Looking for a good Alchemy System for D&D 3.5

[Harlekin]

As the title says, i'm looking for a good alchemy system. We play D&D 3.5, but my dm is okay with Pathfinder, 3rd party and Homebrew, as long as it's reasonably balanced.

I like the idea of my character throwing smokebombs, flashbang grenades and tanglefoot bags, but the mechanic in dnd is totally messed up.

For example compare the tanglefoot bag with a wand of entangle:

A Tanglefoot Bag costs 50 gp, and has the following stats:

- ranged touch attack, range increment of 10 feet, max range 50 ft.
- effects one creature
- DC to break free is 17
- duration is 2d4 rounds
- huge or larger creatures are unaffected, affects flying creatures, does not function underwater.

A Wand of entangle (CL 1) costs 750 gp or 15 gp per charge

- needs now attack roll, has a range of 440 ft.
- effects all creatures in a 40 ft. radius
- DC to break is 20
- duration is 1 min
- effects huge or larger, but not flying creatures, does funtion underwater, but only when there are at least some plants

So the Wand of entangle is strictly better, except in situations where there are absolutely no plants or when u need to affect a flying creature (which needs to be large or smaller and can't fly higher then 50 ft.). To add insult to injury, the wand is four times (!) cheaper (per use) than the bag.

This also applies (although to a lesser extent) to Smokesticks and Wands of obscuring mist. If your not limited to the core rulebooks, a Wand of Wall of Smoke has the same duration (1 round) as the smokestick but has the great nauseated effect.

And the damage dealing alchemical items (acid, alchemist's fire) are even worse (at least the price to damage ratio is).

Acid deals d6 damage, alchmists fire deals 2d6 over to rounds (i treat the splash damage as negligible), granted it is a touch attack and it's energy damage, which is useful in some situations. But the range is lousy is the price is ridiculous. For 10 gp (acid) or 20 gp (alchemist's fire) i get 200 respectively 400 arrows for my composite longbow which deals 2d6+STR in ONE round.

(I know there is the eggshell grenade, but it is totally overpowered. 10 gp for a touch attack, no save just blind debuff... Which is almost like Power word:blind, a 7th-level wizard spell...)

And all of these items don't scale at all!

Sorry, i got carried away in my rant...

What I'm trying to ask:

Is there any balanced, scaling system for alchemical items? (Pathfinder, 3rd party and homebrew is fine for me and my dm)

Thanks in advance!

[Extra Anchovies]

Play a wizard, fluff as alchemy. What do you think the bat guano and sulfur are for?

Smoke bombs and flashbang grenades are both covered by Pyrotechnics. Tanglefoot bags can be replicated with a refluffed Animate Rope. Just take spells that can be explained as some sort of alchemical item or substance, and you're golden.

[Venger]

Play a wizard, fluff as alchemy. What do you think the bat guano and sulfur are for?

Smoke bombs and flashbang grenades are both covered by Pyrotechnics. Tanglefoot bags can be replicated with a refluffed Animate Rope. Just take spells that can be explained as some sort of alchemical item or substance, and you're golden.

yeah, this pretty much.

you might also look at magic of eberron's alchemist savant. its spellvials let you do most of the things you're talking about and you don't lose any caster levels.

[Mehangel]

Pathfinder has Spontaneous Alchemy, a rules system that allows for much quicker crafting of alchemical items. When combined with the Eschew Materials feat, you can can somewhat decrease the cost of crafting aswell. I once played a character who used these rules, and the gm supported me by adding in reagents to the loot. It made crafting more enjoyable.

[Vizzerdrix]

Isint the WoW ttrpg based on D20? Maybe see if that would work.

[zyggythorn]

Play a wizard, fluff as alchemy. What do you think the bat guano and sulfur are for?


Wizards have weird poop.

Anyways, on to the topic at hand!

Fair question, what sort of general stuff are you thinking of making? Any multi-use items? And, as usual, a rough party make-up would be helpful.

[Fizban]

The problem with an alchemist is that making a class with daily recovery of resources means. . . it's not an alchemist anymore. Alchemist isn't a combat profession or a spellcaster, it's a person who knows how to make things and maybe use those things efficiently. With enough time to make enough things they can have a lot of things, which makes them dangerous, until they run out of things. But if you let them magically recover their stock every day and cap it with a mysterious limit it's just a spellcaster or other magical attack class being labeled an alchemist. Pathfinder has one of the better versions of the class and it's still exactly that: a 2/3 spellcaster with a daily stock of exactly X bombs/whatever and no more (that I know of anyway).

If you really want to make an alchemist, it would have to be an actual crafter. Even the Artificer isn't a crafting based class: it's an Infusion based class, with easy access to crafting and efficient use of charged items. The Alchemist would be similar, with whatever base of spellcasting or other skills you find appropriate, and the ability to cannibalize finished products into unstable but more efficient/powerful forms. Instead of Metamagic Spell Trigger and Metamagic Item and whatnot you have alchemical item boosting.

That's the important part: you don't just conveniently make stuff out of nothing or "alchemy materials" on the spot, that's not crafting or being prepared, that's magic. Instead you craft a bunch of real, usable items, and then when the time comes you power them up. You take an Acid Flask, mix in the secret ingredient, and if thrown in the next round it deals level-appropriate damage instead of just 1d6. You take a potion of some buff and stretch it into multiple uses or alter the effect, but if not used quickly it becomes useless. Using the secret ingredients is tricky, it's cheap but all sorts of local conditions like atmosphere, temperature, humidity, and magical mumbo jumbo mean you have to make a check to pull it off which means you have to actually be an Alchemist.

[Harlekin]

Thanks for your replies so far!

I thought there might by an easy fix for the alchemy problem in the homebrew department, but obviously I was mistaken.

So here is the additional information you asked for:

The campaign I'm playing in is based on an older one. The old campaign fell apart, because the character hat completly different goals. A few months later, our dm decided he wants to finish his story. So the opposing players start in two different groups with a some new players, but their actions influence each other. We'll start in two weeks with character creation and getting to know the other characters. Our dm said, everyone starts at level 1, except the two characters from the old campaign, they could start at level 3, if it's ok for the rest of the group, but the group has not come to a final decision yet.

As my character is one of the "old" ones, i'd like to keep him more or less how he is, so no radical changes in race or class, but minor changes are ok.
My Stats are: STR 7 DEX 12 CON 14 INT 15 WIS 14 CHA 10 (Pathfinder point buy 15, if we get 20 points, i'll make it 16 in INT)
Gnome Factotum 2, Cloistered Cleric 1 (Luck and Travel Domain, Knowledge Devotion) planning to take to more levels of Factotum and then going into Chameleon.
Feats and Flaws: Able learner (for Chameleon), Nymph's Kiss, Slow (mostly roleplaying reasons, i met a friendly nymph and i lost a leg in combat)
My 3rd level feat is undecided yet, maybe Darkstalker, Font of Inspiration, Improved initiative

The second player from the old campaign played an Archer Fighter (he hasn't played d&d before) and our dm gave him TOB maneuvers and stances (Falling Star, homebrew) and the warblade recovering method to boost his character. He hasn't decided if he wants to continue his old character or start a new one.

The other players are, as far as i know, planning the following:
Barbarian
Dragonborn Paladin
Cloistered Cleric focused on healing and casting

My character is more of a skillmonkey, storyteller, prankster and jester than a combatant so smokebombs and tanglefoot bags are more in his nature than iaijutsu focus (and i think the gnomish quickrazor is utterly ridiculous), so i thought alchemy is the way to go.

The main problems with alchemy for me are:

price
I don't really know how to solve this issue, since i don't have much experience with wealth by level because our dm doesn't use it strictly. On the other hand, this might be no problem, because I can find ingredients or buy them for reasonable prices anyway.
But what would be a reasonable price for these one use items?
crafting time
Our dm already indicated, that he won't be to strict with downtime and creation of alchemical items, so no big problem either.
limited choices
I'd like mostly battleield control and debuffs. There are a lot of cool spells, which are easy to refluff as alchemy (grease, glitterdust, wall of smoke, web ...)
non-scaling DCs
I think for balance reasons the DC should 10+1/2 charecter lvl+INT, but it would be cool, to derive the dc from your alchemy check or ranks without messing with the game balance.
use of multiple items
If we make (damaging) alchemical items cheaper, we lose the main balancing mechanism here. Because what's keeping the barbarian from throwing barrels of alchemist's fire to deal dozens of d6 fire damage? (I know that the barbarian could probably deal more damage by charging...)
giving them to other characters
This is mainly an issue if you could make buffing potions, since the main problem with buffing is the action economy, and if everyone uses a masterwork potion belt (frcs) it's suddenly like a quickened, chained buff for free.


Actually these are no problems, which can't be solved by a gentlemen's agreement. We are all reasonable people and as you can see with my character build, it's more about the role-playing and not so much about optimization. But I still would like to hear your thoughts and ideas on these problems.

Thanks in advance!

[Harlekin]

The problem with an alchemist is that making a class with daily recovery of resources means. . . it's not an alchemist anymore. Alchemist isn't a combat profession or a spellcaster, it's a person who knows how to make things and maybe use those things efficiently. With enough time to make enough things they can have a lot of things, which makes them dangerous, until they run out of things. But if you let them magically recover their stock every day and cap it with a mysterious limit it's just a spellcaster or other magical attack class being labeled an alchemist. Pathfinder has one of the better versions of the class and it's still exactly that: a 2/3 spellcaster with a daily stock of exactly X bombs/whatever and no more (that I know of anyway).

If you really want to make an alchemist, it would have to be an actual crafter. Even the Artificer isn't a crafting based class: it's an Infusion based class, with easy access to crafting and efficient use of charged items. The Alchemist would be similar, with whatever base of spellcasting or other skills you find appropriate, and the ability to cannibalize finished products into unstable but more efficient/powerful forms. Instead of Metamagic Spell Trigger and Metamagic Item and whatnot you have alchemical item boosting.
I agree, the "use your powers X times per day or per encounter" kind of disagrees with the "feeling" i want from an alchemist.
But the "preparing approach" has it's own drawbacks. Mainly the free buffing and throwing ridicoulus amounts of acid/alchemist's fire in one round issues I mentioned in my previous post.

That's the important part: you don't just conveniently make stuff out of nothing or "alchemy materials" on the spot, that's not crafting or being prepared, that's magic. Instead you craft a bunch of real, usable items, and then when the time comes you power them up. You take an Acid Flask, mix in the secret ingredient, and if thrown in the next round it deals level-appropriate damage instead of just 1d6. You take a potion of some buff and stretch it into multiple uses or alter the effect, but if not used quickly it becomes useless. Using the secret ingredients is tricky, it's cheap but all sorts of local conditions like atmosphere, temperature, humidity, and magical mumbo jumbo mean you have to make a check to pull it off which means you have to actually be an Alchemist.
I love this idea! It kind of solves the aforementioned problems and it has the perfect alchemist "feel". I'll see what i can do with this!