[PF] Alchemical Allocation and Craft Wondrous Item

[KutuluKultist]

Alchemical Allocation is a 2nd level alchemist extract that allows you to use a potion or elixir without using it up.

There are a number of interesting elixirs in the core rules that give +10 to a skill for 1 hour costing 250 GP. It seems that it's good advice for alchemists to invest in one of each at some point. +10 is a very substantial bonus that can raise a skill from untrained to adequate.

Now, pretty clearly, elixirs are single use, use activation items. They are also wondrous items, requiring craft wondrous item, not brew potion to craft.

This brings up two ideas. According to the item creation rules, you can add several effects together into one item, but the lower level effect will cost 1.5 times as much as a single item with that effect would cost. Hence it seems reasonable to assume that an elixir that gives +10 to two skills should have a base price of 250+375=625 GP. Affecting a third skill would add another 375 and so on.
By the item creation rules, you could have an elixir that gives +10 to 10 skills for 1 hour for 4000 GP, 2000 GP because you're going to be crafting it yourself.
Now, for 1 feat and 2000 GP an alchemist can get a second level spell that gives him +10 to 10 skills for 1 hour.

It seems legal by raw, but would you think it's too powerful? This could easily be achieved by around level 5.

Here's the second idea. Elixirs are wondrous items and hence not limited by the potion level cap. You can have an elixir of a 4th, 5th,... level spell. Such an elixir would cost as much as a corresponding potion (spell level x caster level x 50 GP). Certainly an alchemist could create an elixir of any extract he himself knows, which effectively allows him to spend gold for the ability to use higher level extract in second level extract slots (at least out of combat, the action cost is a bit high for in combat extract drinking).
But thats not the end of it. The alchemist could get a friendly full caster to supply the spell for the elixir. But wait. It's a use-activation, not a spell-completion or spell-trigger item. And that means that you can create item even if you don't know the spell, if you just accept a +5 on your spellcraft (or craft alchemy) check.
You know what that means? Every single spell on every single spell list just became a 2nd level alchemist extract. All for the price of one feat and an extra standard action.

But wait, there is more. The item creation rules do not stipulate anywhere that you have to actually have the item's caster level (of a wondrous item) in order to craft it. During the creation process, the caster level only determines the DC for the spellcraft check.

This means that not only are all spells ever 2nd level alchemist extracts, but that the alchemists gains access to them long before anyone else. How long? That depends on your spellcraft optimization, but since it's a INT-based class skill of an INT-based class, that's not much of an issue.

Do I have to buy it now?

[Benly]

The problem with your second idea is that no published elixir works like that. In fact, the common factor among all published elixirs is that they are consumed items that do not replicate the effects of a spell. (Elixir of Love comes the closest, expressing most of its effects in terms of Charm Person, but it has an altered duration and a unique target requirement.) Lacking a definition for what constitutes an elixir other than the published elixirs, it would be just as reasonable, if not more so, for a GM to say that this is what defines an elixir rather than allowing elixirs to duplicate high-level spells.

Essentially, what you've discovered here is that if your GM chooses to grant you custom magic items that combine powerful effects in certain ways, you can break the game.

[KutuluKultist]

The problem with your second idea is that no published elixir works like that. In fact, the common factor among all published elixirs is that they are consumed items that do not replicate the effects of a spell. (Elixir of Love comes the closest, expressing most of its effects in terms of Charm Person, but it has an altered duration and a unique target requirement.) Lacking a definition for what constitutes an elixir other than the published elixirs, it would be just as reasonable, if not more so, for a GM to say that this is what defines an elixir rather than allowing elixirs to duplicate high-level spells.

There is some truth to this, but you could certainly point out that elixirs do various things such as imitating feats and even imitating breath weapons and that pretty clearly, they are single-use, use activation items and that there are rules for creating such items mimicking spells of any level and that there is really no reason why there shouldn't be such items, sans alchemical allocation.



Essentially, what you've discovered here is that if your GM chooses to grant you custom magic items that combine powerful effects in certain ways, you can break the game.

I really don't think that this is problem with the item creation rules. It's an interaction between two pieces of rules, which has very odd consequences. You could try to change either piece or just add a rule arbitrarily forbidding certain explicit options, but it's not really possible to say that x or y is where the problem is.

As with any nuclear option, the advise is to not use it, but there it is.

[Benly]

I really don't think that this is problem with the item creation rules. It's an interaction between two pieces of rules, which has very odd consequences. You could try to change either piece or just add a rule arbitrarily forbidding certain explicit options, but it's not really possible to say that x or y is where the problem is.

Well, to be more specific, what you've found is that Alchemical Allocation has made the "elixir" keyword, which has no defined general application or cost, disproportionately powerful, and that if you can convince a GM to let you attach that keyword to arbitrary magic items at no added cost, those magic items become disproportionately powerful for their cost.

Alchemical Allocation is a great extract, no doubt; once you've built up a "library" of useful potions it becomes "spontaneously cast a level 3 or lower spell from your library in a level 2 slot". The "trick" with the elixirs, however, is pretty much exactly "convince DM to let you make an overpowered custom item in such a way that its overpowered nature is not immediately obvious".

[Cieyrin]

Customizing magic items tends to create imbalance, which you're just showing occurs. So yes, if you're allowed to create an elixir of Wish or Miracle, you could have a lot of them via a 2nd level extract but the keyword here is 'allowed'. Custom magic items is most certainly the domain of the DM and not the player exclusively. If your DM allows it without beating you with whatever books happen to be on hand, it's on their head but in the general case, the extract was designed to work within the published elixirs and the restrictions of potions.