out - it works, but I cant figure out how to make it polyphonic...
ahh, K i figured it out. I added a patch/polyindex object into the subpatch voice object thing and then clicked update and it added the poly dropdown menu to the patch/patcher object.
Huge results too. My synth was maxed out at 5 voices, not it does 16 no problem YEEEEEEY!
For future reference if you want to add the polyphonic selector in manual way:
