Potions of Healing advice

[GutterFace]

Has anyone had to handle players creating potions of healing? The herbalism kit says in the description it allows proficient users to make said potions.
so since clearly the player that is proficient with the kit and survival they can find all the ingredients? does this negate the crafting costs because they have all the materials?

[Giant2005]

They can find all of the ingredients if the DM allows it but I'd have it double the time it requires to create the potion and the time factor is the real limitation.

[Daishain]

Going to disagree with Giant here. If you want to badly restrict potion use, go ahead and follow that advice. Me? I don't see player's making things as a threat, and don't see why others do.

For basic healing potions, a simple survival check in an area that would reasonably hold the right ingredients should be sufficient to gather several potion's worth. A couple hours of gathering, tops. Bump the time up or declare it impossible if in an area where appropriate sources are nigh nonexistent.

For rarer potions one would assume rarer ingredients, leading to tougher checks and longer gathering times, but that wasn't the question.

The real issue comes with the actual crafting of the potions. I find the current crafting rules to be utterly ridiculous, and suspect they were designed for the sole purpose of making players not want to mess with it so the designers wouldn't have to do so either. Ten days of crafting time for a simple potion might be appropriate for work done while on the road with a crude traveling kit, but I would strongly suggest shortening that time drastically if the player is off the road and has access to a decent lab.

[Giant2005]

Going to disagree with Giant here. If you want to badly restrict potion use, go ahead and follow that advice. Me? I don't see player's making things as a threat, and don't see why others do.

For basic healing potions, a simple survival check in an area that would reasonably hold the right ingredients should be sufficient to gather several potion's worth. A couple hours of gathering, tops. Bump the time up or declare it impossible if in an area where appropriate sources are nigh nonexistent.

For rarer potions one would assume rarer ingredients, leading to tougher checks and longer gathering times, but that wasn't the question.

The real issue comes with the actual crafting of the potions. I find the current crafting rules to be utterly ridiculous, and suspect they were designed for the sole purpose of making players not want to mess with it so the designers wouldn't have to do so either. Ten days of crafting time for a simple potion might be appropriate for work done while on the road with a crude traveling kit, but I would strongly suggest shortening that time drastically if the player is off the road and has access to a decent lab.

You are talking about 25g worth of ingredients per potion, in a world where the average wage is 2s per day. If it was so easy to get 25g worth of materials in a couple of hours work, then the average wage sure as hell wouldn't be 2 per day as no-one would work for that wage if they can simply farm or gather potion ingredients in a much shorter time that is worth 125x more.
The absolute fastest that one should be able to feasibly gather the ingredients for the potion is at that same rate - 2s worth of ingredients for every day spent searching. My method is far more generous than that and doesn't quite destroy the logic of the world's economy as giving away things for free.

[Daishain]

logic of the world's economy
Heh, that's a good one, tell another.

The economy of D&D is broken, badly. Always has been, probably always will be. Adventurers break it just by being adventurers. They expect a certain level of income in order to purchase the supplies and gear they need, not to mention make a decent profit on the side, but the pricing and listed wages are such that rewards offered inevitably end up being comparable to the GDP of entire bloody nations.

Attempting to use the defined wages compared to object pricing to limit what an adventurer can and will be capable of is a fool's errand, it will fail one way or another. Much safer to simply ignore it and do what seems appropriate for your campaign and setting. If the low wages bother you, update them.

I would actually suggest keeping the suggested wages, they aren't too incredibly unrealistic for the society in question (the wage gap between nobles and commoners is smaller than it could be, but I'm not going to push for that to change). But doing so absolutely requires that the pricing on gear, both magical and mundane, be drastically reduced.

P.S. Even if one did use the PHB as a guide to the economy, you're using the wrong metric. Finding specialized herbs in such a dangerous world is no simple task. Someone qualified to do so on anything resembling a regular basis would be considered on the level of a skilled hireling, who get paid a minimum of 2 GP per day.

[Gritmonger]

There are a few ways to balance it if it becomes a problem.

Gathering Ingredients
You can make this an Investigation check to find them at the local marketplace at a reasonable price, or a Nature check if you are away from a city and need to gather ingredients at a substantially lower price, both in cases where the player wants them in a hurry. It makes sense, you can gather a small or large number depending on how you gauge success, and you can make it so that they can have a stock of supplies on hand. Consider making each Herbalism kit have ten uses (it consists of the glass vials, other reagents, and consumable brewing equipment required) in addition to gathered ingredients, meaning that a person wanting to make it in the field would require a few of them to make more than a few potions while traveling or dungeoneering.

Brewing Potions
A use of the Herbalism kit may require a proficiency check - not sure which attribute is used, as I'm not sure it states, but Intelligence or Wisdom are reasonable for preparation or brewing. The crafting construction rules would state you can make one potion per day, no check stipulated - but you could have them make the check if there are adverse conditions (making one during a short rest, making one in dark, smoky, or rainy conditions) or a desire to make more than one, requiring a DC check to make a larger batch.

Combining consumables with proficiency checks can make it seem both fair and still somewhat limit the rate at which potions are created and developed. It doesn't stop your fighter from stacking ten herbalism kits, but then the 50 gp cost isn't much of a barrier to players after a while either, so stockpiling is probably going to happen eventually.