Afgncaap5
2014-03-18, 01:37 PM
tl;dr version: Workin' out pricing and miscibility issues for a potion that combines the effects of Rage, Bull's Strength and Enlarge Person, and lookin' for input.
I'm working on a plot-specific potion for either my personal campaign setting or for Eberron, and am looking for a few pointers. The potion is effectively just a mix of a Rage potion, an Enlarge Person potion and a Bull's Strength potion that's developed/discovered by a particular villain and used to create a small army of brutes to cause damage wherever he wants. In addition to losing AC from Enlarge Person and Rage, the potion also has the drawback of exhausting the imbiber for 1d6 days (minus the target's unmodified Con modifier) and not allowing the target to heal naturally (with magical healing only possible with a DC 20 Heal check.) The target of the potion will also continue fighting for the duration of the potion's effect (minutes feels "fairer" but hours seems more story appropriate), only not fighting people who've received a certain tattoo that the villain has developed (if another potion drinker is nearby and that potion drinker doesn't have the tattoo, some scent-like capability informs the raging berserker to hold off on the other berserker until other targets are gone.)
My first question is regarding the miscibility aspect of things. should the players discover the method for reproducing this draught on their own, do the drawbacks of the multipotion draught seem fair? The no-healing curse is the one I'm attached to the most, as I'm hoping that the villain will kidnap someone that the players need to rescue, only to have him force the kidnapee to drink the draught so that the players have to take out the victim without overkilling it. The inability to tell friend from foe while fighting (without the presence of the magical gang tattoo, at least) is more story driven, but feels like the kind of thing that would make the players only choose to use the potion tactically, if at all.
Second, I'm trying to figure out the best way to price the potion for the purposes of item creation. Combining the prices of the three potions is a good starting point, but I'm trying to decide if they count as "similar effects". On the one hand, each potion boosts strength; on the other hand, each potion gives a different type of bonus (morale, enhancement and size). More than that, if I treat the duration of the draught as an hour per level (or even ten minutes per level) then that implies some metamagic that would boost the spell slots required for crafting (and it would boost it more for Rage than for the other two). Using an arbitrary number of "three" spell levels to boost each spell through metamagic, that'd give me...
level 4 Enlarge Person: 1400 gp
level 5 Bull's Strength: 2250 gp
level 5 Rage: 2250 gp
So, that either added together for 5900 gp or changed to 75% for one of the 5th level spells and 50% for Enlarge Person for a total of 4637 gp and 5 sp.
Given the number of rules being broken here for potion creation, the crafting requirements will include either access to (or knowledge gained from) a unique Schema if in Eberron, or knowledge of an Alchemical Secret if in my campaign setting (effectively making it harder to make in Eberron, but more dependent upon plot.)
Anyway, that's almost certainly more than you wanted to know about this mini-plot of what I'm working on. Thoughts for how I should implement it?
I'm working on a plot-specific potion for either my personal campaign setting or for Eberron, and am looking for a few pointers. The potion is effectively just a mix of a Rage potion, an Enlarge Person potion and a Bull's Strength potion that's developed/discovered by a particular villain and used to create a small army of brutes to cause damage wherever he wants. In addition to losing AC from Enlarge Person and Rage, the potion also has the drawback of exhausting the imbiber for 1d6 days (minus the target's unmodified Con modifier) and not allowing the target to heal naturally (with magical healing only possible with a DC 20 Heal check.) The target of the potion will also continue fighting for the duration of the potion's effect (minutes feels "fairer" but hours seems more story appropriate), only not fighting people who've received a certain tattoo that the villain has developed (if another potion drinker is nearby and that potion drinker doesn't have the tattoo, some scent-like capability informs the raging berserker to hold off on the other berserker until other targets are gone.)
My first question is regarding the miscibility aspect of things. should the players discover the method for reproducing this draught on their own, do the drawbacks of the multipotion draught seem fair? The no-healing curse is the one I'm attached to the most, as I'm hoping that the villain will kidnap someone that the players need to rescue, only to have him force the kidnapee to drink the draught so that the players have to take out the victim without overkilling it. The inability to tell friend from foe while fighting (without the presence of the magical gang tattoo, at least) is more story driven, but feels like the kind of thing that would make the players only choose to use the potion tactically, if at all.
Second, I'm trying to figure out the best way to price the potion for the purposes of item creation. Combining the prices of the three potions is a good starting point, but I'm trying to decide if they count as "similar effects". On the one hand, each potion boosts strength; on the other hand, each potion gives a different type of bonus (morale, enhancement and size). More than that, if I treat the duration of the draught as an hour per level (or even ten minutes per level) then that implies some metamagic that would boost the spell slots required for crafting (and it would boost it more for Rage than for the other two). Using an arbitrary number of "three" spell levels to boost each spell through metamagic, that'd give me...
level 4 Enlarge Person: 1400 gp
level 5 Bull's Strength: 2250 gp
level 5 Rage: 2250 gp
So, that either added together for 5900 gp or changed to 75% for one of the 5th level spells and 50% for Enlarge Person for a total of 4637 gp and 5 sp.
Given the number of rules being broken here for potion creation, the crafting requirements will include either access to (or knowledge gained from) a unique Schema if in Eberron, or knowledge of an Alchemical Secret if in my campaign setting (effectively making it harder to make in Eberron, but more dependent upon plot.)
Anyway, that's almost certainly more than you wanted to know about this mini-plot of what I'm working on. Thoughts for how I should implement it?