Augmented Alchemy by default?

[AvatarVecna]

Suppose that the epic feat Augmented Alchemy (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#augmentedAlchemy) ceased to exist, and what it used to do (incrementally more powerful alchemical items in exchange for incrementally higher DCs and costs) is now just a default option available when using the Craft (Alchemy) skill - no feat required, no epic level required.

What breaks?

[JNAProductions]

Suppose that the epic feat Augmented Alchemy (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#augmentedAlchemy) ceased to exist, and what it used to do (incrementally more powerful alchemical items in exchange for incrementally higher DCs and costs) is now just a default option available when using the Craft (Alchemy) skill - no feat required, no epic level required.

What breaks?

EVERYTHING!

Okay, looking at the items...

DC 35 Acid does 2d6 acid damage, with 2 splash. Not a problem.
DC 40 Alchemist's Fire does the same, but fire and with DoT. Not a problem.
DC 40 Smokestick is a 20' cube. Wahoo! Not a problem.
DC 40 Tindertwig lights fires SO GOOD. Not a problem, and actually no effect.
DC 45 Antitoxin would give +10 to Fort saves against poison. That actually might be useful! Except, oh wait, it doesn't double that, it doubles duration. So you spend 5 times the cost for two hours instead of one. Not worth it at all.
DC 45 Sunrod lasts 12 hours. Not a problem.
DC 45 Tanglefoot Bag lasts 4d4 rounds, I guess? But it already lasted most or all of a fight, so no problem.
DC 45 Thunderstone lasts two hours. Not a problem.

So, of the listed items in the SRD, you got Acid, Fire, and Smokestick that might be vaguely worth it in any way.

If you can hit DC 55, 4d6 acid on a touch attack isn't awful? But that's 125 GP a pop. It'd probably be cheaper to just use a wand of Magic Missile. And more reliable.
DC 60 and double the price on Alchemist's Fire, and more easily resisted. So not worth it.
A Smokestick could go to a 40' cube at DC 60, which is neat. You could, with some HUGE bonuses, cover a massive area! But wind still disperses it fine, so...

This is an Epic Feat? Who thought it was worth that? At all?

[AvatarVecna]

EVERYTHING!

Okay, looking at the items...

DC 35 Acid does 2d6 acid damage, with 2 splash. Not a problem.
DC 40 Alchemist's Fire does the same, but fire and with DoT. Not a problem.
DC 40 Smokestick is a 20' cube. Wahoo! Not a problem.
DC 40 Tindertwig lights fires SO GOOD. Not a problem, and actually no effect.
DC 45 Antitoxin would give +10 to Fort saves against poison. That actually might be useful! Except, oh wait, it doesn't double that, it doubles duration. So you spend 5 times the cost for two hours instead of one. Not worth it at all.
DC 45 Sunrod lasts 12 hours. Not a problem.
DC 45 Tanglefoot Bag lasts 4d4 rounds, I guess? But it already lasted most or all of a fight, so no problem.
DC 45 Thunderstone lasts two hours. Not a problem.

So, of the listed items in the SRD, you got Acid, Fire, and Smokestick that might be vaguely worth it in any way.

If you can hit DC 55, 4d6 acid on a touch attack isn't awful? But that's 125 GP a pop. It'd probably be cheaper to just use a wand of Magic Missile. And more reliable.
DC 60 and double the price on Alchemist's Fire, and more easily resisted. So not worth it.
A Smokestick could go to a 40' cube at DC 60, which is neat. You could, with some HUGE bonuses, cover a massive area! But wind still disperses it fine, so...

This is an Epic Feat? Who thought it was worth that? At all?

FWIW, my initial worry is that while the SRD stuff is probably fine, there's so many alchemical items scattered through all the books that it's possible there's something out there where a couple doublings for +40 DC would actually be really OP for a mere x25 price. But it's hard to be sure.

EDIT: Like...maybe an item giving a temporary alchemical bonus to attributes? Magic party drugs that normally give +4 alchemical to Charisma, but now give +8, and with twice the duration? That's the kind of thing that might be a bit much for just +20 DC/x5 price, depending on how it already works.

[JNAProductions]

FWIW, my initial worry is that while the SRD stuff is probably fine, there's so many alchemical items scattered through all the books that it's possible there's something out there where a couple doublings for +40 DC would actually be really OP for a mere x25 price. But it's hard to be sure.

Yeah, that's fair.

But would it be more powerful than something like a wand? You can already break the game with WBL if you're smart and have access to crafting various things, after all.

Did Thurbane make a list of Alchemical Goods? I know he's good at lists like that.

[Arcanist]

Nothing breaks exactly, but Craft (Alchemy) definitely gets an upgrade.


If the item or substance deals damage, double the damage dealt. If the item or substance doesn’t deal damage, double the duration of its effect. If the item or substance doesn’t deal damage and doesn’t have a specific listed duration (or has an instantaneous duration), double all dimensions of its area. If the item or substance doesn’t fit any of these categories, then it cannot be affected by this feat.

This disqualifying effect makes it the most irksome to genuinely take advantage of it. My first immediate thought when I saw your idea was "Oh, I'll just use it to make Healing Salves that restore twice as much HP", which you evidently cannot do. However you can use it to take advantage of items such as Shedden from Drow of the Underdark to grant upward to a +5 Natural Armor bonus for 4 minutes for the low cost of 10,000gp (for point of reference, a 12th level potion of Barkskin not only lasts 2 hours, it provides the same bonus, and costs only 1,200gp). The issue with making this even remotely helpful is:


The high DC makes it so that only the most specialized individuals or ones with prodigious abuse of aid another can make use of it.
The cost is so prohibitively high that it is straight up better in most cases to purchase potions or single use magic items of the desired effect.

[AvatarVecna]

Nothing breaks exactly, but Craft (Alchemy) definitely gets an upgrade.



This disqualifying effect makes it the most irksome to genuinely take advantage of it. My first immediate thought when I saw your idea was "Oh, I'll just use it to make Healing Salves that restore twice as much HP", which you evidently cannot do. However you can use it to take advantage of items such as Shedden from Drow of the Underdark to grant upward to a +5 Natural Armor bonus for 4 minutes for the low cost of 10,000gp (for point of reference, a 12th level potion of Barkskin not only lasts 2 hours, it provides the same bonus, and costs only 1,200gp). The issue with making this even remotely helpful is:


The high DC makes it so that only the most specialized individuals or ones with prodigious abuse of aid another can make use of it.
The cost is so prohibitively high that it is straight up better in most cases to purchase potions or single use magic items of the desired effect.


The sole benefit for a lot of them that I can see is that, AFAICT, alchemical items are nonmagical? Craft (Alchemy) requires you to be a caster, but that doesn't make them magic I think? That's a really niche situation though.

EDIT: And that line means an item giving an alchemical bonus to int wouldn't be doubled, so that concern is gone.

[Tzardok]

IIRC not all alchemical items require you to be a caster, only all of those in the Player's Handbook.

[Arcanist]

The sole benefit for a lot of them that I can see is that, AFAICT, alchemical items are nonmagical? Craft (Alchemy) requires you to be a caster, but that doesn't make them magic I think? That's a really niche situation though.

My comment shouldn't be taken as saying that alchemical items are worthless per say, but they do have diminishing results compared to what you are suggesting. If a Potion of Barkskin that lasts a fraction of the time, and listed at almost 10 times mark up that functions in an AMF is what you need, then you get what you need.


IIRC not all alchemical items require you to be a caster, only all of those in the Player's Handbook.


To make an item using Craft (alchemy), you must have alchemical equipment and be a spellcaster.

This funnily enough disqualifies Psions and similar Manifesters from making use of anything involving Craft (alchemy).

[icefractal]

I would think the most benefit would be cases where you don't have to actually pay for it. Major Creation, for example. In that situation, it's just a free improvement if your skill is high enough. Doesn't seem broken though.

[AvatarVecna]

If you can hit DC 55, 4d6 acid on a touch attack isn't awful? But that's 125 GP a pop. It'd probably be cheaper to just use a wand of Magic Missile. And more reliable.

I just realized it's actually worse than this. It says "double", but remember D&D does multiplication stupid. "Currency" and "duration" are real-world measurements, and so they multiply normally, but damage explicitly isn't. For damage, two doublings is a tripling, so the DC 55 Acid Flask is only gonna be dealing 3d6 acid on a touch. Also, because of the price multiplication, it's gonna cost 83.33 gp to craft yourself (250 on open market).

[flappeercraft]

Oh god, it was bad enough as is. Basically multiplying damage is useless now. Might aswell just tape two Alchemist Fire Flasks and throw them.

Also, I noticed you are all looking at the Augmented Alchemy from the srd which is the version of the ELH. CAdv updates it to be slightly better by doubling damage, duration, and area while also increasing the DC by 2. There is no multiplying one thing or the other, it just doubles all of them.

[AvatarVecna]

Oh god, it was bad enough as is. Basically multiplying damage is useless now. Might aswell just tape two Alchemist Fire Flasks and throw them.

Also, I noticed you are all looking at the Augmented Alchemy from the srd which is the version of the ELH. CAdv updates it to be slightly better by doubling damage, duration, and area while also increasing the DC by 2. There is no multiplying one thing or the other, it just doubles all of them.

That makes it a bit better, but yeah it's still a big problem.

[Gruftzwerg]

poisons could get problematic:



Using the Alchemy Skill: Characters with the Alchemy
skill can substitute it for Craft (poisonmaking), but doing so
imposes a –4 circumstance penalty on checks related to poisonmaking.


Doubling poison dmg can be pretty nasty. 6d6 CON or STR dmg can be pretty deadly.
A poison focus build could thus become problematic.

edit: we had a poison themed Iron Chef (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?640260-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-in-the-Playground-CXVII/page3) round not long ago. Have a look if you want to see some poison focused builds to guess how this change might affect them.

[Crake]

The feat doesn't read like you can apply it more than once to any craft to me. It has nothing to say you can repeat this more than once, and only ever says you can make it more powerful than normal by adding +20 to the DC. Once you do that, the item you're crafting is not the normal item, so you can't increase it again by my reading, just a one time deal.

[AvatarVecna]

poisons could get problematic:




Doubling poison dmg can be pretty nasty. 6d6 CON or STR dmg can be pretty deadly.
A poison focus build could thus become problematic.

edit: we had a poison themed Iron Chef (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?640260-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-in-the-Playground-CXVII/page3) round not long ago. Have a look if you want to see some poison focused builds to guess how this change might affect them.

Somebody pointed out the Complete Adventurer version to me, and while it's generally better (it doubles all applicable stuff, and also gives +2 to Save DCs), it also explicitly calls out poison as not being an option.


The feat doesn't read like you can apply it more than once to any craft to me. It has nothing to say you can repeat this more than once, and only ever says you can make it more powerful than normal by adding +20 to the DC. Once you do that, the item you're crafting is not the normal item, so you can't increase it again by my reading, just a one time deal.

I guess that makes it even less worth it.

[Gruftzwerg]

Somebody pointed out the Complete Adventurer version to me, and while it's generally better (it doubles all applicable stuff, and also gives +2 to Save DCs), it also explicitly calls out poison as not being an option.


k, didn't notice that. But that still leaves Ravages from BoED. IIRC they can also be crafted via alchemy.

e.g.

Purified Couatl Venom: normally 2d6/4d6 STR dmg turns into 4d6/8d6 STR dmg

Golden Ice: normally 1d6/2d6 DEX dmg turns into 2d6/4d6 DEX dmg.

Sure these are the most expensive, but can still become problematic at higher lvls where gold for consumables is the lesser issue.

[flappeercraft]

The feat doesn't read like you can apply it more than once to any craft to me. It has nothing to say you can repeat this more than once, and only ever says you can make it more powerful than normal by adding +20 to the DC. Once you do that, the item you're crafting is not the normal item, so you can't increase it again by my reading, just a one time deal.

Actually it does work. I thought the same a few days ago so decided to look into it. “ A character can create an item with multiple degrees of augmentation. For every additional multiplier applied to damage, duration, or area, add an additional +20 to the DC and add an additional 5 to the cost multiplier.”
It’s in the SRD under epic craft alchemy.

I’m AFB so can’t check CAdv but unless anything there contradicts this, it should still work.

[Arcanist]

Also, I noticed you are all looking at the Augmented Alchemy from the srd which is the version of the ELH. CAdv updates it to be slightly better by doubling damage, duration, and area while also increasing the DC by 2. There is no multiplying one thing or the other, it just doubles all of them.

I wonder how this would interact with drugs? Take Liquid Pain for example. Are you stunned for 2d4+2 rounds, and staggered for 2d6 minutes after that? Do you you get 2d4+2 Enhancement bonus to Charisma for 2d10+100 minutes? Do you feel pleasure for 2d4 hours? Is the addiction DC raised by 2? or the Fortitude Save against Overdoses raised by 2? At 1,000gp? That is a steal.

[flappeercraft]

I wonder how this would interact with drugs? Take Liquid Pain for example. Are you stunned for 2d4+2 rounds, and staggered for 2d6 minutes after that? Do you you get 2d4+2 Enhancement bonus to Charisma for 2d10+100 minutes? Do you feel pleasure for 2d4 hours? Is the addiction DC raised by 2? or the Fortitude Save against Overdoses raised by 2? At 1,000gp? That is a steal.

Ok so ignoring the "Drugs function like poisons" debate (it seems to be more a comparison than rules text but should be brought up regardless), Augmented Alchemy would only double the duration of the effects and increase the save DC to resist it. Not sure about the overdose DC but that seems to be a generic DC rather than provided by the drug itself so I'm leaning towards no. It would not double the benefits however as those are generally not area effects. Any damage you take as part of the effects should probably be doubled, including ability damage.

[Blackhawk748]

This funnily enough disqualifies Psions and similar Manifesters from making use of anything involving Craft (alchemy).

Thats not a blanket rule, it only affects Alchemical items specifically called out by it. Plenty of later items lack this qualifier and, as such, are perfectly fine.

Also its stupid and should be ignored anyway because Rogues would clearly want to be the Alchemist.

As for the question, very, very little. Its an incredibly high DC and it gets pricey fast. Hell, I made a modification where the DC only goes up by 5 and the price merely doubled for an extra damage dice.

The party Rogue made a couple of 2d6 Acid flasks, then went up to 3d6 for a bit, then stopped bothering after like level 7 or 8.

[Arcanist]

Thats not a blanket rule, it only affects Alchemical items specifically called out by it. Plenty of later items lack this qualifier and, as such, are perfectly fine.

Also its stupid and should be ignored anyway because Rogues would clearly want to be the Alchemist.

That's funny. I could have sworn that text trumped table, but I suppose if you're just going to throw it out in favor of a house rule that I totally agree with, by all means :smalltongue:

[rel]

There are some weird edge cases, but it doesn't really solve the problem of 'alchemical items are awesome! until you reach level 2'.

An overhaul of the alchemical crafting rules (and crafting rules in general) would probably be a better approach.

[liquidformat]

Does anyone have any ideas on a better way to handle this? It seems reasonable that as your alchemy skill improves you should be able to increase the save DCs, damage, or other values of an alchemical item. However, in most cases the investment isn't worth the increases caused by the feat.

[AvatarVecna]

Does anyone have any ideas on a better way to handle this? It seems reasonable that as your alchemy skill improves you should be able to increase the save DCs, damage, or other values of an alchemical item. However, in most cases the investment isn't worth the increases caused by the feat.

It's difficult to say. It's more or less already following the basic premise that any remake would have to follow too: if base alchemical item does X, and upgraded alchemical item does 2X, the upgraded alchemical item needs to have a higher craft DC (for being a better item) and also needs to cost more than twice what the lesser item does. The reason for this is...okay so an upgraded Alchemist Fire deals the same damage as two alchemist fires used at once. But the upgraded one only takes one action to use, while the two normal ones take two actions to use. Since it's the same effect as two items, and has an action economy advantage over the two item approach, the upgraded item should cost more than double the normal item. That just...makes sense. It's intuitive. The problem is when you get into the specifics.

The 3.0 version (the one on the SRD) increases damage, duration, or area; the CA version increases all of them as well as save DC. An increase to damage isn't an actual doubling, so even if "x5 cost" was appropriate for double effect, and "x25 cost" was appropriate for quadruple effect, damage items would be paying "x25 cost" for triple effect. Thus, "doubling" the damage isn't a good choice. Doubling the duration will double properly with each step, but also doubling the duration isn't worth it. A normal sunrod lasts 6 hours when activated; if you purchased two of them, they would last 12 hours in exchange for taking up two activation actions. Meanwhile, according to our intuitive thing up there, a super-sunrod (which lasts 12 hours) would only require one activation action. Technically speaking, the super-sunrod is a bit more than twice as good as the regular sunrods, so it should cost more than twice as much. At the same time, the activation action is almost irrelevant because the duration is so long - to the point that the SRD doesn't even bother saying what kind of action it is to activate. The area doubling option seems good on paper: pay 5 times the cost for 8 times the volume (since that's how a doubling ends up affecting volume of an AoE), that's practically a steal! Of course, the problem is that a lame effect over a big area still isn't worth much. "Meteor Swarm" has garbage damage; would it be worth casting instead of a souped-up Fireball if the radius was a mile instead of 40 ft? Probably not, it'd still be extremely niche. At the end of the day, dealing 6d6 fire damage to a big area doesn't matter when you're usually facing BBEGs. 6d6 is low enough that ER 10 and a good save makes it deal basically no damage. It's all technically more than twice as good, but frequently the final effect isn't actually worth paying that much more for.

If there was theoretically an alchemical item that worked like mustard gas - where it deals damage over an area over a duration and forces a saving throw - it might be worth using since the CA version upgrades all of those. x5 cost for +100% damage, x2 duration, x8 volume, and an action economy advantage is...probably worth it? For a certain value of worth it, of course. As others have pointed out, the cost increases might be way too much for the effects they give, but half the problem is that the base alchemical items are barely worth using past low levels no matter what you do.

[icefractal]

Does anyone have any ideas on a better way to handle this? It seems reasonable that as your alchemy skill improves you should be able to increase the save DCs, damage, or other values of an alchemical item. However, in most cases the investment isn't worth the increases caused by the feat.
The Alchemy Sphere (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/alchemy) seems like a good place to start, in terms of "what effects are relevant at a given level?"

For example, Improved Acid Flask deals (in 3.5 ranks) 1d6 per two ranks of Craft(alchemy), and the radius for full / half / minimum damage increases as well.

Using the Sphere, the items are free to craft (but go inert after 24 hours), but on the other hand the Sphere also requires a feat or level investment, so having them cost money but only require the skill seems reasonable.

As for how much, some testing would be needed, but as a starting point a Spheres potion is priced at 50 * CL (use ranks -3) * complexity, where in this case complexity would generally be 1-3.

So by that standard, a possible item:
Improved Acid Flask (13 ranks, DC 25): 6d6 damage, 5' radius; 3d6 in 10', 6 in 15' (Reflex half, DC 20); take half that the following round. Price: 500 gp

[AsuraKyoko]

There are some weird edge cases, but it doesn't really solve the problem of 'alchemical items are awesome! until you reach level 2'.

An overhaul of the alchemical crafting rules (and crafting rules in general) would probably be a better approach.


Does anyone have any ideas on a better way to handle this? It seems reasonable that as your alchemy skill improves you should be able to increase the save DCs, damage, or other values of an alchemical item. However, in most cases the investment isn't worth the increases caused by the feat.

Spheres of Might (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/spheres-of-might) for Pathfinder has the Alchemy sphere, which allows you to craft a wide of alchemical items that scale with your ranks in Craft (Alchemy). It's not exactly what is being discussed here, since it involves investment to get, and in general involves crafting temporary stuff for free, rather than permanent stuff, but there are rules for crafting permanent stuff here (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/tech#toc156), though they probably need to be modified to suit our purposes; since they assume you've spent the talents (which are roughly equivalent to a feat) on learning the individual formulae you want to craft.

The expanded crafting system is pretty cool, actually, but it is its own topic.

Anyways, looking at the Alchemy sphere, we see that most of the damage dealing items scale at the same rate as a rogue's Sneak Attack: 1 die/2 levels, rounded up. This makes sense for something that scales off of levels or skill ranks, but is tricky if you divorce it form that; if we simply say that every +2 to the craft DC gives another die of damage and +1 to the save DC, then it becomes potentially really abuseable, because skill bonuses can greatly outstrip level scaling, even before involving things like aid another cheese. This means that price being a gating factor is going to be important.

The other thing to think about is the price of these scaling items. Linear scaling is not a good metric, since the cost effectiveness of items will rapidly skyrocket. doubling the price every step is also bad, because it makes the items not worth the money very quickly. I propose something like this:

You can increase the craft DC of an item by 2 to increase the effect by 100% of the base effect, and to increase the save DC (if any) by 1. Doing this increases the price of the item to the base price of the item * (1 + the number of times you increased the DC this way). In essence, each time you increase the DC by 2, it increases the "spell level" of the item by 1, with the base "spell level" of the item being 1. The price is "spell level" squared * base price.

The best way to compare this to see if the price is reasonable is to compare it to magic item prices; namely potions. A "potion" of Fireball deals 5d6 damage and costs 750 gp; an Acid Flask with the DC increased 4 times would also deal 5d6 damage, and would cost 250 gp; it's single target, rather than an AOE, so this seems reasonable. Comparing at a higher level; a "potion" of Fireball with a CL of 10 would cost 1500 gp; the Acid Flask that deals 10d6 damage would cost 1000 gp. Fireball is still more expensive, but the gap has closed (proportionally; it's actually a 500 gp difference in both cases, but that's more or less a coincidence). The numbers are still reasonable, however; the save DC on the fireball hasn't increased, since it's still a 3rd level spell, if we compare it to a Fireball Heightened to 5th level, the price of the "potion" is 2500 gp, which puts it in the same ballpark, proportionally.

The only outstanding issue is crafting time, but that can probably be solved by using the craft time for magic items, instead of the craft skill. Additionally, if the skill bonus scaling is a problem, you can change the DC increase to compensate and it doesn't really affect the rest of it; perhaps +3 to the DC per step is more appropriate?

There is probably something that I'm missing here, but I think the core idea is sound. What do you guys think?


Oof, Swordsaged (I swear I started this before that, though! :smallbiggrin:)

[Blackhawk748]

I wouldn't more than double the cost for doubling the damage, simply because they you get weird things like it being more cost effective to just break a bag of acid flasks over someone's head or doing other silly things instead of just buying super acid

[icefractal]

I wouldn't more than double the cost for doubling the damage, simply because they you get weird things like it being more cost effective to just break a bag of acid flasks over someone's head or doing other silly things instead of just buying super acidWhile it's not specified either way, I think there's some strong evidence that things like acid flasks don't stack linearly.

For example, being immersed in acid is 10d6 per round, despite being a lot more than ten flasks worth of acid.

Also, throwing a flask of acid is an attack. You can't simply "throw a bag of twenty" for 20d6 damage, any more than you can "dump a barrel of daggers on someone" to deal 50d4.

And in terms of balance, WBL outstrips HP by so much that escalating low-level consumables linearly becomes ridiculous. How about 100d6 acid damage for 1000 gp, seem reasonable?

[JNAProductions]

One thing to note-AV, you say that "DC has to go up and cost has to go up, with cost going up by MORE than 2(Base Cost)".

But is that necessarily true?

A DC 20 Acid that does 1d6 damage is worse than a DC 30 Acid that does 2d6 damage, yes. But it's also harder to make-it requires a +20 bonus to reliably craft, whereas the weaker acid only requires +10.

I definitely agree that, if all else is equal, an item dealing 2X damage should be more than two times the cost. But not all else IS equal-the craft DC is higher, so it's gated behind better checks at a minimum.

[flappeercraft]

So there is probably something wrong with this as I am AFB and cannot check if this works, but I gotta post about it in case it works or inspires similar ideas that work before I forget. Could shapesand create alchemical items? Could it create augmented alchemical items? I recall something about shapesand calling out it works as an ordinary version of the item, but could an Augmented Alchemist Fire Flask count as ordinary?

[Arcanist]

So there is probably something wrong with this as I am AFB and cannot check if this works, but I gotta post about it in case it works or inspires similar ideas that work before I forget. Could shapesand create alchemical items? Could it create augmented alchemical items? I recall something about shapesand calling out it works as an ordinary version of the item, but could an Augmented Alchemist Fire Flask count as ordinary?


Shapesand is a special kind of wasteland soil that is psychoreactive; it can be sculpted into any form according to your will. The new object is made of sand, but serves as a normal item of the same sort.

I'd say the rules are ambiguous on the limitations of Shapesand for this. It depends entirely on if you can convince your DM into believing that an Augmented Alchemist's Fire is the same as an Alchemist's Fire. I doubt it, but if you could this would be a rather nice upgrade for Shapesand.