Low-Magic campaign houserule to Craft (Alchemy)

[ilovefire]

So, for a low-magic campaign setting I'm building, potions are the most common form of magic, more common than even spellcasters. To represent this, I changed Craft (Alchemy) In the following ways.

Craft (Alchemy) may be used to make magical potions. It costs twice as much gold as normal, but no XP. The DC for the Craft (Alchemy) check is 20+Spell level.

Non-casters may use Craft (Alchemy) to make alchemical items and magical potions.

Thoughts?

[cferejohn]

Well, it makes Craft(Alchemy) really powerful, since it sounds like that's going to be the primary source of healing and buffing spells, with casters being rare. Which pretty much means that a character who is specialized in something else can become a 2nd tier buffer/healer with just some skill point investment, which means. I'd rather see a class dedicated to it, or at least a feat chain, so a character has to give up a little more to crank out potions.

Also, without the XP cost, people (PCs, NPSc, whatever) with enough resources can crank out nearly limitless potions. I don't know if that's a problem, per se, but if you're dealing with, say a kingdom that has lucrative gold mines, you're going to have to assume that the higher ups have scads of potions of all sorts available. The XP cost is really a pretty good way of allowing you to introduce large amounts of wealth into the game without allowing people to create rediculous numbers of magic items with them.

That said, they are just potions...

[mikeejimbo]

Personally, I would make them kind of like wizards in that they would have a spellbook, and they'd have spells they know, but instead of casting a certain number of spells per day, they brew them. (As a wizard already can do, except in this case, they can't cast them, only brew potions.) If this were the case, it'd need a new class, though. Possibly.

[Sahegian]

Use the WoW mechanic for it. It requires a recipe that you have to learn(spellbook basically as stated above), and takes whatever rare items you want. Requiring the fresh blood of a red dragon pretty much limits your source of potions, unless you've got one on tap somewhere.

I'd also require feats for different types of potions. Schools of magic might be one way to go, but it would require a little tweaking. It would help keep one character from making damaging oils, healing pots, buffing pots, and utility pots without basically investing all of their feats into it, which more or less makes them little more than a potion maker as they've sacrificed much of their power.

[cferejohn]

Well at that lots of existing spells already have exotic components that have no listed price (i.e. free). I've never seen a DM enforce them other than someone can take away your spell components and then you can't cast anything with a material component. If you wanted to do some WoW-style thing where you were going to individually track each component, well, knock yourself out, but that's a *lot* of bookkeeping (though you can reduce it a bit by having just a few components that are needed in different amounts for different potions. It does allow some cool plot hooks though (like needing to open trade routes for certain rare components, or finding out why the source some component has dried up).

If you are well organized and you trust your players enough not to fudge what components they have, it could be fun, but it could also be a record-keeping headache (the nice thing about WoW is it keeps track of it all for you).

[Iituem]

You know, you could just use the Craft rules. The thing about the Craft rules is, you only use a third of the base price in materials (as opposed to half), no xp, but it takes weeks to make potions. Brew Potion lets you do it in a day, but with xp costs.

Just work out what the potion cost would be normally and go from there.

[icke]

You know, you could just use the Craft rules. The thing about the Craft rules is, you only use a third of the base price in materials (as opposed to half), no xp, but it takes weeks to make potions. Brew Potion lets you do it in a day, but with xp costs.

Just work out what the potion cost would be normally and go from there.

That would be 750gc for a potion reproducing a spell of level 3. A fine start. Make magical potions masterwork items at least, maybe let the DC for crafting a magical potion be 20+(5 x spell level). That would further reduce the availability of potions, since not every second-rate alchemist would be able to make them.

For the requirements to brew the right potions I have two options:

1) Introduce the following feats: Brew Healing Potion(For hit point and ability healing), Brew Destructive Potion(for hit point and ability damage), Brew Enhancement Potion(to enhance numerical values, like AC, abilities etc), Brew Special Potion(for things like Invisibility, Haste or Entropic Shield). potions should only effect one target(if imbibed) or concentric area(for damage spells, thrown as a grenadelike weapon, no lasting effects)

2) Introduce the feats Brew Potion(1), Brew Potion(2), Brew Potion(3), representing the ability to brew a potion of the spell level in brackets.

In both cases the character needs at least 3+caster level ranks in the Craft(Alchemy) skill.

Also, each potion could need some special material(using up most of its creation cost). Players should get creative about that, if one can explain why the potion works with this ingredient, it should be viable. Classics are inner organs of monsters, rare plants, gemstones...



Maybe not a complete treatment, but it's a start.

[Iituem]

Actually, a dc of 20 + 2xspell level is enough that level 9 spells won't be possible to brew up until level 17+ anyhow (DC 38, anyone?) and really will take weeks to make up.

[icke]

Actually, a dc of 20 + 2xspell level is enough that level 9 spells won't be possible to brew up until level 17+ anyhow (DC 38, anyone?) and really will take weeks to make up.

good alchemical items start at DC 25, You wouldn't want spell-like effects to start at less DC, would You?
Concerning the spell levels, the original Brew Potion feat only allows for potions of a maximum spell level of three. Though I don't see why there should be no level 4+ potions I want to make them reasonably difficult. Your spell level 9 potion would be DC 65, something definitely epic, and I'm fine with that - especially in a low-magic campaign.

[Iituem]

Hmm. Level 20 means 23 ranks in skill. Assume a natural or enhanced Int of 18, add +6 for magic items... that's a +30, allows you to get DC 40 half the time. Most skill items now only give a +5, rather than the +10 in 3.0, so at DC 45 a level 20 character can succeed half the time.

Start at DC 25 and do the level x 2 and then a level 9 potion will be comfortably possible at level 20 (DC would be 43).

[icke]

What I want to prevent is that level one potions are available at a less DC then some mundane potions, so 5 x spell level is minimum on a masterwork basis(DC 20).
Plus, I'm not too sure about allowing higher level potions, the standard rules only have them up to spell level three, and these assume a high-magic setting!