Promethean
2023-01-21, 06:45 PM
Alchemy and Poison have problems. Serious problems.
Resources for both are strewn evenly across various books, but unlike magic items and spells, their usefulness is negated by class features early on and often cost inordinate amounts of wealth for what they do. There are dozens of examples of poisons describing their legendary status and how many people they've given horrible deaths in the fluff text, only for it have stats that wouldn't kill your average commoner if they failed both saves(which isn't actually a given considering how few poisons have a higher than 20 difficulty and level 3+ commoners get a bonus to fortitude).
so in effort to make alchemy and poisons useful I want to make some rule changes:
Alchemy: Augment alchemy is no longer a feat. Instead it's just a function of the craft(alchemy) skill like all epic skill tests. Doubling damage, duration, area, or increasing DC is now up to the crafter's choice. All alchemical items with a variable numeric effects can be deployed in groups to multiply the effect(based on how many were used) up to x10 the base. Basically, throw 1 Alchemists flask to do 1D6 acid damage, throw 2 to do 2d6, etc. up to 10d6, the same as full immersion in acid(if the augment alchemy roll feature was use to augment the damage of the flasks once to do 2d6 each, the max would become 20d6 damage for full immersion). This works with all alchemical items with a rolled damage or healing effect, like alchemist fire or healing salve. For Alchemical items with a DC, the same is true of doses, but increasing the DC up to the base plus 10. So one thunderstone is DC 15, 3 would be DC 17, etc. up to DC 25.
Poison and Disease: Poison now operate under the same rule changes as alchemy. In addition, after the initial roll of an injected or inhaled poison, the victims that fail the initial check must make a save vs the secondary effect DC Every Round until the poison burns out or is purged. The Poison lasts a number of rounds equal to it's check DC minus 10, with the save DC becoming 1 lower for every succeeded check. Damage from each failed check is cumulative. Diseases and Ingested Poisons work as above, but checks must be made every hour and they last a number of Days equal to their check DC minus 10.
Would anything about this be unbalanced?
Resources for both are strewn evenly across various books, but unlike magic items and spells, their usefulness is negated by class features early on and often cost inordinate amounts of wealth for what they do. There are dozens of examples of poisons describing their legendary status and how many people they've given horrible deaths in the fluff text, only for it have stats that wouldn't kill your average commoner if they failed both saves(which isn't actually a given considering how few poisons have a higher than 20 difficulty and level 3+ commoners get a bonus to fortitude).
so in effort to make alchemy and poisons useful I want to make some rule changes:
Alchemy: Augment alchemy is no longer a feat. Instead it's just a function of the craft(alchemy) skill like all epic skill tests. Doubling damage, duration, area, or increasing DC is now up to the crafter's choice. All alchemical items with a variable numeric effects can be deployed in groups to multiply the effect(based on how many were used) up to x10 the base. Basically, throw 1 Alchemists flask to do 1D6 acid damage, throw 2 to do 2d6, etc. up to 10d6, the same as full immersion in acid(if the augment alchemy roll feature was use to augment the damage of the flasks once to do 2d6 each, the max would become 20d6 damage for full immersion). This works with all alchemical items with a rolled damage or healing effect, like alchemist fire or healing salve. For Alchemical items with a DC, the same is true of doses, but increasing the DC up to the base plus 10. So one thunderstone is DC 15, 3 would be DC 17, etc. up to DC 25.
Poison and Disease: Poison now operate under the same rule changes as alchemy. In addition, after the initial roll of an injected or inhaled poison, the victims that fail the initial check must make a save vs the secondary effect DC Every Round until the poison burns out or is purged. The Poison lasts a number of rounds equal to it's check DC minus 10, with the save DC becoming 1 lower for every succeeded check. Damage from each failed check is cumulative. Diseases and Ingested Poisons work as above, but checks must be made every hour and they last a number of Days equal to their check DC minus 10.
Would anything about this be unbalanced?