| Ndar |
Sometimes you just want a campaign where every magic item has a story and is practically as rare as an artifact. In those same campaigns, its hard to rationalize magical classes as well (at least ones with overt spellcasters who can close wounds). Sometimes, even a normal or high magic campaign can benefit from more comprehensive alchemy rules, and that's what we've created (and have used for a couple of years) and I thought I'd share our basic premise:
First and foremost, this concept concludes that the world is so lush, rich, and diverse that there's a way to extract powerful ingredients from all walks of life.
A blue fern that grows only in swamps with swalloed grave yards can be used to brew an incense that can cleanse the body of wounds and infection; a rare bird whose feathers can protect you from the ravages of fire, but only so long as the bird they're from remains alive.
That being said, depending on the campaign, we have a much more detailed and verbose list of alchemy including what we call 'dirty' potions. These alchemical items can replicate nearly any magical potion, but at a cost. Cure Light Wounds, meet your counterpart, the 'dirty' Cure Light Wounds. Same healing, same basic rules, even the same price, but can be made without magic. Unlike normal potion rules, there is no level limit of spells that an alchemical potion can contain.
The 'dirty' rules: Consuming a dirty potion has no immediate effect on a creature, other than the taste can be described as less-than-appealing. However, a person can only consume a number of dirty potions between rests equal to twice their constitution modifier (for a low-magic campaign) or their constitution modifier (for a normal, or high magic campaign). Once they reach this point, every potion they consume requires a Fortitude save or they become sickened until they rest at least 6 hours. Each additional potion increases the DC by 1, with each DC based on the level of the potion currently being consumed.
Once a target is sickened, the fortitude save instead prevents nauseated for 1d10 rounds. Any creature that fails two saves against nauseated in a row, is instead knocked unconscious for 1 hour.
Dirty potions do not affect normal potions that are imbibed, or even standard magical healing, and only a running tally of the 'dirty' consumption needs be tracked.
In light of the Alchemist, we added a new 'Discovery' based on this new alchemy system: 'Filtration' A number of times per day equal to his Intellect modifier, the Alchemist can create alchemical potions that are 'clean;' very loosely meaning they do not apply the dirty penalty. These clean potions become dirty after 24 hours (preventing a stockpiling of clean potions).
The other step to the advanced alchemy is the rare material componant requirements to create some of these potions. We prefer a method of keeping track of our potion creating process through the individual materials involved in the creation of the alchemical items. In example, to make a dirty cure light wounds potion (which should cost roughly 25g in terms of game balance) you might require a blue fern (10g), a crystal vial (5g), and some powdered glass (10g). The materials are really unimportant so long as the theme is effective, the goal is to add yet a new unique set of items to find lying around dungeons, growing naturally, and even a sellable treasure.
Obviously, this is a complicated stage to setup for your games, and I fully understand not all people would be interested in keeping track of the fine nuances of the creation process like this, but just thought I'd share the entire idea we use. Typically it only comes into play in low-magic campaigns (which we do a lot of, kicking back to that OD&D feel we used to get every time a new magic item was introduced) and its really a blast to watch people drinking themselves nauseated in that extra long dungeon, heh.
I'd love comments, suggestions, anything constructive, and even just whether or not the system might be useful to you, or other peoples' testing of a similar nature, or even this idea itself.
Thanks in advance for reading =)
| cranewings |
Most people will have a CON of +2. So they can get 4 potions at rests. So they can get 6 without risking being knocked out. Nausea doesn't matter because it is only 1d10 rounds.
Last time I was prescribed oxy, I was nauseated for 16 hours and useless for another 8. I don't think that a day of nausea is unreasonable for someone cramming back 3-4 liters of graveyard flowers.
I've also never drank anywhere close to that many potions in a game, not when they were just sitting around, not when they were free. I think your limit is going to see very little use.
Maybe roll it back to 1 potion, and drinking it anymore gives you 75% chance of generating a random non-helpful effect or curse.
| Ndar |
First and foremost, clearly very different playstyles between groups then lol. Since our games tend to be much more oriented toward low-magic settings, healing is incredibly rare - 6 potions a day means the DM isn't doing their job (but again, just our groups, I understand not all groups flow this way).
Even in campaigns where the fantasy is just 'everyday', I drag my players through much harder encounters than they should; we're more of an exceptional challenge oriented people. When its not RP or solving this or that, we want the combat to be intense with a high chance of death. If we don't feel the fear of needing to make a new character, we're kinda bored with battle.
I've used the randomly generated negative effects thing before, but a bit more wild-magey than I really dig.
I'm well aware that most groups (I'll use most loosely) don't really see a use for potions very often; our groups very much do. Feel free to try out your own penalties, obviously, but the last time I drank less than 4 potions a -session- let alone rest was on a Hungry Ghost Monk... ridiculous power there. Then again, I can't remember the last battle with less than 5 equal level CRs in a party of 4 people.. and that's the low end. What can I say, we like the high xp chart XD
P.S. I think the biggest thing is, we use potions in combat a -lot-, kind of out of necessity, so the 1d10 rounds of nausea can pretty much leave you out of an entire battle and fodder. If potions were mostly chugged out of combat, I'd definitely consider as your suggestion indicates, a much longer nausea. Perhaps we're all too stuck in the 80s and Diablo XD