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Howdy folks,
I will be spinning up a home game in the near future set in my homebrew campaign realm. The premise is that the city the players are in has an unusual way of dealing with criminals: if the crime is severe enough (or nobles pay enough money to bribe the arbiters), the criminals are sent into the Prisons. "Prisons" is a fancy way of saying a massive dungeon complex beneath the city. They're dropped there and left to die with nothing on but skivvies essentially with the lingering promise that if they can manage to escape the dungeons through a specific exit, they are granted a full pardon.
So, with that in mind, the characters will be starting with nothing except a torn shirt, burlap pants and a short length of rope as a belt. They have to scavenge and survive. There are prisoners that live down there that have created their own factions to survive and of course there are areas of the dungeons that are avoided because they're so dangerous.
The players have been informed of this lack of starting resources time and time again, but one player wants to make an alchemist anyway. So, here's the crux of my post: one of the house rules I'm implementing is that arcane spellcasters may make use of the esoteric spell components as described in the Unchained book - do you think those rules would do well for an alchemist attempting to find ingredients for their bombs, mutagens, extracts, etc?
I also have a copy of the Alchemy Manual and have been considering using the power components as things that the player can search for instead, and coming up with how much (and/or what kind) is necessary to make their bombs, extracts, etc.
Has anyone here played in and/or run a game that has had similar limited resources for players? Or seen rules for "esoteric" or "itemized" alchemical ingredients? I've done some internet crawling and searching through these forums and haven't found anything.
Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
-SK
I wouldn't handle it so literally. I'd just count units of components. Then when he wants to make X, I'd come up with a roll to see if he can figure a way to make it with what he has. I'd have it be craft: alchemy and I'd set it with multiple levels of success. A high level will allow him to make it with one unit of components. Lower will use up more components until he just can't make it.
This represents him twisting formulas on the fly to get the effect he wants and requires less bookkeeping.